Paperback Writer

I'm usually found 20 tomes deep in literary escapism but memoirs and essays really trip my trigger too.

Recent favs are Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman and, of course the late, great, fabulous Nora Ephron.
        I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman,
        I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections,
        Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble: Some Things About Women and Notes on Media
I read Heartburn too which I understood it to be a ‘fictional memoir’ -- loved her style/hated the husband. Of course. He was a cad and we’re meant to detest him...right?

In any case, while buzzing around Goodreads I found health, happiness, LOVE, peace, prosperity, SAFETY. a fictional memoir by Kevin Tudish. I'd not read him before -- in fact, I think this might be his first book.

Why’d I buy it? What was the hook for me? Tudish isn't writing about homicidal space aliens on deadly pioneer worlds (think Zoe’s Tale), there are no ginger headed orphans on Prince Edward’s Island or Magnificent Desolations of life after walking on the moon. You know, the uzh for me.

He’s writing about life in the Silicon Valley, growing up in an itinerant military family; dividing time between making art and making a living; negotiating marriage and the unexpected fortunes of fatherhood;

Between his light wit, questing and questioning heart and mind, the frequent, magically delicious turns of phrase, the lyricism, I couldn’t put it down.

Waddya mean the doctor will see me now? Lemme read just one more page!
            I gotta go to work? Can’t I read just one more page?
                       Our herd ‘o’ cat’s waiting to be fed? Can you slop them tonight? Yes, again.
                                     Waddya mean, ‘dinner’s burnt?’
                                                 Can’t be -- I just sat down for a sec to read one page!

The teaser first page on Amazon is what really totes snagged me* -- not with a giant space ship crashing to earth scene but a quiet, charming ‘c’mere, let’s chat. I’ll tell you a story. It’ll be spun with truths, paths walked, questions, funny stories and otherwise.'

"Sometimes it snows at Christmas, like two years ago when we got two feet overnight, but usually it's just cold and the trees are bare. Animals forage, but the miles of forest are otherwise dormant, gray and brown.

Inside, there's plenty of life crowded behind the steamy windows. More people than bedrooms, more food than can fit in the cupboards and refrigerators. The golds and greens and red velvet of Christmas.

Despite everyone's promise to dial it back this year, the pile of gifts overwhelms the tree.

You start gaining weight the first day. The walk and the crunches and the blueberry smoothie first thing in the morning are vestigial habits that give way to shuffling down the hall to the breakfast table for coffee and nut rolls.

Nut rolls are an important thread in my family history. Both grandmothers made them. My mom made them every Christmas: wherever we lived, whichever coast or continent, she rolled out the tiny crescents of sugary dough, filled them with walnuts and cinnamon soaked in milk and butter.

Three days in, you're glad you brought sweat pants."

Talking about his father -- a very different seeming man than the author -- and how he learned so

much from him:

"In a military family, war is never an abstract. You live around the armament, climb in and out of it on field trips. Everything your dad does every day is in preparation for it. Almost everyone has seen combat. But my dad never made it sinister. It was always a possibility, even a likelihood, but it was just something we were ready for, not something that kept us up at night or contaminated our lives.

He knew how awful it was, how it would never be beyond the periphery of our lives, so he made it an entertainment.

“One of the cooks on Guadalcanal used to make wine out of grape jelly. And you could cut a hole in a coconut, pour in some sugar and plug it up for a week to make some hooch.”

“They used to shoot at us from the jungle. One day, we were taking sniper fire, so we got down behind the wheel of a P-39. This Marine comes strolling down the beach. He’s got a Browning Automatic, and ammo strapped all over him. All I could think was, If they hit him, man, we’re all going up. ‘Jump out and draw some fire,’ he says, ‘so I can see where it’s coming from.’ We drew a few shots from the jungle and he let go with that Browning.”

It was all candid information about life in a war zone, but he talked about it the same way he talked about being able to ice skate on Dunkard Creek all the way from Davistown out to Poland Mines, where the creek empties into the Monongahela; or how he talked his way into every funeral in town so he’d have a chance to ride in a car. There was an affection for his experience, for learning to improvise and survive.

I wanted to give my own kid that sense that there’re catastrophic forces at work, things that can annihilate you in an instant, but you don’t have to live in fear of them."

**************************************
So beautifully, lyrically put.

A discussion with his wife over their daughter’s misconstrued laugh leads to a memory of his own badly timed mirth overload.

"“She just started laughing at me,” my wife said. “She took this really snotty tone, and when I called her on it she started laughing.”

Like when we wrecked two cars in one night.
..........................................................................snip
The more I snickered and the closer we came to seeing my dad explode, the funnier it seemed.

Of course she laughed at you, I thought while my wife was telling the story. She couldn’t help herself."

************************************** 
You just have to read the whole story -- it’s funny, sad and I can SO relate.

More discussions:

"“That’s twice this week she’s wanted you to put her to bed,” my wife said.
“Maybe she misses me.”
“You were in there a long time.”
“We were discussing the big issues. God, eternity.”
“Really? Did she tell you the class hamster died?”
“That’s what started the conversation.”
“Did she want to know if Hammy was in heaven?”
“Yeah, and what heaven was like.”
“What did you tell her?”
“No cats, and no Republicans.”"

************************************** 
HAH! Señor, you are mistaken. Heaven IS cats but you’re right too -- no Republicans.

The thrills of seeing your child grow:

"And when she wanted to play poker with my family, and in a game of deuces wild threw down her cards and said, “Natural straight.”
I loved the experience of raising a child, but it got a lot more fun the first time she said, “Five-card draw, Jacks or better to open.”" 

************************************** 
I wanna share a bottle of Jami with this guy and get him to tell me ALL his stories! His daughter's gonna be a fabulous Hell-On-Wheels adult.

Ponderings on marriage:

"Of the myriad things I’d fantasized as part of my marriage, being able to share a sense of humor was one I wanted most. Even if she were an astounding beauty with an unfettered sexual imagination, if we weren’t able to laugh together, riff on any banal moment, then the experience of her beauty and erotic abandon would be cold comfort through the most of our lives when we weren’t fucking.
.............................................................................................................................................snip
The good moments are amplified, and the bad ones muted. You buoy one another with a sense of good fortune and a shared indulgence in the silliness of life.

Otherwise, marriage is a long low-blood-sugar episode where you feel deprived and put upon."

************************************** 
Trenchant -- that last line is trenchant, I tell ya!

Marriage and kids:

"...more often, now, I hear her parroting her mother’s impatience with me. It’s easy enough for her to find her own fault with me, but that’s at least genuine, cultivated from her own experience. It bothers me to see this alliance forming around a prejudice that’s beyond her, to see something that my wife cultivates inculcated in my daughter without her having a chance to decide whether it’s valid.

It’s easy to make kids proxies. You repeat the same things over and over, let your own pain or disappointment color the remark, until it becomes an inherited truth like racism."

Convos with kiddles:

"“Dad, are you and Mom getting a divorce?”
“Uhm, not that I know of. Why do you ask?”
“Mom was asking how I’d feel if you guys lived in different houses, if I had to stay part of the week in one house, and part of the week in another.”"

************************************** 
I was so roped into these characters that this part sent a chill through me.

I want to meet the author (duh. OF COURSE I DO!) and his parents too. He feels like an old friend.
I want to be his daughter’s art teacher.
I alternate between disliking his wife and admiring her. She seems utterly pragmatic and, possibly, fun to dish with over a nice Cakebread Sauvignon Blanc.

How much is real and how much is fiction in this fictional memoir? I suppose only the author, his wife and their daughter know the answer to that.

* In the quoted out sections from Mr. Tudish's work, any and all misquoting, typos and other assorted strange crap is my own damn fault. I can't copy and paste from the Kindle app so I just keyed it all in. I would've made a wretched typist. Good thing that wasn't one of my life goals.