Memoirville

Memoirville, which is part of Smith Magazine, has published my memoir piece "Loaded." It's about meeting my father and grandmother for the first time several years ago. Here's an excerpt:

At the age of 86, my grandmother has been sober fewer years than there are fingers on her hands. As we head to the restaurant, it becomes clear she shouldt be driving. We bob and weave at 45 miles per hour down the Interstate. She can’t remember where we’re going. Somehow this is the exit’s fault.

During dinner, I notice she’s wrapping all-you-can-eat pork chops into napkins and tucking them neatly into her purse. Hesitantly, I raise the question. “I hear you, uh, killed someone?” I am touched by the gentleness of her refusal, so unlike a hard-drinking, gun-toting Texas grandma. “Oh, let’s not talk about that. Those were terrible, terrible times.”

Although I am a journalist by trade, I have never been one to prod where prodding isn’t wanted. Each of us here–my brother, my father, my grandmother, and me, slouching in uncomfortable molded-plastic chairs over rapidly cooling heaps of mashed potatoes, carved turkey breast, and boiled veggies–each of us has our dark places, the ones we don’t like to visit. When we do go there, we understand it is better to travel alone. And yet, this lack of a past has left me full of great gaping holes. Amazing in retrospect, my certainty that answers would somehow make me whole.

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