She considers her pension vital, but what she always wanted was to become a journalist.Īnne’s city planning office stood across the hall from the offices of the Associated Press. She’s now been retired for almost twenty years, but to my surprise, she looks back on her twenty-year career as a city planner with some regret. My father, brother, and I fancy ourselves risk-takers, yet we forget Anne’s pioneering spirit runs through our veins.Īfter a year of struggling to secure employment, Anne was considering returning home to Boston when she found a job as a city planner in Los Angeles. When Anne’s second marriage fell apart, she packed up her belongings and drove from Boston to Los Angeles to start a new life. Yet he forgets his mother pursued a master’s while raising him. How my father takes for granted the traits he inherited from his mother! Indeed, he values education highly and pursued an associate’s degree in adulthood to better himself. She lived a common life, but every life has extraordinary bits when examined closely. It’s unfortunate that few seem interested in Anne’s stories. And because neither my father nor my younger brother seemed to have any interest in learning the details of her life, I would have to become the family historian. She just wanted to record the past for the family, and maybe for herself too. We both acknowledged the essays probably wouldn’t find publication, but that was never the point. Through her, I learned that I came from a long line of rabble-rousers-the origin of my revolutionary spirit.Īnne thought of these as her piecemeal memoir. My father moving to New Hampshire after high school to become a “mountain man” and start a construction business. The excitement of the feminist movement and the thrill of becoming a democratic delegate for Massachusetts. Meeting her second husband and becoming politically engaged in the seventies. Going to graduate school in her late thirties to study public policy after a divorce. Recognizing this, I began trying to get to know Anne better and encouraged her to share stories of her life.Įvery few months, Anne would send me mini pieces of memoir that captured slices of her life: Dropping out of college after getting married. It was only a few years earlier, sometime in my thirties, that I realized learning more about my past could help me know not only where I had come from but also where I should go. She mapped our heritage exhaustively, while I ignored it. Meanwhile, Anne researched our family’s lineage, read history books, and visited our ancestors’ graves. I didn’t pay much attention to family history as the idea of digging up the past seemed like a waste of time. I hadn’t been close to my grandmother growing up, and in my twenties, I was so focused on the future that I charged forward, trying to find my place in the world. I sat back in my chair and wondered how much longer I would have with her. Anne smiled, clutched my hand, and closed her eyes. I told her I had submitted the final draft to my editor and the story was going to be the magazine’s cover story. The doctor had just given her an anti-anxiety medication, which made her drowsy, but she insisted on talking with me, wanting to know how my latest article was coming along. When I entered her room a few hours later, Anne’s skin was pale, and she was having trouble staying awake. As soon as I got off the phone with the nurse, I left my apartment in Boston to drive up to Maine. My grandmother, Anne, didn’t have COVID-19, thankfully, but her kidney disease had advanced, according to the critical care physician, who wasn’t hopeful about her prospects. She informed me that my grandmother was in the intensive care unit and might need dialysis. I had just finished dinner when I received a phone call from a nurse at Maine Medical Center.
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