Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother ‘worked’ at anything besides raising her children.
The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn.
Wherever it is you make your home, there is always this other place, this other person, calling to you. Come to me. Come back.
I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.
It troubles me that people speak about writing for money as ugly and distasteful.
Those who rhapsodize about the ease and joy of childhood have perhaps forgotten what it’s like to be 12 years old.
One of the sad realities of being a parent is that the same stuff you know is exciting, educational, and enriching in your child’slife is often messy, smelly and exhausting to deal with.
The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I’ve written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.
The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell.
I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn’t paid for what she writes.
Imagine if you succeeded in making the world perfect for your children what a shock the rest of life would be for them.
Nothing like being visible, publishing one’s work, and speaking openly about one’s life, to disabuse the world of the illusion of one’s perfection and purity.
I believed my story would be helpful to young women my daughter’s age, who are still in the process of forming themselves as women, and in need of encouragement to remain true to themselves.
My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?
Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals.
Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on.
If a man wishes to truly not be written about, he would do well not to write letters to 18-year-old girls, inviting them into his life.
I have no doubt that over the years my children will find plenty of things about me to criticize. But something tells me that twenty years from now not one of them will sit on some therapist’s couch complaining because their mother didn’t spend enough time vacuuming up glitter.
Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful.
Every child, woman, and man should possess license to speak or sing in his or her true voice.
No, I said. I didn’t remember that. There was so much to remember, sometimes the best thing was to forget.