You write out of Montana now—with July’s still-snowy mountains. You are led up and down a scrambled map, open prairie, the bluest lakes, the sharpest peaks…
…your dad put on a Bossa nova record and the other dads clustered by the stereo, talking about vacations, real estate, cars, baseball, their icy old-fashioneds jingling like tambourines.
Alie breezes in with her big warm smile, scans my barcode—to make sure I’m the right person, or maybe to see if I’m on sale—then carefully lifts up my sheet and peers down at my penis.
My hair stylist brushed chemicals onto my hair. The clientless stylist in the booth beside us talked about how she’d recently—finally—lost the weight she gained after getting off Adderall.
My grandma and I are in her kitchen filling two baking sheets with rounds of cookie dough when I realize someday, in the not too distant future, she will be the oldest person on earth.
I hope he won’t turn the car around. I hope I’m not making a mistake. I hope I don’t do anything to make him mad. I am eighteen. I will soon be married in Reno.
Patty Somlo was good at packing her sparse belongings in a box, moving to a different city, and beginning a whole new life. It wasn’t until she met her husband, Richard, that she began to question the true meaning of “home.”
This memoir of an African-American man finding his way is a catalog of stepping stones from childhood to middle age, each footfall landing on the beauty, the sadness, the joy, the mistakes, the second chances.