i'm a new reader (shoutout to cafe anne who couldn't describe your newsletter and, for some reason that made me read it)...i'm from RI, and now live in boston indeed quite close to rt. 1. now i have to check out the mcdonalds. i really love your writing! i got that feeling i had heard it before (but not in a "he sounds like tons of other people" way) and realized finally that you remind me of a friend i used to have. we worked for the same company and would crack each other up all day over gchat and then go on smoke breaks together where we would stand together awkwardly and mostly silently because real life is hard.
a car story: my old vw golf (whose name was nugget, and i named it only because i was dating a guy who named his cars and said i should - he drove a black dodge neon named skittle) started smoking in the tunnel here one day on my way to a petsitting client in eastie. by some miracle i was able to get out of the tunnel and off the exit. some men rushed out from some mechanic looking type place and said here, put some water in it. i got down the block to my client, told my partner about the car who said "it will be fine, now hurry up and drive home we have a club night to run." we lived in cambridge at the time and i just made it to our exit off storrow drive and as i was coming up the exit and about to turn onto the bridge, the car whole ass died. no power, no steering, nothing. and now i'm blocking this huge exit during rush hour on a friday, and i have horrible anxiety and i'm losing it. i'm hysterical. but it's also fucking cambridge so a grew of guys who happened to all be on a crew team together happened by while i was sobbing and panicking in my drivers seat and were like HEY, HEY. IT'S OK WE'RE GONNA PUSH YOU OK. and they pushed my car, with me in full meltdown mode inside it, to a safe space away from traffic where i was able to get a tow. it was a miracle. and it was also probably quite the scene. (the car unfortunately never recovered, and sat in our driveway until our apartment burnt down and i sold it to the landlord for a reasonable stack of cash.)
anyway, i too often wonder why i didn't ask more about people when they were here, and why i don't ask things i want to know of my parents now. i should. i've started to a little bit. it's such a weird phenomenon. we have all this time, and we don't do it, then later you're going through the things of a dead relative and everybody's wondering the same things and nobody ever asked.
Hahahahahaha omg. I have so much to say in response to this. First I thought we truly did work together cuz the way u described the friendship via gchat until the smoke break part cuz I wasn’t cool enough to smoke at any of my jobs lol
Also that car story is epic and is just so perfectly Massachusetts / Boston. The crew team, the apt burning down, the rush hour traffic of Boston making everything worse. truly all of it feels like it’s happening with the Sox playin in the background and everyone sippin on Dunkie ds.
Wait so where in RI r u from? My parents live in S Kingstown. I grew up in Sharon MA not sure how far u r from there in Boston.
Anyways all to say I’m very glad Anne sent you here! And yea I feel it w my parents too. Why not just ask? I find that setting up like formal times for it so it’s scheduled helps. So I can’t back out if it.
i'm from warwick! but when my mom was pregnant with me they lived on the parade route in bristol in this amazing apartment that backed onto the water/bike path - like a month ago i finally asked why they gave that place up and my dad said it was because commuting from there to wakefield where he got transferred for work sucked. alas. then they moved into a duplex in north kingstown until i was three. the whole place was pastel yellow shag and the outside was like the 70s and the flinstones had a baby. wait here i'll show you.
except back then that ugly siding was wood shingling in olive green. i used to love sitting on those big rocks which are still there! the landlord had a hilarious name, it was like mr. bluffington or mr. brusselsprouts or something. at some point he had his sons repaint the shingles to a nicer forest green type shade, but their ladder didn't reach the top so for years (decades?) the shingles were one green on the bottom and the old olive green at the top. it's near a railroad and my dad used to take me to watch the trains go by. it's also near schartner farms (rip). anyway, then they moved to warwick and that's where they've been ever since. my aunt lives in south kingstown, we used to spend a lot of time at her house because they have a big inground pool. my maternal grandparents lived in narragansett and they took care of me when my parents went back to work so i spent a fuckton of time there in bonnet shores too. best place ever.
i moved to boston when i was 17 for college & i did the requisite move-every-year thing for a long time. (back bay, harvard area of cambridge, allston, brighton, quincy, brighton again, arlington, cambridgeport.) my partner and i live in chelsea now & have for the past 8 years or so, which looks about 30 miles north of sharon.
the formal times thing is a good idea. my sister gave birth to Precious Nephew last year and they live with my parents so i've been visiting a lot more, and my mom now retired has finally been going through some of my grandparents' things that she has so there's been more opportunities for questions. we found a big book of family history type stuff my gramma had kept, so that was cool. we also found these lists my gramma made of all the furniture they owned, what it was made out of, why they had it, and who made it or gave it to them. who would think to do that? why? but having it is actually so cool now. it was stuff like "wooden ironing board from [my grampa's] mom, couldn't get a metal one because all the metal was going to the war." of course nowadays it wouldn't be cool at all because it would just be like "entire apartment, from ikea, needed furniture."
hahahaah omg that list thing is incredible. that is the sort of shit people truly7 do not do anymore!
also that house, the side panels on each door sweet baby ray that is something. man, all of this talk of RI and MA is making me wanna head on back east and eat some clam chowder.
also you're a great writer lol you should start a substack!
-- the paragraph that begins "There’s simply no way to explain"
-- “don’t you die on me you son of a bitch”
-- "Believe it or not, pushing a car is HARD. Cars are HEAVY. " (i believe it!)
-- MoshJesus (MJ)
-- "calm as two cucumbers"
-- "Alik didn’t have a childhood, the stories go"
-- "the land of almond milk and raw honey"
-- "People can’t ever tell when he’s kidding and when he’s serious, like he exists in that liminal space, that hazy intersection between joke and truth where there is no longer a difference between the two" (BOTH ARE TRUE? origin story?)
-- "Turns out I don’t know what my own car looks like."
-- "And then, much like Onyx, the convo dies."
-- "another miracle happened: Onyx died again." (JUST LIKE JESUS KIND OF BACKWARDS! THE SECOND GOING!)
-- “It’s funny today, maybe.. What, you think we had toilet paper?”
-- “What was good?,” he replies, “We were alive. We didn’t die during the war.”
-- "I do steer (heh) our conversation to cars" (HEH INDEED)
-- "not to toot his own horn (nice)" (AND ALSO WITH YOU)
-- "I didn’t ask Alik or my dad for help. Because I didn’t need to, because I knew what to do. Also because Lenia told me what to do."
-- “I love you.”
-- "Grandparents are a fascinating contradiction - they are some of the closest family you have and yet your lives could not be more different. " (TRUTH)
-- your grandpa
-- you
you've done it again! (or you're still doing it. either way, it's happening!)
Know what I liked about your comment? When you wrote this part:
love!
specific things i love include
-- the paragraph that begins "There’s simply no way to explain"
-- “don’t you die on me you son of a bitch”
-- "Believe it or not, pushing a car is HARD. Cars are HEAVY. " (i believe it!)
-- MoshJesus (MJ)
-- "calm as two cucumbers"
-- "Alik didn’t have a childhood, the stories go"
-- "the land of almond milk and raw honey"
-- "People can’t ever tell when he’s kidding and when he’s serious, like he exists in that liminal space, that hazy intersection between joke and truth where there is no longer a difference between the two" (BOTH ARE TRUE? origin story?)
-- "Turns out I don’t know what my own car looks like."
-- "And then, much like Onyx, the convo dies."
-- "another miracle happened: Onyx died again." (JUST LIKE JESUS KIND OF BACKWARDS! THE SECOND GOING!)
-- “It’s funny today, maybe.. What, you think we had toilet paper?”
-- “What was good?,” he replies, “We were alive. We didn’t die during the war.”
-- "I do steer (heh) our conversation to cars" (HEH INDEED)
-- "not to toot his own horn (nice)" (AND ALSO WITH YOU)
-- "I didn’t ask Alik or my dad for help. Because I didn’t need to, because I knew what to do. Also because Lenia told me what to do."
-- “I love you.”
-- "Grandparents are a fascinating contradiction - they are some of the closest family you have and yet your lives could not be more different. " (TRUTH)
-- your grandpa
-- you
you've done it again! (or you're still doing it. either way, it's happening!)
This is the first piece of writing of yours that I have read and it’s beautiful. The relationships with grandparents are funny things and so wrapped up in layers of stuff that we as grandkids can only guess at or imagine. Thanks for writing this. It’s got me thinking about my grandpa and the conversations that I could have with him. I’m so glad you have found a way to have deeper conversations with your grandpa.
I love your writing so much. Found you through Substack featuring you last Sunday past, and am just reading current and older posts. Such beautiful, timeless writing about family, and love and loss and internal divides. I also grew up in Rhode Island, East Providence, with Portuguese immigrant grandparents, fifty years ago. The past is a big place. Your writing brings me back there.
Linda wow thank you for this! East providence, god I loved hanging out there...god I wanna go back and hang there now as an adult. Are you still in that general area?
also "the past is a big place" is such a beautiful way to put it.
dang I'm so happy you found my substack and that you're digging the work - makes my heart get warm fuzzy
No, no longer a Rhode Islander, (but maybe in some sense, will always be one!) living in the mountains of NH, but miss the food of RI, and the crazy people for sure.
Your writing is amazing, the inter generational dynamics is so real and rich. Coming from a place of BEING a grandparent, I am identifying with all three generations at different times in your essays. So fluid. Have to go manage my subscription now.
omggg Linda thank you so so so much that means the world! I truly appreciate all your kind words and the support you have no idea
And yes, RI people are NUTS! Are you up on the Buddy Cianci drama? I met him once and sweet lord in person he was so charismatic and charming I was like damn, I get why this guy is a great politician lolol
mountains of NH ain't half bad tho I gotta think - I've been up there a few times and it is beaaautiful
Hahaha! The Prince of Providence, I remember his campaign in the 1970’s and the radio ads, “Buddy Cianci, He Gets Things Done!” Yea, it is easier to get things done when you circumvent all those annoying little regulations, and just have your boys juice who needs to be juiced. We don’t need no stinking permits.... he was the prototype for SNL’s Pathological Liar... albeit, as you say, charming. After he got out of prison, and had his own talk radio show, all the employees at City Hall used to listen to it. Used to piss the new mayor off. Guess he didn’t like the idea of his rival’s voice still ringing through the hallowed halls, lol.
Gah. You caught me at just the right time for this one. I just went back home for the first time since my grandmother, my last grandparent, died 8 years ago. My parents moved out here to almost-Rhode-Island after that and made it 7 years before moving back, and I took my whole family to visit, most for the first time (or the first time they’ll remember; my oldest was 2 and my youngest hadn’t been born yet).
She died suddenly and, while we had a good relationship and I often asked her questions in her later years, I forgot most of the answers and wish I’d recorded them somewhere.
Being back home stirred up a lot of shit for me, and this newsletter stirred up even more. Well done, once again, Dobrenka. Or Sasha. Whichever you prefer.
ahhhhh Nicci damn that's some real talk right there. sending you lotsa love. I'm sure that even if you dont remember the answers themselves you remember the feelings? maybe? idk. what was it like for your kids to see your home and all that?
A little disappointing actually. My parents sold the house I grew up in so their new place has no emotional connection for me. But maybe it’s better that way, considering. In a way, though, my parents have a presence in every place they’ve had. So while it’s not the same as the house I remember and the house my kids visited when my parents lived out here, we all find something familiar when we go there, if that makes sense.
totally! My parents moved out of our childhood home when I went to college and I was so pissed. Now I've grown to like their new home but still I miss the old place, wish I could stomp around it now as an adult.
Sending you and the fam lots of love over there <3
I love it, Alex, this is my third go-round with this piece (who wants to let go of what's good in this life?), and, it's hilarious, wry, poignant, bittersweet, holding back but savvy enough to let your foot get a tiny bit heavier on the gas (or more torque if its EV) in the right spots. Thank you for sharing something your little one gets to read when he's old enough to want to read it (it'll be a while) and he's got a little one, and he reminds him holo you to chat. This piece is THE show, greenlit, live, prime-time, and we're looking forward to you narrowing that gap between Alex and Alik because regret's no way to go. In a word, fantastic piece (as usual).
Dude omg thank you so much this is so kind and beautiful. Also had truly never thought about how Wilder might one day yell at his kids to call me brb gonna cry a bunch
Also v exciting about your pilot!
It could be who knows!!!!
DONBRENKO is an incredible name punch up, A+
Hahahahaj
okay the comments are back
Yesssss
JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL
I do love the thought that life is one giant jar of marmalade — I’m thinking chunky orange.
lol ok this is my fav line in the essay I had to fight to keep it in haha
lemme talk to the editor
CCPR needs some CCR
What
CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL
I wanted to put my standard silly comments, but damn, Alex, what an essay. What a way to tie together these threads.
That’s when I know I’ve won. When I can get even #1 fan Madelinez to stop the silly comments (which I then miss bring ‘em back)
i'm a new reader (shoutout to cafe anne who couldn't describe your newsletter and, for some reason that made me read it)...i'm from RI, and now live in boston indeed quite close to rt. 1. now i have to check out the mcdonalds. i really love your writing! i got that feeling i had heard it before (but not in a "he sounds like tons of other people" way) and realized finally that you remind me of a friend i used to have. we worked for the same company and would crack each other up all day over gchat and then go on smoke breaks together where we would stand together awkwardly and mostly silently because real life is hard.
a car story: my old vw golf (whose name was nugget, and i named it only because i was dating a guy who named his cars and said i should - he drove a black dodge neon named skittle) started smoking in the tunnel here one day on my way to a petsitting client in eastie. by some miracle i was able to get out of the tunnel and off the exit. some men rushed out from some mechanic looking type place and said here, put some water in it. i got down the block to my client, told my partner about the car who said "it will be fine, now hurry up and drive home we have a club night to run." we lived in cambridge at the time and i just made it to our exit off storrow drive and as i was coming up the exit and about to turn onto the bridge, the car whole ass died. no power, no steering, nothing. and now i'm blocking this huge exit during rush hour on a friday, and i have horrible anxiety and i'm losing it. i'm hysterical. but it's also fucking cambridge so a grew of guys who happened to all be on a crew team together happened by while i was sobbing and panicking in my drivers seat and were like HEY, HEY. IT'S OK WE'RE GONNA PUSH YOU OK. and they pushed my car, with me in full meltdown mode inside it, to a safe space away from traffic where i was able to get a tow. it was a miracle. and it was also probably quite the scene. (the car unfortunately never recovered, and sat in our driveway until our apartment burnt down and i sold it to the landlord for a reasonable stack of cash.)
anyway, i too often wonder why i didn't ask more about people when they were here, and why i don't ask things i want to know of my parents now. i should. i've started to a little bit. it's such a weird phenomenon. we have all this time, and we don't do it, then later you're going through the things of a dead relative and everybody's wondering the same things and nobody ever asked.
Hahahahahaha omg. I have so much to say in response to this. First I thought we truly did work together cuz the way u described the friendship via gchat until the smoke break part cuz I wasn’t cool enough to smoke at any of my jobs lol
Also that car story is epic and is just so perfectly Massachusetts / Boston. The crew team, the apt burning down, the rush hour traffic of Boston making everything worse. truly all of it feels like it’s happening with the Sox playin in the background and everyone sippin on Dunkie ds.
Wait so where in RI r u from? My parents live in S Kingstown. I grew up in Sharon MA not sure how far u r from there in Boston.
Anyways all to say I’m very glad Anne sent you here! And yea I feel it w my parents too. Why not just ask? I find that setting up like formal times for it so it’s scheduled helps. So I can’t back out if it.
i'm from warwick! but when my mom was pregnant with me they lived on the parade route in bristol in this amazing apartment that backed onto the water/bike path - like a month ago i finally asked why they gave that place up and my dad said it was because commuting from there to wakefield where he got transferred for work sucked. alas. then they moved into a duplex in north kingstown until i was three. the whole place was pastel yellow shag and the outside was like the 70s and the flinstones had a baby. wait here i'll show you.
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.5567929,-71.5143531,3a,40.3y,63.92h,86.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJDrWqZXNaw-e0IfgSnYuVQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
except back then that ugly siding was wood shingling in olive green. i used to love sitting on those big rocks which are still there! the landlord had a hilarious name, it was like mr. bluffington or mr. brusselsprouts or something. at some point he had his sons repaint the shingles to a nicer forest green type shade, but their ladder didn't reach the top so for years (decades?) the shingles were one green on the bottom and the old olive green at the top. it's near a railroad and my dad used to take me to watch the trains go by. it's also near schartner farms (rip). anyway, then they moved to warwick and that's where they've been ever since. my aunt lives in south kingstown, we used to spend a lot of time at her house because they have a big inground pool. my maternal grandparents lived in narragansett and they took care of me when my parents went back to work so i spent a fuckton of time there in bonnet shores too. best place ever.
i moved to boston when i was 17 for college & i did the requisite move-every-year thing for a long time. (back bay, harvard area of cambridge, allston, brighton, quincy, brighton again, arlington, cambridgeport.) my partner and i live in chelsea now & have for the past 8 years or so, which looks about 30 miles north of sharon.
the formal times thing is a good idea. my sister gave birth to Precious Nephew last year and they live with my parents so i've been visiting a lot more, and my mom now retired has finally been going through some of my grandparents' things that she has so there's been more opportunities for questions. we found a big book of family history type stuff my gramma had kept, so that was cool. we also found these lists my gramma made of all the furniture they owned, what it was made out of, why they had it, and who made it or gave it to them. who would think to do that? why? but having it is actually so cool now. it was stuff like "wooden ironing board from [my grampa's] mom, couldn't get a metal one because all the metal was going to the war." of course nowadays it wouldn't be cool at all because it would just be like "entire apartment, from ikea, needed furniture."
hahahaah omg that list thing is incredible. that is the sort of shit people truly7 do not do anymore!
also that house, the side panels on each door sweet baby ray that is something. man, all of this talk of RI and MA is making me wanna head on back east and eat some clam chowder.
also you're a great writer lol you should start a substack!
HAHA brb while i update my linkedin with this endorsement
...
.....
ok i'm back
in all seriousness, appreciate your letting us read all your great stories, and for taking the time to chat. chowdah and clamcakes 4LYFE
hahahah CnC4lyfeeeeeee
love!
specific things i love include
-- the paragraph that begins "There’s simply no way to explain"
-- “don’t you die on me you son of a bitch”
-- "Believe it or not, pushing a car is HARD. Cars are HEAVY. " (i believe it!)
-- MoshJesus (MJ)
-- "calm as two cucumbers"
-- "Alik didn’t have a childhood, the stories go"
-- "the land of almond milk and raw honey"
-- "People can’t ever tell when he’s kidding and when he’s serious, like he exists in that liminal space, that hazy intersection between joke and truth where there is no longer a difference between the two" (BOTH ARE TRUE? origin story?)
-- "Turns out I don’t know what my own car looks like."
-- "And then, much like Onyx, the convo dies."
-- "another miracle happened: Onyx died again." (JUST LIKE JESUS KIND OF BACKWARDS! THE SECOND GOING!)
-- “It’s funny today, maybe.. What, you think we had toilet paper?”
-- “What was good?,” he replies, “We were alive. We didn’t die during the war.”
-- "I do steer (heh) our conversation to cars" (HEH INDEED)
-- "not to toot his own horn (nice)" (AND ALSO WITH YOU)
-- "I didn’t ask Alik or my dad for help. Because I didn’t need to, because I knew what to do. Also because Lenia told me what to do."
-- “I love you.”
-- "Grandparents are a fascinating contradiction - they are some of the closest family you have and yet your lives could not be more different. " (TRUTH)
-- your grandpa
-- you
you've done it again! (or you're still doing it. either way, it's happening!)
Know what I liked about your comment? When you wrote this part:
love!
specific things i love include
-- the paragraph that begins "There’s simply no way to explain"
-- “don’t you die on me you son of a bitch”
-- "Believe it or not, pushing a car is HARD. Cars are HEAVY. " (i believe it!)
-- MoshJesus (MJ)
-- "calm as two cucumbers"
-- "Alik didn’t have a childhood, the stories go"
-- "the land of almond milk and raw honey"
-- "People can’t ever tell when he’s kidding and when he’s serious, like he exists in that liminal space, that hazy intersection between joke and truth where there is no longer a difference between the two" (BOTH ARE TRUE? origin story?)
-- "Turns out I don’t know what my own car looks like."
-- "And then, much like Onyx, the convo dies."
-- "another miracle happened: Onyx died again." (JUST LIKE JESUS KIND OF BACKWARDS! THE SECOND GOING!)
-- “It’s funny today, maybe.. What, you think we had toilet paper?”
-- “What was good?,” he replies, “We were alive. We didn’t die during the war.”
-- "I do steer (heh) our conversation to cars" (HEH INDEED)
-- "not to toot his own horn (nice)" (AND ALSO WITH YOU)
-- "I didn’t ask Alik or my dad for help. Because I didn’t need to, because I knew what to do. Also because Lenia told me what to do."
-- “I love you.”
-- "Grandparents are a fascinating contradiction - they are some of the closest family you have and yet your lives could not be more different. " (TRUTH)
-- your grandpa
-- you
you've done it again! (or you're still doing it. either way, it's happening!)
i thank you! very thorough!
I’m a new reader and I’m in tears - laughing! Your car problems are hilarious! Your writing is absolute gold!
wow thank you so much Carole and welcome to the wacky world that is Both Are True :)
ALEX I'm enjoying that.
DAVID I'm enjoying that you're enjoying :) thank you
This is the first piece of writing of yours that I have read and it’s beautiful. The relationships with grandparents are funny things and so wrapped up in layers of stuff that we as grandkids can only guess at or imagine. Thanks for writing this. It’s got me thinking about my grandpa and the conversations that I could have with him. I’m so glad you have found a way to have deeper conversations with your grandpa.
Omg Brittany thank you so much this is so kind! Sorry for the delay in getting back I genuinely did not see the comment until just now
I have no idea how I found my way here but that was genius and so fun (and sweet) to read. Also, I live on the north shore of Boston. :)
Whoaaaa North shore represent! I never spent much time there seeing as it was the bitter rival of the South Shore lol jk that never existed.
I also have no idea how you got here but I'm very glad you did :)
I love your writing so much. Found you through Substack featuring you last Sunday past, and am just reading current and older posts. Such beautiful, timeless writing about family, and love and loss and internal divides. I also grew up in Rhode Island, East Providence, with Portuguese immigrant grandparents, fifty years ago. The past is a big place. Your writing brings me back there.
Linda wow thank you for this! East providence, god I loved hanging out there...god I wanna go back and hang there now as an adult. Are you still in that general area?
also "the past is a big place" is such a beautiful way to put it.
dang I'm so happy you found my substack and that you're digging the work - makes my heart get warm fuzzy
No, no longer a Rhode Islander, (but maybe in some sense, will always be one!) living in the mountains of NH, but miss the food of RI, and the crazy people for sure.
Your writing is amazing, the inter generational dynamics is so real and rich. Coming from a place of BEING a grandparent, I am identifying with all three generations at different times in your essays. So fluid. Have to go manage my subscription now.
omggg Linda thank you so so so much that means the world! I truly appreciate all your kind words and the support you have no idea
And yes, RI people are NUTS! Are you up on the Buddy Cianci drama? I met him once and sweet lord in person he was so charismatic and charming I was like damn, I get why this guy is a great politician lolol
mountains of NH ain't half bad tho I gotta think - I've been up there a few times and it is beaaautiful
Hahaha! The Prince of Providence, I remember his campaign in the 1970’s and the radio ads, “Buddy Cianci, He Gets Things Done!” Yea, it is easier to get things done when you circumvent all those annoying little regulations, and just have your boys juice who needs to be juiced. We don’t need no stinking permits.... he was the prototype for SNL’s Pathological Liar... albeit, as you say, charming. After he got out of prison, and had his own talk radio show, all the employees at City Hall used to listen to it. Used to piss the new mayor off. Guess he didn’t like the idea of his rival’s voice still ringing through the hallowed halls, lol.
hahahaha god. what an insane thing that is also real
Gah. You caught me at just the right time for this one. I just went back home for the first time since my grandmother, my last grandparent, died 8 years ago. My parents moved out here to almost-Rhode-Island after that and made it 7 years before moving back, and I took my whole family to visit, most for the first time (or the first time they’ll remember; my oldest was 2 and my youngest hadn’t been born yet).
She died suddenly and, while we had a good relationship and I often asked her questions in her later years, I forgot most of the answers and wish I’d recorded them somewhere.
Being back home stirred up a lot of shit for me, and this newsletter stirred up even more. Well done, once again, Dobrenka. Or Sasha. Whichever you prefer.
ahhhhh Nicci damn that's some real talk right there. sending you lotsa love. I'm sure that even if you dont remember the answers themselves you remember the feelings? maybe? idk. what was it like for your kids to see your home and all that?
A little disappointing actually. My parents sold the house I grew up in so their new place has no emotional connection for me. But maybe it’s better that way, considering. In a way, though, my parents have a presence in every place they’ve had. So while it’s not the same as the house I remember and the house my kids visited when my parents lived out here, we all find something familiar when we go there, if that makes sense.
totally! My parents moved out of our childhood home when I went to college and I was so pissed. Now I've grown to like their new home but still I miss the old place, wish I could stomp around it now as an adult.
Sending you and the fam lots of love over there <3
Thank you! Lots of love to your fam too!!
I love it, Alex, this is my third go-round with this piece (who wants to let go of what's good in this life?), and, it's hilarious, wry, poignant, bittersweet, holding back but savvy enough to let your foot get a tiny bit heavier on the gas (or more torque if its EV) in the right spots. Thank you for sharing something your little one gets to read when he's old enough to want to read it (it'll be a while) and he's got a little one, and he reminds him holo you to chat. This piece is THE show, greenlit, live, prime-time, and we're looking forward to you narrowing that gap between Alex and Alik because regret's no way to go. In a word, fantastic piece (as usual).
Dude omg thank you so much this is so kind and beautiful. Also had truly never thought about how Wilder might one day yell at his kids to call me brb gonna cry a bunch