Archive for category family

father’s day

Jun 20

Posted by kate in family | No Comments

My dad and I don’t talk as much as I wish we did, for a lot of complicated reasons. We’ve been in touch more often recently, mostly because my youngest brother has been in and out of the hospital. It’s a shame that we seem to only talk when things are not so good.

My dad is not a big reader. I have more books in my bedroom than he’s got in his whole house, everything confined to two bookcases in the basement. And, even then, my dad’s books are mostly limited to home-improvement reference books and a Time-Life series on Vietnam (with which he is mildly obsessed despite not having served, but he was ROTC in high school and probably would have gone into the army had the decision not coincided with the outbreak of Vietnam and due dates for grad school applications). My stepmother has an uncle who is a prolific published writer, so there’s a shelf of his books, too. But that’s kind of it. And my dad’s stories of having skated through his English classes are the stuff of legend; he’s still kind of proud of the fact that he passed freshman English by flirting with the teacher.

My dad’s real gift is for storytelling. He can spin a yarn like few others can. I’ve heard all of his stories many times, but I’m happy to sit through them again because he enjoys telling them so much. He also makes a point of learning story jokes, and he can keep your interest through a lengthy one and deliver the punchline with aplomb. I think my desire to tell stories must come from that tradition to a degree. (My maternal grandfather also was not much for book-learnin’ but could tell a great story in his Ozarks twang. I used to love to sit and listen to him talk.)

My dad was sick a lot when I was a kid with a chronic illness that has, against all odds, largely gone into remission now that he’s in his sixties. My youngest brother, as it happens, has been diagnosed with the same illness, but I imagine it must offer him some comfort to have Dad around to commiserate with.

I’m grateful that my dad is still around to tell stories. It worries me sometimes that he fudges the details now, mixing up who was involved in the story, but we forgive him some senility and make jokes about his age. I think he finds his inability to recall some details frustrating. But then, when I spoke with him this afternoon, he sounded great, happy and preparing for a busy summer.

I spent a few hours in my favorite neighborhood cafe this afternoon, plugging away at my current WIP. A number of men came in with their kids for lemonade or iced tea (it’s a hot one in New York today). The staff at the cafe was quick to offer all the dads a happy day, which I thought was sweet. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of young families, and it’s not in any way unusual to see men wheeling around strollers.

mom’s day

May 9

Posted by kate in books, family, vanity | No Comments

Halloweeen ca. 1984

I went digging for a few old photos of my mother in honor of the holiday and came up with this one. It’s fitting in its way; every Halloween since forever, she’s dressed up as a witch. There was a box of old costumes that lived in our basement that had no fewer than 5 pointy hats in it at any given time.

My mom is also a writer, though she writes mostly non-fiction these days. My dad is a scientist. As far as following in parental footsteps, it could have gone either way; I did pretty well in my English classes in school, but I also excelled at math. Still, I became an editor and a writer, just like my mother. Because, as maybe you can guess from the photo, a part of me wanted to be her.

My mom was always trying to further our education. She has a keen interest in American history, so my brother and I got dragged around to reenactments and documentary screenings and war movies when we were kids. I probably got a better education in history from my mother than I did from school. In 10th grade, for example, I was assigned a paper on the Battle of Gettysburg, and I didn’t even have to go to the library because my mom had so many reference books on the Civil War.

Some branches of my mother’s family have been in the US since the late 1600s, which maybe explains the preoccupation with American history and genealogy. My mother told me at our early Mother’s Day dinner last night that her brother has been doing some research and discovered that we had an ancestor who’d been imprisoned at Andersonville, the worst of the Confederate prison camps during the Civil War. My brother and I both exclaimed “Wow, cool!” (And my brother’s fiancée, who was also having dinner with us, gave us a blank stare. Although, she and my brother have been together a long time, and he’s about to go back to school to get an advanced degree in history, so she’s kind of used to this.) My mom had a similar reaction, though; it’s one of those things… Andersonville was, by all accounts, a terrible place. The man who ruled over it was hanged for war crimes after the war ended. My ancestor, in fact, died a few weeks after being liberated. But my brother and I got kind of a giddy thrill to know that an ancestor of ours had been a part of this chapter in American history that we knew something about.

As an adult, when I read nonfiction, I read mostly history. (My brother recently loaned me David McCullough’s book on the Brooklyn Bridge, which is kind of a doorstopper, but I’m enjoying it so far.) I toy with writing historical fiction. I love to write (and read!) it, but a life spent with my mother makes me leery sometimes, terrified to get the details wrong. (Plus, the historical eras I’m interested in are not so universally appealing. I wrote a chapter of a novel that takes place during the Gilded Age and thought, “Geez, would anyone but me be even remotely interested in this?”)

Although the fact that I’m writing romance at all is maybe my little bit of rebellion. My mom was always reading these weighty, academic tomes (although I knew where she kept her secret stash of pulp sci fi novels) so I hid romance novels in my room when I read them as a teenager. One of the fun things about being an adult is that I don’t even bother to hide those anymore; most of my romance novels are in a bookcase in the hallway right next to the front door of my apartment. It’s like a sign that says, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

So there it is. Blame my mother.