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Making Toast: A Family Story
Making Toast: A Family Story
Making Toast: A Family Story
Ebook122 pages2 hours

Making Toast: A Family Story

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this ebook

“A painfully beautiful memoir….Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive.”

—E. L. Doctorow

 

A revered, many times honored (George Polk, Peabody, and Emmy Award winner, to name but a few) journalist, novelist, and playwright, Roger Rosenblatt shares the unforgettable story of the tragedy that changed his life and his family. A book that grew out of his popular December 2008 essay in The New Yorker, Making Toast is a moving account of unexpected loss and recovery in the powerful tradition of About Alice and The Year of Magical Thinking. Writer Ann Beattie offers high praise to the acclaimed author of Lapham Rising and Beet for a memoir that is, “written so forthrightly, but so delicately, that you feel you’re a part of this family.”

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateFeb 16, 2010
ISBN9780061969874
Author

Roger Rosenblatt

Roger Rosenblatt  is the author of six off-Broadway plays and eighteen books, including Lapham Rising, Making Toast, Kayak Morning and The Boy Detective. He is the recipient of the 2015 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

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Reviews for Making Toast

Rating: 3.5878048702439025 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

205 ratings42 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Roger Rosenblatt writes a tender, touching memoir chronicling his family’s life after the sudden death of his daughter. He and his wife move in with their son-in-law to help with their three young grandchildren and tells their story in a series of thoughtful, sometimes abrupt, sometimes heartbreaking vignettes. It’s a loving tribute to his daughter. Highly recommended.I had read the original essay which was published in The New Yorker a couple of years ago. This book expands on that story. HarperCollins/Ecco kindly provided the ARC.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I give Roger Rosenblatt 4 stars for a touching series of vignettes on grief, loss and love. (Others have complained that the book doesn't really have a plot or narrative arc, but I didn't mind that.)I deduct one star for the classism, name dropping, and unchecked privilege.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Have tissues handy. This is not a book of fiction. The author and his wife move in with his son-in-law and three children after the untimely and unexpected death of their daughter. The author makes toast for the children every morning. The morning after his daughter died one of the children asked "how long are you staying?" and he answered "Forever." It's really a collection of essays. Their daughter, Amy, though deceased, still lives in many of those essays. Many of them are about death and loss. But many are about re-creating a family, albeit a new kind of family. And love, always love.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Such a touching memoir. Overwhelmed by how Harris, the children, Ginny and Roger deal with the loss of a beloved wife, mother and daughter. Uplifted by its message of faith in family and renewal.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Touching, honest, sweetly sad, and yes, funny at times. I didn't think I'd like this book as much as I did. It was read by the author on CD, and the author isn't the most exciting reader I've heard, but he got the job done. His words resonated with reality and the emotions behind the vignettes.

    The book is about his grown daughter's untimely death and the aftermath when the author, a writer, and his wife go to live with their son-in-law and three young children. It's a simple book about daily routines, thoughts, small revelations, and choice moments. It's about every grandparent ever in this position and yet it's a personal story about a lovely family, simple and complex, and how they cope.

    Lovingly crafted, the story is a beautiful tribute to a young mother and those she held most dear. The writing is spare and not meant to bring tears. It's uplifting and also down to earth. Bravo to the author.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a tender story of the aftermath of the sudden death of a beloved daughter, wife, and mother of three at a very young age, due to a non-symptomatic genetic heart defect. A tragedy like this can hardly be imagined, but the entire surviving family weathers the tempest by creating new routines and by caring for each other. Sad, true, and well told.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I found this book was more about the author than his deceased daughter or the family she left behind. I didn't really get to know her or her husband or her kids, but by the end of it I knew all about the author's written works, accolades, likes, dislikes, politcal views etc. It felt a touch 'self-centered' to me...

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Audiobook read by the author

    From the dust jacket When his daughter, Amy – a gifted doctor, mother, and wife – collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the south Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies. Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny – Boppo and Mimi to the kids – quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children … Roger attends each day to “the one household duty I have mastered” – preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child’s liking.

    This is a tender and loving memoir of one family’s efforts to recover from a devastating loss. How do you explain to a toddler that Mommy won’t be coming back? Where do you find joy? What small events trigger memories, both painful and joyous? As Boppo and Mimi learned which was Jessie’s favorite jacket (the blue, although pink is her favorite color), how Sammy liked his cereal (with REAL milk), and where Bubbies liked to hide the car keys, they were reminded of their own daughter’s childhood. At one point he relates an interview with Alice McDermott about her novel After This about a couple whose son is killed in Vietnam. McDermott says, “Even as we face unbearable sorrow, small things happen that make us able to bear it.” This book is about those small things.

    The love is so evident in these pages. Rosenblatt is restrained where he could have been sentimental, and the book has all the more impact because of that. What might have been difficult to read, what might have seemed like an invasion of privacy is transformed by his simple recording of the everyday events that helped this family get through a seemingly impossible year of grief.

    I usually prefer that audiobooks be performed by skilled voice artists, but Rosenblatt does a fine job narrating the audio himself.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    a gentle, sad, funny, insightful memoir. No parent wants to outlive a child. Yet, the author speaks openly about his grief, anger, and his unfailing love for his daughter and her children. Two things that struck me over and over was the fame of the people in the author's circle of friends, and his incredible sense of humor/playfulness. Bopo the great, indeed.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Won this on Goodreads (thank you!!!). The book is slim, but nonetheless tells the story well. You can feel the loss the family went through. I lost my dad when I was 11, so I know how the death of a parent (looking at it from the child's side) can affect a small child. Your world is upside down. At least the grandparents were able to step in and become part of the household.
    Small complaint, since the characters aren't fleshed out much it can be hard to follow who is who in the book. An extra 20-50 pages may have helped with this. Or even a list of who is who at the beginning.

    All in all, a nice story to read.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Disappointing. More a journal of grieving a daughter than a constructed memoir. I found Rosenblatt's reflections emotionally shallow and wasn't at all sure why he expected me to read on.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Life is short and none of us knows if we will even have tomorrow let alone next year. That was certainly true for Amy Rosenblatt Solomon, pediatrician, wife, mother of three young children. Her unexpected death made it impossible for her husband Harris to continue his career as a hand surgeon and father to their three children. Consequently, he enlisted the help of Roger and Ginny Rosenblatt, Amy's parents and his in-laws. They moved into the Solomon home in Bethesda,MD, and picked up the slack. Known as Boppo, Roger Rosenblatt, the granddad and nationally known author, became adept at 'making toast' for breakfast in whatever style each child wanted. His wife, Ginny, a former kindergarten teacher, took on her daughter's role as caretaker for the children, homework helper, cook, etc. Between the two of them, Roger and Ginny helped the family to get through the first year without Amy. In turn, the children and Harris helped them work through their grief. The book is such a heartbreaker in parts, but is also such a wonderful picture of how a family can come together and heal. Rosenblatt is very honest about his feelings. The book was so good that I was sorry when I got to the last page.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A short but poignant slice of life about unexpected death and the hole it leaves in the world. The author invites us into his life after the tragic death of his daughter, a young mother and medical doctor. Mr. Rosenblatt and his wife move into their son-in-laws house to help with the young children. It's an intimate look at the impact of a parent's death on the lives of their children as told through the eyes of their grandfather. Mr. Rosenblatt's own pain is also close to the surface and the reader sees the very intimate journey he goes on as he mourns his daughter.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A beautifully crafted memoir of grief and its impact on the author's family.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I’m so glad I didn’t read this story any sooner (since my dad died in Feb 2010) I’m not sure that I could have taken it. It’s amazing what can happen when a parent dies for the kids or a child dies before their parents. This is a story about both. Amazingly Roger and Ginny Rosenblatt live close enough to help their son-in-law Harris and their 3 grandchildren after the sudden death of their daughter, wife, mother.

    It’s amazing what love can do to help you overcome anything. Grandparents become surrogate parents, aunts and uncles become new friends to help the children adapt. The most lucky thing is the children are young so that it might be easier to adjust.

    Family seems to be the story of the day as they all deal with Amy’s death differently. Mom Ginny tries to help out and take her place whenever possible. Dad Roger struggles to find his place in the process. Husband Harris struggles in his own way. In the end they all do come through, but with many trials and tribulations along the way.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Thank goodness that's over. There's no story here. Just daily details about a family.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What happens when a world renowned author loses a daughter? Usually only friends and family will hear about it. But, for Roger Rosenblatt that wasn't what he needed. He needed to try and work through the first year plus a few months by writing about his feelings and the changes in his life that occurred when middle-child, and only daughter, died from an undiagnosed heart defect. Amy was a married doctor, mother of three and loved by anyone who met her. When she died with her oldest child being only six Roger and his wife Ginny moved in with their son-in-law and the three children to try and fill a hole that broke apart the families world.

    I managed to read the whole book in one day, which isn't that remarkable since it was originally written as an essay, but I also managed to read it without tears. Those came as I finished the book and realized that those three children and their father, aunts, uncles, and both sets of grandparents still struggle daily to understand what happened and to try and move forward.

    The book isn't written as a history or as a biography but as a stream of remembrances. How Amy was at six, then as a teen, the as a toddler, then as a college student. The memories are triggered often by her children. They will say or do something that reminds Roger of something Amy did that was similar or how she handled it with the oldest but that the youngest will never know.

    The children play a central part in the story, from trying to help them cope with the loss of a mother to learning their day to day habits and trying to help a father who feels lost without his mate. But it is also a story about how two grandparents learn to cope with the loss of a daughter and the sudden responsibility of caring for three small children (not alone but they do take on a whole new lifestyle).

    A touching, heartbreaking story and one that I'm very glad I took the time to read.

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Tiny little gem of a book that packs an emotional punch. My only complaint was the name dropping by the author of all the folks that helped or sent condolences after the death of his daughter. I get it, you are "somebody" who knows a lot of other "somebodies." Get over yourself.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Roger Rosenblatt's daughter Amy, a wife and mother of three small children died one day while on her treadmill from some type of oddity in her heart that is not supposed to kill you. Roger and his wife move from their home on Long Island to live with their son in law and help take care of the children. It covers the first 18 months as well at looking back at Amy's life growing up with her two brothers. Although I tired a little of the perfectness of all the people mentioned (no one was ever just a little bit selfish?), it was a loving tribute to his daughter - I hope everyone in the family is doing well 3 years later.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Roger Rosenblatt's daughter Amy, a wife and mother of three small children died one day while on her treadmill from some type of oddity in her heart that is not supposed to kill you. Roger and his wife move from their home on Long Island to live with their son in law and help take care of the children. It covers the first 18 months as well at looking back at Amy's life growing up with her two brothers. Although I tired a little of the perfectness of all the people mentioned (no one was ever just a little bit selfish?), it was a loving tribute to his daughter - I hope everyone in the family is doing well 3 years later.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have already written a letter to the author of MAKING TOAST, attempting to tell him what a beautiful book it is and how much it meant to me. I'm not sure I succeeded. But it is a brave book, wonderfully written, about family tragedy, about loss and grief. It's also very much about carrying on in the face of these things, about a family coming closer together, about sacrifices and major life changes made, all in the hopes of filling sudden empty places in a young family's life. Roger Rosenblatt is a writer who has mastered his craft, but he is also a still angry and grieving father and grandfather. MAKING TOAST is his testament to a life cut short - his daughter's - and a record of how he, his wife and his sons stepped in to help with the raising of his young grandchildren. This is a ten-star read that you will not soon forget.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A personal roadmap to deal with the horrendous loss of a daughter, and to continue to not only function but to step in and help raise her 3 young children. Roger and Ginny Rosenblatt were thrown back into the roles of parents when Amy, their daughter, a doctor, wife and mother suddenly died probably due to a heart anomaly. While the family mourns Amy, with the help of friends they heal by remembering her life with love. Though Roger and Ginny were involved in Amy's life, they lived hours away in Long Island and came for visits. After her death, they learn just how much she meant to her friends and patients. This strong family come together, despite their grief and anger, allowing each other time to remember and grieve while also living a very full and busy life. Roger, Ginny and Harris take the children to school, after-school activities, friends' homes, birthday parties, and vacations. The children also receive counseling. Their father and grandparents meet with the counselor to get status reports on the kids, and to discuss any of their own concerns. Roger is surprised that many of those friends who comforted him lost children of their own. Rosenblatt has written a wonderful tribute to his daughter, and how time, and love of family helped him work through his grief and anger.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I think his fans like this out of sympathy...very boring & elitist.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I loved the excerpt I read in a magazine, and was excited to discover Rosenblatt's book in my library. I've always loved his writing, but the whole book was a disappointment. It's a very poignant story - Rosenblatt and his wife moving in with their son in law after his wife, their daughter, dies, to help care for the grandchildren. And I feel bad commenting on the writing, when what they did was so magnificent, but it fell flat for me. I think something like this is too hard to write about until it's long in the past, if ever.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An unexpected and tragic death, a family grieving, the everyday life that goes on after disaster strikes - "Making Toast" has the potential to help those who face similar heartache; tragically, the author has no relationship with a loving God who weeps with the brokenhearted, which might have made his move through grieving easier, or less life-long, but his real honest raw emotions are muted and understated - poignant even.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Roger Rosenblatt has written a love story to his daughter, his wife, his grandchildren, is in-laws, and his friends. Snippets of a life, without its light, make for a beautiful story of love and loss.When their daughter Amy dies suddenly, leaving her children and her stoic husband, Roger and his wife Ginny move in to help. Roger feels his only job is to make toast. A skillful writer, he makes the everyday magical as they navigate a new reality, one without Amy. Accepting the unacceptable is their new life.I really liked this book, and the people in it. I want to know how it all turns out. I wish them only the best!I read this on my e-reader while traveling and recovering, and I got it from the library. I love this thing!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A moving, forthright account of a family dealing with the sudden death of their daughter, wife, mother. How we respond, how we go on living, and loving, in a tender, real story. Rosenblatt has chronicled how his life changed with the death of his daughter, a young and vibrant wife, mother and doctor, and he and his own wife stepped in to provide -- and receive -- some stability during a painful time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very touching -- it would be a perfect little memoir of love, loss, and family if it weren't for the name dropping.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    It was a very sad thing that happened to this family. But in reading the book it felt like I was just listening to a stream of consciousness. There seemed to be little continuity from one section to the next. Also the name dropping got old.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt is dedicated to his daughter Amy. When Amy suddenly dies, she leaves a busy medical practice, a loving husband, three small children, friends, siblings and parents. Her sudden death illustrates for us all the fragility of life and is written as a joyful reminder of what love can accomplish.I really enjoyed reading about the interaction between the children and their grandparents. There was a lot of sadness, but it was often interspersed with humor that only children can guarantee. So…that being said, how terrible of a person am I that I didn’t much like the book? Yep…I’m a terrible person. I sympathized with the family, I felt a lot of empathy for the pain and difficult situation they found themselves in, and yet I found the book really awkward to read. It seemed to contain too many names, and occasionally I would have to go back to figure out who was being mentioned. I thought the way it was written, while mostly chronological, did go back and forth a bit too much and I was confused by the timelines. And to me, it read much more like a personal journal of a grieving father. I felt like I was eavesdropping on aspects of a family that were frankly none of my business. But if it was going to be published as a memoir, I thought it could use some more editing.Okay…that took me a good three weeks to get the nerve to write. (Talk about kicking someone when they’re down…I’d probably be out beating up second graders for their lunch money soon…..)

Book preview

Making Toast - Roger Rosenblatt

Making Toast

A Family Story

Roger Rosenblatt

for amy

Contents

Begin Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Books by Roger Rosenblatt

Copyright

About the Publisher

The trick when foraging for a tooth lost in coffee grounds is not to be misled by the clumps. The only way to be sure is to rub each clump between your thumb and index finger, which makes a mess of your hands. For some twenty minutes this morning, Ginny and I have been hunting in the kitchen trash can for the top front left tooth of our seven-year-old granddaughter, Jessica. Loose for days but not yet dislodged, the tooth finally dropped into a bowl of Apple Jacks. I wrapped it for safekeeping in a paper napkin and put it on the kitchen counter, but it was mistaken for trash by Ligaya, Bubbies’s nanny. Bubbies (James) is twenty months and the youngest of our daughter Amy’s three children. Sammy, who is five, is uninterested in the tooth search, and Jessie is unaware of it. We hope to find the tooth so that Jessie won’t worry about the Tooth Fairy not showing up.

This sort of activity has constituted our life since Amy died, on December 8, 2007, at 2:30 p.m., six months ago. Today is June 9, 2008. The day of her death, Ginny and I drove from our home in Quogue, on the south shore of Long Island, to Bethesda, Maryland, where Amy and her husband, Harris, lived. With Harris’s encouragement, we have been there ever since. How long are you staying? Jessie asked the next morning. Forever, I said.

Amy Elizabeth Rosenblatt Solomon, thirty-eight years old, pediatrician, wife of hand surgeon Harrison Solomon, and mother of three, collapsed on her treadmill in the downstairs playroom at home. Jessie and Sammy discovered her, our oldest son, Carl, told us on the phone. Carl lives in Fairfax, Virginia, not far from Amy and Harris, with his wife, Wendy, and their two boys, Andrew and Ryan. Jessie had run upstairs to Harris. Mommy isn’t talking, she said. Harris got to Amy within seconds, and tried CPR, but her heart had stopped and she could not be revived.

Amy’s was ruled a sudden death due to an anomalous right coronary artery—meaning that her two coronary arteries fed her heart from the same side. Normally, the arteries are located on both sides of the heart so that if one fails, the other can do the work. In Amy’s heart, they ran alongside each other. They could have been squeezed between the aorta and the pulmonary artery, which can expand during physical exercise. The blood flow was cut off. Her condition, affecting less than two thousandths of one percent of the population, was asymptomatic; she might have died at any time in her life.

She would have appreciated the clarity of the verdict. Amy was a very clear person, even as a small child, knowing intuitively what plain good sense a particular situation required. She had a broad expanse of forehead, dark, nearly black hair, and hazel eyes. Both self confident and selfless, when she faced you there could be no doubt you were the only thing on her mind.

Her clarity could make her severe with her family, especially her two brothers. Carl and John, our youngest, withered when she excoriated them for such offenses as invading her room. She could also poke you gently with her wit. When she was about to graduate from the NYU School of Medicine, her class had asked me to be the speaker. A tradition of the school allows a past graduate to place the hood of the gown on a current graduate. Harris, who had graduated the previous year, was set to hood Amy. At dinner the night before the ceremony, a friend remarked, Amy, isn’t it great? Your dad is giving the graduation speech, and your fiancé is doing the hood. Amy said, It is. And it’s also pretty great that I’m graduating.

Yet her clarity also contributed to her kindness. When she was six, I was driving her and three friends to a birthday party. One of the girls got carsick. The other two backed away, understandably, with cries of Ooh! and Yuck! Amy drew closer to the stricken child, to comfort her.

Ginny and I moved from a five-bedroom house, with a den and a large kitchen, to a bedroom with a connected bath—the in-law apartment in an alcove off the downstairs playroom that we used to occupy whenever we visited. We put in a dresser and a desk, and Harris added a TV and a rug. It may have appeared that we were reducing our comforts, but the older one gets the less space one needs, and the less one wants. And we still have our house in Quogue.

I found I could not write and didn’t want to. I could teach, however, and it helped me feel useful. I drive from Bethesda to Quogue on Sundays, and meet my English literature classes and MFA writing workshops at Stony Brook University early in the week, then back to Bethesda. The drive takes about five hours and a tank of gas each way. But it is easier and faster than flying or taking a train.

Road rage was a danger those early weeks. I picked fights with store clerks for no reason. I lost my temper with a student who phoned me too frequently about her work. I seethed at those who spoke of Amy’s death in the clichés of modern usage, such as passing and closure. I cursed God. In a way, believing in God made Amy’s death more, not less, comprehensible, since the God I believe in is not beneficent. He doesn’t care. A friend was visiting Jerusalem when he got the news about Amy. He kicked the Wailing Wall, and said, Fuck you, God! My sentiments exactly.

What’s Jessie’s favorite winter jacket? The blue not the pink, though pink is her favorite color. Sammy prefers whole milk in his Froot Loops or MultiGrain Cheerios. He calls it cow milk. Jessie drinks only Silk soy milk. She likes a glass of it at breakfast. Sammy prefers water. Such information had to be absorbed quickly. Sammy sees himself as the silver Power Ranger, Jessie is the pink. Sammy’s friends are Nico, Carlos, and Kipper. Jessie’s are Ally, Danielle, and Kristie. There were play-dates to arrange, birthday-party invitations to respond to, school forms to fill out. Sammy goes to a private preschool, the Geneva Day School; Jessie to Burning Tree, the local public school. We had to master their schedules.

I reaccustomed myself to things about small children I’d forgotten. Talking toys came back into my life. I will be walking with the family through an airport, and the voice of a ventriloquist’s dummy in a horror movie will seep through the suitcase. Buzz Lightyear says, To infinity and beyond! A talking phone says, Help me! Another toy says, I’m a pig. Can we stop?

In all this, two things were of immeasurable use to us. First, Leslie Adelman, a friend of Amy’s and Harris’s, and the mother of friends of the children, created a Web site inviting others to prepare dinners for our family. Emails were sent by Leslie, our daughter-in-law Wendy, Laura Gwyn, another friend and school mother, and Betsy Mencher, who had gone to college with Amy. Soon one hundred people—school families, friends and colleagues of Amy’s and Harris’s, neighbors—comprised the list. Participants deposited dinners in a blue cooler outside our front door. Food was provided every other evening, with enough for the nights in between, from mid-December to the beginning of June.

The second was a piece of straightforward wisdom that Bubbies’s nanny gave Harris. Ligaya is a small, lithe woman in her early fifties. I know little of her life except that she is from the Philippines, with a daughter there and a grown son here who is a supervisor in a restaurant, and that she has a work ethic of steel and the flexibility to deal with any contingency. She also shows a sense of practical formality by calling Bubbies James, and not by the nickname Amy had coined, to ensure the more respectable name for his future. Ligaya altered her schedule to be with us twelve hours a day, five days a week—an indispensable gift, especially to her small charge, who giggles with delight when he hears her key in the front door. No one outside the family could have felt Amy’s death more acutely. Yet what she said to Harris, and to the rest of us, was dispassionate: You are not the first to go through such a thing, and you are better able to handle it than most.

Bubbies looks around for Amy, says Mama when he sees her pictures, and clings to his father. Bubbies has blond hair and a face usually occupied by observant silences. When I am alone with him, he plays happily enough. I’ve taught him to give a high five, and when he does, I stagger across the room to show him how strong he is. He likes to take a pot from one kitchen cabinet and Zone bars from another, deposit the bars in the pot, and put back the lid. He’ll do this contentedly for quite a while. When Harris enters the kitchen, Bubbies drops everything, runs to him, and holds him tight at the knees.

Jessie is tall, also blond, with an expression forever on the brink of enthusiasm. Amy used to say she was the most optimistic person she’d ever known. She is excited about her hip-hop dance class; about a concert her school is giving in Amy’s name, to raise money for a memorial scholarship set up at the NYU School of Medicine; about going to the Nutcracker. Do your Nutcracker dance, Boppo, Jessie says. (Ginny is Mimi, I am Boppo.) I swing into my improvised ballet, the high point of which is when I wiggle my ass like the dancing mice. Jessie is also excited about our trip to Disney World in

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