The Beginning
An excerpt from The Bolter: A Memoir. My family believed in Dickens, root vegetables, ignoring difficult truths and Louis Kahn. They believed in making fun of the fat, the unintelligent, the poorly read, the conservative, and God. We believed in Ireland and scorned the Brits but loved England and adored the Beatles and hated the Monkees. I had no idea what was morally correct as a child, except you, should suffer for everyone and not show off. You should tell a good story, and when your parents drank, go to bed, and hold your breath and hope morning comes fast.
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Rural Life
I grew up in the country. Sort of. Our farmhouse was just over the county line from Princeton, part of Lawrenceville, a sort of red-headed stepchild of both towns. When we moved in, I was, I think, four? I was born across the street from Princeton University where my father was an English professor, then we went to live in London for a year where I acquired a posh accent from attending my posh nursery school while my sisters, doomed to the comprehensive, spoke like ‘guttersnipes’ according to some upper-class lady who encountered them in Harrods.
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Leaving
We just returned from a vacation, crossing the Atlantic on the RMS Queen Mary 2, a British ocean liner, and a week in Norway, mainly Oslo, where my husband’s family on his mother’s side comes from. The boat was predictably luxurious, fun, and relaxing. Norway was beautiful and impressive in its lack of tension, unlike the United States in general and the city where I live, Chicago.
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