365 Memories

My first memory of reading out of pure obligation and not deriving any form of pleasure from it is linked to the start of middle school. I was in California, where it's typical for middle school to consist of seventh and eighth grades only. I'd graduated from my public elementary school and had gained admittance to a private prep school. Heading into the summer before that seventh-grade year, incoming students were given a reading list. Apparently all the books were mandatory. I only remember a single one—though probably there were books on that list that formed a much more lasting impression, I just don't associate their titles with the marching orders I received in the summer of 1981. Until this time, I read voraciously, and I read everything I wanted (including Judy Blume books banned by my elementary school teacher) and nothing I didn't want. I mean, yes, certainly there were other school assignments, probably other summer reading lists, but if any of them were les...

In 1931, one year before my mother was born, a fifty-four-year-old woman named Irma Rombauer predated the current DIY approach to book publishing and self-published a collection of recipes and kitchen knowledge for $3,000*. That book, once commercialized, would go on to become the American cooking classic, the Joy of Cooking . More than fifty years later, I would cook the first meal I remember making completely on my own from this book: at age thirteen or fourteen, I used my mother's yellowing edition (the fourth from the top in this post's photograph; the aqua colored one with no dust jacket and a bright red ribbon to mark your place, which I think was the sixth edition that appeared in 1962) to prepare a special breakfast of "German Apple Pancake" for my family. We were living in Los Angeles (or my parents were—I don't recall whether I made this dish before going to a boarding school for the arts in North Carolina, or if I made it during a vacation), in a two-...

The worst kind of prejudice is the kind that slips under the radar. It's too subtle to cause a stir (and if you point it out, you'll usually get a sideways look: you're the one making too much of nothing), but its corrosive message nevertheless seeps in—subliminally, insidiously—beating down the spirit of the group it belittles or excludes. I am blessed to have been raised by two parents who were sensitive to prejudicial undercurrents; they fought against them in their own distinct ways through the tumultuous 1960s, and into the 70s and 80s as I was growing up. And it seems, thinking about it now, that they never missed a good learning moment with me: we often discussed issues of bias, prejudice, stereotype, and their harmful effects. This week, images in some of my kindergartener's reading books gave me pause. And in wrestling with how to handle these, I remembered something I hadn't thought of in many years: the library at the Brentwood Science Magnet School in ...

Sometimes you never know where things will lead, if anywhere. And yet . . . there is an inexplicable impulse, a vibe, a premonition perhaps, that drives you on. I was browsing in the then-new (now closed) Waterstone's book shop off Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Spring 1995, standing before the sleek black shelves and colorful book jackets. I had recently come to the end of a creative writing class that I'd been taking in the evenings through Northwestern's University College (their continuing education department). The class had me thinking for the first time about the possibility of writing fiction, attempting to get published in the genre. And of course my instructor encouraged me to get my hands on a bunch of literary magazines and start reading, researching the market, requesting submission guidelines. It's the same thing anyone will hear who takes even a half-step in the direction of fiction, at least where short stories are concerned. So, there I was, on the outsi...

Then there are the books that shock you. Really shock you. There's a book like this for me, a book by Shel Silverstein . It wouldn't shock me as an adult, and especially not now that I myself am a writer: I understand the desire to make sometimes drastic departures from your best-known material. (Plus, sometimes your best-known material doesn't even represent your best self, though I'm not saying one way or the other with respect to Silverstein .) We all have many facets to our personalities, many wells to draw from in our quest for creative expression. Today, I'm sure I'd love this large-format, coffee table book of drawings—or if not love it, then at least really appreciate it—and I hope my parents still have it in their personal library. I'm guessing that they do. But when I saw this book for the first time, I wasn't an adult. I was around ten or eleven years old, and the book in question, despite Silverstein's huge contributions to the world of...

Although I am an only child, I paraded through childhood with a group of kids who felt very much like family—they even lived in my house. They were fictional characters, but no less real to me. Actually, while I was growing up, they often seemed more real to me than real people did. That is, they were much more honest. They didn't try to stuff you with platitudes or false optimism when things weren't going well, but they gave it to you straight . . . including giving you the knowledge that you'd make it through whatever it was, intact. These characters most often were the brainchildren of one or the other of two classic children's book authors: Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume . (In fact, they're so classic that I almost worry it's cliché to remember them here.) While living in Chicago, I started out with Beverly Cleary and her neighborhood of kids on Klikitat Street. Ramona may have been a "pest" to her sister Beezus —and as a parent, I tend to agre...

Although generally I am keeping anecdotes relating to my son off the blog (since he is a minor, and as his parent I am ethically bound to protect him and his privacy) . . . still, there is one early memory I have of him that has been on my mind a lot today for some reason, and I have decided to share it to illustrate a point about my family overall. I am sitting with my son in his room (the one in a former apartment that still had the look of a nursery about it), and we are reading Maurice Sendak's classic, W here the Wild Things Are . My son is not yet three years old. He's following along with the pictures, and suddenly he stops the story where Max has been sent to his room by his mother, and the boy's bedroom is about to transform into a dense forest. My son asks in a genuinely concerned voice: "Where are his books?" I'm thrown by the question, a complete non sequitur , and I look hard at those same illustrations that I grew up with and cherished a generat...

For twenty years now, or very nearly, my father and I have shared a tradition of leather journal giving. I confess that the ratio of giving and receiving is not at all an even one. Mostly it is I who have been blessed with a package to unwrap—a hardcover, hand sewn, hand bound package smelling of rich, oiled sheepskin. The color of the hand-dyed leather has varied, as has the size of the journal (from the rather large to the quite compact) and the image carefully pressed into the cover, but one thing has always been the same: the journals all have been brought to life by the same hand, that of bookbinder Greg   Pfaff . The first journal, I remember, was discovered by my father at a small gift shop in Rhinebeck , New York, where I lived alone in an apartment on Montgomery Street while I attended Bard College. He gave one to me for Christmas, I think in 1990 (if not, I could only be off by a single year). I was immediately honored and intimidated. How could I ever hope to have thoughts, ...

Blue, blue, Brazilian blue. My one, my only love is you . . . I may not recall with total accuracy this, or indeed any, specific passage, but to this day I bear the imprint of the text and vivid artwork bound together in the book  Lion and Blue . My father gave this book to me for a birthday in the 1970s (maybe '75 or '76); he inscribed it with words I also can no longer quote verbatim though the emotion behind them still resonates. I was between the ages of six and eight, no more. The book, a fable of love written by Robert Vavra and illustrated with reproduced oil paintings by Fleur Cowles, was published in 1974 by William Morrow & Co, and was marketed as children's literature. It's appeal, however, crossed over to all ages. What I remember most is the deeply saturated hue of the blue Brazilian butterfly with black-veined wings, who was the object of the lion's love. I remember being mesmerized by its intensity, and the color has in fact become a motif in my l...

It was January 1990 when I found out about the death of a family friend, Morgan R. He was an IT man we knew through a work connection, a "techie" before that designation meant much to the average person—before the dot-com Silicon Alley boom (or bust) became part of public discourse. Morgan was a tall, thin man, and somewhat frail. He had pale skin, brown hair, brown or hazel eyes; he wore glasses. He spoke with a Southern accent, though I don't recall where he was from. Perhaps the Carolinas . He was sweet, intelligent, and was dying from the day I met him. He was the first man I knew personally who was homosexual (until then I'd only known boys who were struggling with the issue), and he was HIV-positive when the AIDS epidemic was ripping mercilessly through that population in the 1980s. I remember Morgan walking the office in his gray suit pants, his white shirt—his employee badge and a tiny red-handled screwdriver in his breast pocket. He wanted to leave his job, I...