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COMING HOME AGAIN

When my mother began using the electronic pump that fed her liquids and medication, we moved her to the family room. The bedroom she shared with my father was upstairs, and it was impossible to carry the machine up and down all day and night. The pump itself was attached to a metal stand on casters, and she pulled it along wherever she went. From anywhere in the house, you could hear the sound of the wheels clicking out a steady time over the grout lines of the slate-tiled foyer, her main thoroughfare to the bathroom and the kitchen. Sometimes you would hear her halt after only a few steps, to catch her breath or steady her balance, and whatever you were doing was instantly suspended by a pall of silence.

ing ceased my mincing and chopping, would stare blankly at the brushed she was fine, then begin to move again, starting her rhythmic ka-jug; and ‹ only then could I go on with my cooking, the world of our house turning once more, wheeling through the black

I wasn't cooking for my mother but for the rest of us. When she first moved downstairs she was still eating, though scantily, more just to taste what we were having than from any genuine desire for food. The point was simply to sit together at the kitchen table and array ourselves like a family again. My mother would gently set herself down in her customary chair near the stove.

I sat across from her, my father and sister to my left and right, and crammed Published in the New Yorker (October 16, 1995), an important American magazine of literature and the arts, just after the appearance of Lee's award-winning novel, Native Speaker (1995).

CHANG-RAE LEE

in the center was all the food 1 had made —a spicy codhsh stew, say, ora casserole of gingery beef, dishes that in my youth she had prepared for us a le had been ten years since we'd all lined together in the house, which at Cacen I had leh to atend beading school in New Hampshire. My mother would sometimes point this out, by speaking of our present time as being

"d like befan, Freter" which surprised me, given how proud she alwa

was that I was a graduate of the school.

Me eine to rch a obce was part of my mother's not so secret plan he change my character, which she worried was becoming too much like hers. I chanciere and able enough, but without outside pressure was readily given to soch and vanity. The famous school-which none of us knew the hiot thing about -would prove my metle. She was night, of course, and while I ka there would falter more than a e times, academically and otherwise.

But never though that my leaving home then would ever be a problem for her, a private quartel she would have even as her life waned.

Now bet house was full again. My sister had just resigned from her job in New York City, and my father, who typically saw his psychiatric patients until cight of nine in the evening was appearing in the aneway at four-thirty. I had been Iving at home for nearly a year and was in the final push of work on wha would prove a demal failure of a novel. When I wasn't struggling over my prose, I lept occupied with the things she usually did - the daily er-rand, the grocery shopping, the vacuuming and the cleaning, and, of course, When I was six or seven years old, I used to watch my mother as she prepared our favorite meals. It was one of my daily pleasures. She shooed me away in the beginning, telling me that the kitchen wasn't my place, and adding, in her half proud, half-deprecating way, that her kind of work would only serve to weaken me. "Go out and play with your friends," she'd snap in Korean, "or better yet, do your reading and homework." She knew that I had already done both, and that as the evening approached there was no place to go save her small and tidy kitchen, from which the clatter of her mixing bowls and pans would ring through the house

I would enter the kitchen quietly and stand beside her, my chin lodging upon the point of her hip. Peering through the crook of her arm. I beheld the movements of her hands. For kalbi,' she would take up a butchet short rib in her nanow hand, the Binty bone shaped like a section of an airplane wing and deeply embedded in gristle and flesh, and with the point of l: r knife cut so that the bone fell away, though not completely, leaving it com: cied to the meat by the barest opaque layer of tendon. Then she methodicall butterflied the flesh, cutting and unfolding, repeating the action until the nicat lay oul on her board, glistening and ready for seasoning. She scored it dragonally, then sifted sugar into the crevices with her pinched fingers, gently rubbing in the crystals. The sugar would tenderize as well as sweeten the meat She did this with each rib, and then set them all aside in a large shallou bowl. She

COMING HOME AGAIN

minced a half-dozen cloves of garlic, a stub of gingertoot, sliced up a few scallions, and spread it all over the meat. She wiped her hands and took out a bottle of sesame oil, and, after pausing for a moment, streamed the dark oil in two swift circles around the bowl. After adding a few splashes of soy sauce, she thrust her hands in and kneaded the flesh, careful not to dislodge the bones. I asked her why it mattered that they remain connected. "The meat needs the bone nearby, she said, "to bortow its richness." She wiped her hands clean of the marinade, except for her little finger, which she would flick with her tongue from time to time, because she knew that the Ravor of a good dish developed not at once but in stages

Whenever 1 cook, 1 fnd myself working just as she would, readying the ingredients— a mash of garlic, a julienne of red peppers, fantails of shrimp-and piling them in little mounds about the cutting surface. My mother never left me any recipes, but this is how I leamed to make her food, each dish coming not from a list or a card but from the aromatic spread of a board I've always thought it was particularly cruel that the cancer was in her stomach, and that for a long time at the end she couldn't eat. The last meal I made for her was on New Year's Eve, 1990. My sister suggested that instead of a rib roast or a bird, or the usual overflow of Korean food, we make all sorts of finger dishes that our mother might fancy and pick at

We set the meal out on the glass coffee table in the family room. I prepared a tray of smoked-salmon canapts, fried some Korean bean cakes, and made a few other dishes I thought she might enjoy. My sister supervised me, arranging the platters, and then with some pomp carried each dish in to our parents. Finally, I brought out a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. My mother had moved to the sofa and was sitting up, surveying the low table. *It looks pretty nice," she said. "I think I'm feeling hungry

This made us all feel good, especially me, for i couldn't remember the last time she had felt any hunger or had eaten something I cooked. We began to eat. My mother picked up a piece of salmon toast and took a tiny corner in her mouth. She rolled it around for a moment and then pushed it out with the tip of her tongue, letting it fall back onto her plate. She swallowed hard as if to quell a gag, then glanced up to see if we had noticed. Of course we all had. She attempted a bean cake, some cheese, and then a slice of fruit, but notlung was any use

Sh: nodded at me anyway, and said, "Oh, it's very good." But I was already feching lost and I put down my plate abruptly, nearly shattering it on the thick glass. There was an ugly pause before my father asked me in a weary, gentle voice if anything was wrong, and I answered that it was nothing, it was the last night of a long year, and we were together, and I was simply relicved. At mmoght. & poured out glasses of champagne, even one for my mother, who took a deep sip. Her manner grew playful and light, and I helped her shuffle to her muttress, and she lay down in the place where in a brief week she was deadf 5

CRANG-RAE LEE

Momsher could whip up most anything, but during our fint vean of li ing in this country we ate only Korean foods. At my harangue-hke behen … madhood benefe leanies beato cook exotic American dishes. Lucki

ind neighbor, Mrz Churchill, a tall, forid your

woman with flaxen hair,

nught my mother hes most trusted recipes. Mrs. Churchill's two young s nIh, weent bos with identical crew cuts, always accompanied her. houch I liked them well enough, I would sip away from them after a fe Whe for Thore tut the reliction would be in the kitchen, where thei America are made. She readily demonstrated certain techniques - how in layer wet sheet of pasta for a lisagna or whisk up a simple roux,' for exam She dien brought git shoebores containing curious ingredients like died oregano, instant yeast, and cream of mushroom soup. The two women. though a case and jolly with each other, had diffculty communicating, and thin we made wore by the often confusing terminology of Western cuisine (comed beel denied g. Athough I was just leaming the language mysell, d gladly play the interlocutor, jumping back and forth between thei Lices at the counter, dipping my fnger into whatever sauce lay about I was an insisteot child, and, being my mother's firstbom, much too prized My mother could way no to me, and did often enough, but anyone who knew

Ether and sister-could tell how much the denying

wined her. And if I was overconscious of her indulgence even then, and sud

of guilt that she could inflict upon me with the

Ped die voting hum of her lip, a too hapily obtuse and venal to let her cease. She reminded me daily that 1 was her sole son, her reason for liv ing, and that if she were to love me, in either body or spirit, she wished that God would mercifully smite her, strike her down like a weak branch.

In the traditional fashion, she was the house accountant, the maid, the launderer, the daplinarian, the driver, the secretary, and, of course, the cool. She vat also my fint basketball coach. In South Korea, where girls high school busietball is a popular spectator sport, she had been a star, the point guard for the national high school team that once won the all-Asia champi sachips. I leamed this one Saturday during the summer, when I asked my fa ther d be would go down to the schoolyard and shoot some baskels with me. I had just finished the fith grade, and wanted desperately to make the middle chool team the coming fall. He called for my mother and sier to come along, When we amrived, my sister immediately ran off to the swilks, and I recall being annoyed that my mother wasn't following her. I dribbled clumsily around the key, on the verge of losing control of the ball, and fung a Rat shol that caromed wildly off the rim. The ball bounced to my father, who took a few not so graceful dribules and made an easy layup. He dribbled out and then drove to the hoop for a layup on the other side. He rebounded his shol and passed the ball to my mother, who had been watching us from the foul line. She tured from the basket and began heading the other way.

3. Thickening ageal foe muces and soups

CRANG-RUE LEE

Her hen Munched, and her neck suddenly became rigid, as if I were thret ling her. She mer srack me right then, but instead she bit her lip and cam potam Welled her, sleading for forgiveness at her door. But it was the one hone in our life that i couldnit convince her, melt her resolve with the

blandishments of a spoiled son.

When my nasther was feling strong enough be and in particularly good. pin, the would ral her machine into the hitch mosty oi at the table ond rath me work. She wore painma day and night, mostly old pairs of mine

She said, "I can't tell, what are you making?

"Mohn doo'filing"

You didn't salt the cabbage and squash."

"Was I supposed lo?"

-of cous Lock, is too wet Now the skins will get soggy before you can fy them

What should I do?"

-IT oo Late. Mate it be OK if you work quickly. Why didn't you ask

me?

Yoa were finally sleeping.

"You shoeld have woken me."

"No way:

She sighed, as deeply as her weary lungs would allow.

"I doe? know how you were going to make it without me."

*I don| know, ather. 1) remember the salt next time.

You better. And not too much."

We often talked like this, our tone decidedly matter-of-fact, chin up, just this side of being able to bear it Once, while inspecting a potato fritter batter I was making, she asked me if she had ever done anything that I wished she hadn't done. I thought for a moment, and told her no. In the next breath, she ondered aloud if it was right of her to have let me go to Excier, to live away om the house while I was so young She tested the batter's thickness with her finger and called for more four. Then she asked if, given a choice, 1 woald go to Exeter again

I wasn't sure what she was getting at, and I told her that I couldn't be cer-tain, but probably yes, I would. She snorted at this and said it wa, my leaving home that had once so troubled our relationship. "Remember huss I had so

much dfculs talkine to you? Remember?

She believed back then that i had found ber more and more ignurant each time I came home. She said she never blamed me, for this was thie way she knew it would be with my wonderful new education. Nothing I could say seemed to quell the notion. But I knew that the problem wasn't sumply the education, the fint time I wa her again after starting school, barely six weeks later, when she and my father visted me on Parents Day, she lad already grown nervous and dstant. After the usual campus events, we had gone to the moxet stare they were staying in a nearby loan and sat on the beds in

§ Korcan dumpling, umally fled with cabbage and meat.

COMING HOME AGAIN

basket's over here?

"Um-mah," I cried at her, my exasperation already bubbling over, "the After a few steps she turned around, and from where the professional three-point line must be now, she effortlesly Ripped the ball up in a two-handed sel shot, its flight truer and higher than I'd witnewed from any boy or man. The ban, the cared in the hoot in espie he heard at he

ping the chain-link net. All after

When we got home from the playground, my mother showed me the pho tograph album of her team's championship run. For years I kept it in my room, on the same shelf that housed the scrapbooks 1 made of basketbal stars, with magazine clippings of slick players like Bubbles Hawkins and Pistol Pete and George (the Iceman) Gervin

It puzzled me how much she considered her own history to be immaterial and if she never patently diminished herself, she was able to finesse a kind of self removal by speaking of my father whenever she could. She zealously te-counted his excellence as a student in medical school and reminded me, each night before I started my homework, of how hard he drove himself in his work to make a life for us. She wid that because of his Asian face and imperfect English, he was "working two times the American doctors." I knew that she was building him up, buttressing him with both genuine admitation and her own brand of anxious braggadocio, and that her overarching concer was that I might fail to see him as she wished me to — in the most dawning light, his pose steadfast and solitary.

In the ycar before I left for Exeter. I became weary of her oft-repeated accounts of my father's success. I was a teenager, and so ever inclined to be dis missive and bitter toward anything that had to do with family and home Often enough, my mother was the object of my derision. Suddenly, her life scemed so small to me. She was there, and sometimes, I thought, always there, as if she were confined to the four walls of our house. I would even complain about her cooking. Mostly, though, I was getting more and more impatient with the difficulty she encountered in doing everyday things. I was afraid for her. One day, we got into a temble argument when she asked me to call the bank, to question a discrepancy she had discovered in the monthly statement. I asked her why she couldn't call herself. I was stupid and brutal, atd: knew exactly how to wound her.

" I hom do I talk to?" she said. She would mostly speak to me in Korean, ane: would answer in English

- :he bank munazer, who else?"

What do I say?"

"Whatever you want to say."

"Don't spenk to me like that!" she cried

"It's just that you should be able to do it yourself," I said

"You know how I feel about this!"

"Well, maybe then you should consider it practice," I answered lightly, us ing the Korean word to make sure she undentood

4. Korean for "mommy"

COMING HOME AGAIN

our room. She seemed to sneak looks at me, as though I might discover a horrible new truth if our eyes should meet

My own secret feelir

specially, sed toch more than I had anicited entele them he

these fint weeks were a mere blur to me, that I felt completely overwhelmed by all the studies and my much brighter friends and the thousand irritating details of living alone, and that I had really learned nothing, save perhaps how to put on a necktie while sprinting to class. I felt as if I had plunged too deep into the world, which, to rny great horror, was much larger than I had ever imagined:

I welcomed the lull of the motel room. My father and I had nearly dozed off when my mother jumped up excitedly, murmured how stupid she was, and hurried to the closet by the door. She pulled out our old metal cooler and dragged it between the beds. She lifted the top and began unpacking plastic containers, and I thought she would never stop. One after the other they came out, each with a dish that traveled well— a salted stewed meat, rolls of Korcan-style sushi. I opened a container of radish kimchi" and suddenly the room bloomed with its odor, and I reveled in the very peculiar sensation (which perhaps only true kimchi lovers know) of simultaneously drooling and greging as 1 breathed it all in. For the next few minutes, they watched me eat. I'm not ertain that I was even hungry

Sicken patic and war beas, Isudkenly ralaed that ha lon al he and

in my life. And it scemed I couldn't get enough of it back, I ate and late, so much and so fast that I actually went to the bathroom and vomited. I came out dizzy and sated with the phantom warmth of my binge And beneath the face of her worry, I thought, my mother was smiling Fron that diy, my mother prepared a certain meal to welcome me home.

It was always the same. Even as I rode the school's shuttle bus from Exeter to Logan airport, I could already see the exact arrangement of my mother's table I new that we would eat in the kitchen, the table brimming with plates There nas the kalbi, of course, broiled or grilled depending on the season Leaf ictrice. to wrap the meat with. Bowls of garlicky clam broth with miso and tolu and fresh spinach. Shavings of cod dusted in flour and then dipped in spr wash and fried. Glass noodles with onions and shiitake. Scallion and-hot-sepper pancakes. Chilled steamed shrimp. Seasoned salads of bean pro, *,, spinach, and white radish, Cris squares of seaweed. Steamed rice

sith lilet and red beans. Homemade kimchi It was all there — the old al sun I knew. the beautiful salt, the sweet, the excellent taste.

Alict the neal, my father and I talked about school, but I could never sa enough for it to make an sense. My father would often recall his high school principal, who lad gone to England to study the methods and traditions of the public schools, and regaled students with stories of the great Eton man.

My mother sat with us, paring fruit, not saying a word but taking everything in. When it was time to go to bed, my father said good night first. I usuall

ratched television until the carly morning. My mother would sit with me fo

6. Spicy Korean welch

CHANC-RAE LEE

en hout or to, perhas until she ag accustomed to me again, and only then

would she kiss me and head upstairs to sleep

During the following days, it was always the cooking that started our com verations. She'd hold an ingoest over the cold leftovers we ate at lunch, d cusser each dah in tenus of is balance of flavon or what might have bee prepared diferenty. But mostly I begged her to leave the dishes alone. I wi i had paid more attentioo. After her death, when my father and I were th

Ih ane let in dhe hose, datin h Moaeh it wat too ghont, I some

times ined lo make but meal for him. Though it was too much for two, l mode each dish anyway, taking as much care as I could. But nothing turmed out quite nght-not the color, not the smell. At the table, neither of us said much of anything. And we had to eat the food for days.

Englah, for her usual seat, "I made a big mistake."

I rewember washing rice in the kitchen one day and my mother's saying

"About Eseter?"

Tia. I made a big mistake. You should be with us for that time. I should never let you go there" So why did you?" I said.

*Because I didn) know I was going to die."

i let her words pars For the fint time in her life, she was letting herself peak ber full mind, so what else could I do?

"But you know what?" she spoke up. "li was better for you. If you stayed bome, you would not like me so much now." I suggested that maybe I would like her even more.

She shook her head. "Impossible."

Sometimes I sill think about what she said, about having made a mistake.

I would lave leh home for college, that was never in doubt, but those years ! vas zaay al boarding school grew moce precious to her as her illness pro pressed Aer many months of cahaustion and pain and the haze of th rue, 1 thought that her mind was beginning to fade, for more and more it seemed that the was seting me again as her fifteen-year-old bos. the one she had dropped off in New Hampshure on a cloudy September afternoon I remember the fist person I met, another new student, named Zack, who walked to the welcome picnic with me. I had planned to eat with my par-ents- my mother had brought a coolerful of food even that first day-but ! learned of the cookout and told her that I should probably go. I s anted to go, of courve I was excited, and no doubt fearful and nenous, and ! must have though i was only thinking abead. Sbe agreed wholeheartedly, saving | cer-tualy should I walked ther to the car, and perhaps I hugged them, before syung goe One day, alter the ded, my father told me what happened on the long drive home to Syracuse.

He was driving the car, looking stight ahead. Traffic was light on the Maschusets Tumpike, and the sly was nearly dark. They lad driven for more than two hours and had not yet spoken a word. He then heard a strange were grinding its way out

sound from her, a kind of muffled chewing noise, as if something inside her

"So, what's the matter?" he said, trying to keep an edge to his voice.

ON GOING HOME

She looked at him with her ashen face and she burst into tears. He began to cry himself, and pulled the car over onto the narrow shoulder of the turn-pike, where they stayed for the next half hour or so, the blank-faced cars droning by them in the cold, onrushing night.

Every once in a while, when 1 think of her, I'm driving alone somewhere on the highway. In the twilight, I see their car off to the side, a blue Olds coupe with a landau top, and as I pass them by I look back in the mirror and I see them again, the two figures huddling together in the front seat. Are they sleeping? Or kissing? Are they all right?

QUESTIONS

Chang-Rae Lee begina his essay in medias res— in the middle of things.
How does his choice create drama, rympathy, and significance for the personal experience that he narrates?
Because Lee begins his account at a late stage of his mother's illness, he of. ten flashes back to earlier points in their relationship. Mark the flashbacks in the text and explain the purpose of each.
Details of food and cooking appear throughout the essay —for example, in paragraphs 8-9, 12-13, and 32-38. Besides giving us a flavor of Korean ood, what function do these details serve?
Lee titles his essay
"Coming Home Again," whereas Joan Didion titles hers
"On Going Home" (sce the neat essay in "Personal Report"). What different connotations do "coming home" and "going home" sugges? How do there differences emerge in the personal accounts of each writer?
Write a personal essay about "coming home" or "going home."
Joan Didion
ON GOING HOME

I an home for my daughter's first birthday. By "home" I do not mean the house in Los Angeles where my husband and i and the baby live, but the place shere my family is, in the Central Valley of California. It is a vital al. though troublesome distinction. My husband likes my family but is uneasy in thcir house, because once there i fall into their ways, which are difficult, oblique, deliberately inarticulate, not my husband's ways. We live in dusty houses ("D-L'S-T," he once wrote with his finger on surfaces all over the house, but no one noticed it) filled with mementos quite without value to him (what could the Canton dessert plates mean to him? how could he have known about the assay scales, why should he care if he did know?), and we

Fron Slouching towards Bethlehem (1966), Didion's fins volume of nonfictica, which includes both autobiographical cauys and artcles analyzing, American culure of the 1960k.

I of 2

CHANG-RAE LEE

an hour or two, perhaps until she was accustomed to me again, and only then would she kiss me and head upstairs to sleep.

During the following days, it was always the cooking that started our con-versations. She'd hold an inquest over the cold leftovers we ate at lunch, discussing each dish in terms of its balance of flavors or what might have been prepared differently. But mostly I begged her to leave the dishes alone. I wish I had paid more attention. After her death, when my father and I were the only ones left in the house, drifting through the rooms like ghosts, I sometimes tried to make that meal for him. Though it was too much for two, I made each dish anyway, taking as much care as I could. But nothing turned out quite right —not the color, not the smell. At the table, neither of us said much of anything. And we had to eat the food for days.

I remember washing rice in the kitchen one day and my mother's saying in English, from her usual seat, "I made a big mistake."

"About Exeter?"

"Yes. I made a big mistake. You should be with us for that time. I should never let you go there."

"So why did you?" I said.

"Because I didn't know I was going to die."

I let her words pass. For the first time in her life, she was letting herself speak her full mind, so what else could I do?

"But you know what?" she spoke up. "It was better for you. If you stayed home, you would not like me so much now."

I suggested that maybe I would like her even more.

She shook her head. "Impossible."

Sometimes I still think about what she said, about having made a mistake.

I would have left home for college, that was never in doubt, but those years I was away at boarding school grew more precious to her as her illness pro-gressed. After many months of exhaustion and pain and the haze of the drugs, I thought that her mind was beginning to fade, for more and more it seemed that she was seeing me again as her fifteen-year-old boy, the one she had dropped off in New Hampshire on a cloudy September afternoon.

I remember the first person I met, another new student, named Zack, who walked to the welcome picnic with me. I had planned to eat with my par-ents— my mother had brought a coolerful of food even that first day —but I learned of the cookout and told her that I should probably go. I wanted to go. of course. I was excited, and no doubt fearful and nervous, and I must have thought I was only thinking ahead. She agreed wholeheartedly, saying I certainly should. I walked them to the car, and perhaps I hugged them, before saying goodbye. One day, after she died, my father told me what happened on the long drive home to Syracuse.

He was driving the car, looking straight ahead. Traffic was light on the Massachusetts Tumpike, and the sky was nearly dark. They had driven for more than two hours and had not yet spoken a word. He then heard a strange

were grinding its way out.

sound from her, a kind of muffled chewing noise, as if something inside her

"So, what's the matter?" he said, trying to keep an edge to his voice.

ON GOING HOME

Every once in a while, when I think of her, I'm driving alone somewhere on the highway. In the twilight, I see their car off to the side, a blue Olds coupe with a landau top, and as I pass them by I look back in the mirror and I see them again, the two figures huddling together in the front seat. Are they sleeping? Or kissing? Are they all right?

QUESTIONS

Chang-Rae Lee begins his essay in medias res—in the middle of things.
How does his choice create drama, sympathy, and significance for the per. sonal experience that he narrates?
Because Lee begins his account at a late stage of his mother's illness, he often flashes back to earlier points in their relationship. Mark the flashbacks in the text and explain the purpose of each.
Details of food and cooking appear throughout the essay— for example, in paragraphs 8-9, 12-13, and 32-38. Besides giving us a flavor of Korean food, what function do these details serve?
Lee titles his essay "Coming Home Again," whereas Joan Didion titles hers
"On Going Home" (see the next essay in "Personal Report"), What different connotations do "coming home" and "going home" suggest? How do these differences emerge in the personal accounts of each writer?
Write a personal essay about "coming home" or "going home."

Joan Didion

ON GOING HOME

I am home for my daughter's first birthday. By "home" I do not mean the house in Los Angeles where my husband and i and the baby live, but the place where my family is, in the Central Valley of California. It is a vital although troublesome distinction. My husband likes my family but is uneasy in their house, because once there I fall into their ways, which are difficult, oblique, deliberately inarticulate, not my husband's ways. We live in dusty houses ("D-U-S-T." he once wrote with his finger on surfaces all over the house, but no one noticed it) filled with mementos quite without value to him (what could the Canton dessert plates mean to him? how could he have known about the assay scales, why should he care if he did know?), and we

From Slouching towards Bethlehem (1966), Didion's first volume of nonfiction, which includes both autobiographical essays and articles analyzing American culture of the 1960s.

appear to talk exclusively about people we know who have been committed to mental hospitals, about people we know who have been booked on drunk-driving charges, and about property, particularly about property, land, price per acre and C-2 zoning and assessments and freeway access. My brother does not understand my husband's inability to perceive the advantage in the rather common real-estate transaction known as "sale-leaseback,"]

and my

husband in turn does not understand why so many of the people he hears about in my father's house have recently been committed to mental hospitals or booked on drunk-driving charges. Nor does he understand that when we talk about sale-leasebacks and right-of-way condemnations we are talking in code about the things we like best, the yellow fields and the cottonwoods and the rivers rising and falling and the mountain roads closing when the heavy snow comes in. We miss each other's points, have another drink and regard the fire. My brother refers to my husband, in his presence, as "Joan's hus. band." Marriage is the classic betrayal.

Or perhaps it is not any more. Sometimes I think that those of us who are now in our thirties were born into the last generation to carry the burden of

"home," to find in family life the source of all tension and drama. I had by all objective accounts a "normal" and a "happy" family situation, and yet I was almost thirty years old before I could talk to my family on the telephone without crying after I had hung up. We did not fight. Nothing was wrong. And yet some nameless anxicty colored the emotional charges between me and the place that I came from. The question of whether or not you could go home again was a very real part of the sentimental and largely literary baggage with which we left home in the fifties; I suspect that it is irrelevant to the children born of the fragmentation after World War II. A few weeks ago in a San Francisco bar I saw a pretty young girl on crystal' take off her clothes and dance for the cash prize in an "amateur-topless" contest. There was no particular sense of moment about this, none of the effect of romantic degradation, of "dark journey," for which my generation strived so assiduously. What sense could that girl possibly make of, say, Long Day's Journey into Night?? Who is beside the point?

That I am trapped in this particular irrelevancy is never more apparent to me than when I am home. Paralyzed by the neurotic lassitude engendered by meeting one's past at every fur, around every corner, inside every cupboard, i go aimlessly from room to room. I decide to meet it head-on and clean ouf a drawer, and I spread the contents on the bed. A bathing suit I wore the summer I was seventeen. A letter of rejection from The Nation, an aerial photograph of the site for a shopping center my father did not build m 1954. Three teacups hand-painted with cabbage roses and signed "EM. my grandmothers inials.

There is no final solution for letters of rejection from The Nation and teac ups hand-painted in 1900. Nor is there any answer to snapshots of one's grandfa ier as a young man on skis, surveying around Donner Pass in the year 1910. 1 smooth out the snapshot and look into his face, and do and do not see my ...n.

A methamphetamine.
Tragedy by playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888-1952), based on the shame and deception that haunted his own family.

ON GOING HOME

I close the drawer, and have another cup of coffee with my mother. We get along very well, veterans of a guerrilla war we never understood.

Days pass. I see no one. I come to dread my husband's evening call, not only because he is full of news of what by now seems to me our remote life in Los Angeles, people he has seen, letters which require attention, but because he asks what I have been doing, suggests uneasily that i get out, drive to San Francisco or Berkeley. Instead I drive across the river to a family graveyard. It has been vandalized since my last visit and the monuments are broken, overturned in the dry grass. Because I once saw a rattlesnake in the grass T stay in the car and listen to a country-and-Western station. Later I drive with my father to a ranch he has in the foothills. The man who runs his cattle on it asks us to the roundup, a week from Sunday, and although I know that I will be in Los Angeles I say, in the oblique way my family talks, that I will come. Once home I mention the broken monuments in the graveyard. My mother shrugs.

I go to visit my great-aunts. A few of them think now that I am my cousin, or their daughter who died young. We recall an anecdote about a relative last seen in 1948, and they ask if I still like living in New York City. I have lived in Los Angeles for three years, but I say that I do. The baby is offered a horehound drop, and I am slipped a dollar bill "to buy a treat." Questions trail off, answers are abandoned, the baby plays with the dust motes in a shaft of after-

It is time for the baby's birthday party: a white cake, strawberry-marsh-mallow ice cream, a bottle of champagne saved from another party. In the evening, after she has gone to sleep, I kneel beside the crib and fouch her ace, where it is pressed against the slats, with mine. She is an open and trust-ig child, unprepared for and unaccustomed to the ambushes of family lit ad perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life. I would lik to give her more. I would like to promise her that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother's teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differ; ently now and I can promise her nothing like that. I give her a xylophone and a sundress from Madeira, and promise to tell her a funny story.

QUESTIONS

Didion speaks of herself at home as "paralyzed by the neurotic lassitude ent serdered by meeting one's past at every turn" (paragraph 3). What about the essay helps explain these feelings?
What does Didion mean by "the ambushes of family life"? (Besides "am-bushes" note Didion's other highly charged language: e.g., "betrayal" in paragraph I and "guerrilla war" in paragraph 3.)
In paragraph 6 Didion says she would like to give her daughter "home for her birthday, but we live differently now and I can promise her nothing like that." In an essay, explain whether or not you think parents today can give their children "home." Include examples.