Tag: Quotes

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Are we facing toward the light? How about now?

— Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son (Grove Press, April 9, 2024)
 

Notes:

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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It’s all so sickeningly, dizzyingly, tightly circular, at the very edges of existence, I mean. And those universal edges—birth, death—they’re hard to take in completely, when they’re happening. It’s all going too fast, blood rushing to the head. Even the middling, middle bits—stable-enough marriage, healthy kids, good income—like the middle of a roundabout, you can think it’s all going quite manageably no matter how wildly the edges are quivering. I did; I thought I had it all under control… Three perfect children. Above all, even if I’d screwed up every other thing, I’d still have three perfect children. And now I see, that too had been an illusion.

— Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son (Grove Press, April 9, 2024)
 

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.”

(and then) I take root.

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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.

— Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son (Grove Press, April 9, 2024)
 

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.”

Tuesday Morning Wake Up Call

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“I celebrate myself,” the American Walt Whitman wrote in his late edition of that famous poem, “and sing myself.” That had really struck me when I’d finally read it, in my early twenties by then. Imagine believing in a self, any self, yourself that much.
 
— Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son (Grove Press, April 9, 2024)

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.”

I Cheerfully Refuse

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“So what do you think should happen to (him)? … If not jail then what?” “I don’t know. Long life, I guess. How about a clear mind? Work he enjoys, someone to laugh with, couple of happy kids. That would do, don’t you think?” It was the same list she wanted for herself.

— Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse: A Novel (Grove Press, April 2, 2024)

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