Quote

When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places.

When I was a child I had a best friend who lived across the road from me. When her mother died unexpectedly it was like losing a member of my own family. I think I am still affected by the memory of that loss.

Never far from my thoughts are memories of being a little girl in Queens, N.Y., our family of five crowded in a small one-bedroom apartment, struggling to learn English and survive a new life in a new country, America. We humbly and gratefully still recall the kindnesses shown by strangers and neighbors who became new friends.

I was angry and frustrated when I was younger and didn't know my place in the world.

But one sets of grandparents lived on Davidson Avenue in the Bronx and one lived in Manhattan and I had an aunt and uncle in Queens, so in my heart I was a New Yorker.

Since my brother died in 1982, my parents and I had formed a shaky tripod of a family; now that I'd lost my father too, it was too easy for me to glimpse a future point where I alone was the keeper of not just my own childhood memories, but of my family lore.

My parents were mourning the death of my sister. She was killed in a car accident before I was born, and I didn't know she existed until I was 13 or 14 years old. I knew I was growing up in a house where people were angry and sad.

I'll never forget the time my mother showed up with her best friend and two daughters, and all four of us dressed up in matching clothes, shoes and hats to go pick up my brother from school. I thought it was a fun thing to do, but we stepped outside my brother's school and he was mortified!

My great frustration is that, more and more, my memories come and go, and friends all my life are not recognized. Many of the things I say and do, I can no longer remember even right afterwards.

No matter where we come from or where we're going, we've all got memories to contend with, and it's always best not to do this alone!