SOUNDTRACK:
[READ: December 22, 2022] “Family Weekend”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fifth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
Like we always do at this time: the Short Story Advent Calendar is back for 2022. We had such a great time last year working with our first-ever guest editor, the one and only Alberto Manguel. This year, however, we’re bringing things back to basics. No overarching theme or format, just 25 top-class short stories, selected in-house, by some of the best writers in North America and beyond. It’s December 22. Lori Hahnel, author of Vermin, has practiced her scales enough for one day.
This story was utterly relatable.
A woman has moved from her home town to New York City and now her daughter is going to college in her home town. So when she visited her daughter for Family Weekend, she stays in her old house. Her mother has passed away, so she is staying with her father.
Her father wears jeans now. This is new. He has a new phone–his first smartphone–and he doesn’t like it. He deletes texts, doesn’t see the point of the threads.
You borrow your father’s car to drive to campus, but your daughter is in class. So you run an errand and miss everything.
You father is cleaning and getting rid of things he doesn’t need. You should be grateful that he is doing such a good job taking care of his affairs. Meanwhile your daughter is buying more and more things for her dorm–you should be grateful she is trying to nest in a new place. But is this just some kind of conservation of capitalism?
I loved this little paragraph:
Your father doesn’t like it when you tell him he has already told you something.
Your daughter doesn’t like it when you forget she has already told you something.
Mostly, you let your father repeat himself,
Mostly, you remember everything your daughter tells you.
Your mother would have hated this story–where’s the fiction. But she would agree–there’s a shard of ice in every writer’s heart.
I enjoyed this story very much and I was intrigued to read this in her interview:
JFK: Of all my stories, there are two that are more autobiographical than the others: “How to Become a Publicist” in my first collection, Bending Heaven, and this one. When I had the idea for “Family Weekend,” I knew right away it could be a kind of companion story to “Publicist.” In the first, the narrator is leaving home and settling in New York City after college for work. In the second, the narrator is going back home for a Parents’ Weekend visit with her daughter, who is in college. I say the stories are autobiographical, but it would be more accurate to say that I hold a funhouse mirror up to my life, look at the shapes it makes, and try to do something with them.
Guess I’ll have to look for that story too.
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