My parents’ marriage was hard to categorize. They were madly in love, but they also were awful to one another, including my father being violent when drunk and my mother finding ways to punish him through guilt and shame. Still, they were married at twenty, met on the steps of the Widener Library at Harvard, brilliant, beautiful, and well, who knows, they were my parents; their marriage was a mystery except for one thing: I never wanted that.
Read MoreVisiting the cemetery in Princeton was a Gothic, rain-soaked quest. The cemetery guy was kind but busy and showed me on a map where my parents’ and sister’s headstones were. I had visited my sister’s grave as often as possible but moving far away had made it hard. At thirty-two she had died before I could tell her so many things.
Read MoreMy son got married last weekend to a wonderful person. The celebration was joyous and funny, and I did not, as I feared cry more than I might because he was glowing with happiness and that has been my entire goal in life when I knew he was going to be born, let him be happy. Help him be happy. Let him find his own happiness. The log line on me as a child was that I was very cheerful until I wasn’t and then the temper tantrums were supposedly epic.
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