Then I’d promised Fi his favorites—oxtail stew with grits and greens—as soon as I had an operating kitchen, my pots and pans unpacked. Also, baked apples, Epsom salt baths, peppermint oil foot rubs, hot water bottles, green tea, honey, lemon, ginger, and garlic in everything: I treat my children as if they’re faddish Edwardian lepidopterists when they’re tired, poorly, under strain. “I can’t wait to feed you properly,” I’d said. I’d told him how much I’d missed feeding him: all that gathering of ingredients, all those hours in fragrant steam, the piles of food, plates wiped clean. It grounds me to feed my children; they eat and I take root.
Selected as one of the Best Books of 2024 (so far) by NY Times Book Review. Review by David Sheff: “A Mother’s Devastating Memoir of Losing Her Adult Son. In “Fi,” Alexandra Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old.”
When the nurse brought her, all swaddled up, to the glass-panelled door outside the operating theatre to show her to me, tears projectiled on to the glass, signalling the single most miraculous moment of my life. If there’s a nanosecond’s worth of choice when you fall in love, there was no measure of time between seeing Oilly and feeling the most profound, life-changing love imaginable. Beyond all counting! Our longed for, miracle, baby.