My husband read the draft of my first book, my memoir, while we were at Mayo Clinic. This was a few years ago, in the month of May. We were there for a week that time, and it was because of me (as usual)—a big surgery, my second of big surgeries there in seven months. My husband was the trooper through it all. In fact, he’s the one who got me into Mayo Clinic a few years before all that, making sure I was getting seen by doctors there in case something “big” happened. He said, “If you ever need it, I want you to have a key to the door,” meaning he wanted me to have the best doctors available should I need it.
I needed it. I had the key because of him. The key was critical.
My husband took care of everything in his power. He read all the literature the doctors handed to us (including a thick book I could not bear to open), went with me to all the appointments, booked the hotels, got our flights, and most importantly, told me it was going to be okay, that I was going to be okay. I believed him. He was the one who waited with me before each surgery, waited while I had surgery, was waiting when I came out of the anesthesia fog. He counted my pills out and gave them to me as prescribed around the clock. He changed my bandages. And what did I do to thank him that May, for all he’d done to help me with that second surgery? I handed him the draft of my memoir and said, “If you want to read it before it gets published, you’d better do it now.” I had a contract offer on the table, so time was ticking.
Did I mentioned that my memoir is about some big (romantic) loves in my life?
Yes, my husband is in it, but how fun would it be to read about your wife’s other big loves? The answer: um, yeah, not at all. But he did it all with kindness and patience, and when he finished, he gave it his stamp of approval, which was the most important stamp.
When it got published, a year later, it was easy to figure out the person I would dedicate it to.
My second book, 52 Things I Wish I Could Have Told Myself When I Was 17, is about advice I wish I had gotten a long time ago. I was lucky, though: I had an older sister, one who was always making sure I was okay, and this sister guided me as best as she could throughout the years. (I’m stubborn, though, so she can’t be blamed for what I ignored.) She looks out for me still, and I often tease her that she is my second mom.
But my sister makes me feel safe in the world. It was easy to figure out that she was the one to whom I was going to dedicate my second book.
I also dedicated it to my goddaughter, who I am supposed to be guiding through life. (I want to tell her, “Just do the opposite of everything I did!”)
Now it’s my third book, A Small Thing to Want. This one is a collection of short stories that “chronicles the choices people make about whom to love and whom to let go, their yearnings that either bind them or set them free, and the surprising ways love shows up, without reason or restraint.”
There’s a lot about family in this one—spouses, parents, children. There’s one character in particular, Suzette, who has lost her father years before. In the book, she describes him like this: “On all of her childhood nights, her father had been the parent who tucked her into bed and kissed her forehead. He’d been the one to clap his hands at her victories, shake his head at her losses, the one who told her, ‘You are the brightest star in my every sky.’”
This is, of course, a work of fiction, but that description could be of my own parents. They have always been the brightest stars in my every sky.
That’s whom this book will go out to. I hope they know how grateful I am for everything.
A Small Thing to Want is available for pre-order now from Press 53, with free U.S. shipping if the order is placed by December 31st. The book is due out in May 2020, but preorders will get shipped in early April. Click here to learn more about the book or to read early reviews.