Memoir

Alternating between St. Louis and San Francisco, past and present, this memoir revisits a transformative period in my early twenties following the loss of my mother to cancer.

I remember when I received the news that Random House wanted to publish this book. I was at my desk at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where I worked as an editor. Before that, I had worked at Encyclopedia Britannica in Chicago. And before that, as an editor in Berkeley, California. I was a film school graduate with big dreams, and time was flying as I kept taking off and landing, unsure of which branch would hold.

I was elated that my book had found a home. Buoyed by the sale, and with romantic visions of authorhood, I took flight again, returning to the Bay Area where many of the events in these pages took place.

In 2004, Borderlines was published, and for a few years I experienced the excitement of engaging with readers and having a book tour. As time passed, I followed a career in media production and the book fell out of print. With the rights back in my hands, I initially planned to bring out a new edition. I reread the book and began to make edits that I thought improved the text. I ignored the distant cries from my younger self, who lived and wrote much closer to the events, and I created a new cover to support the revised text.

Only after stepping away for a time, and then returning to my edits, did I realize my aim was folly. I had altered the younger me in ways that aligned her with who I am now - fewer moments of hesitation, less self-doubt. And some of the most candid and uncomfortable scenes were softened to suit my older, more private self.

But those hesitations had been real, and the self-doubt my albatross. The softened scenes made no sense.

Living through those challenges, and writing about them, has led to a more stable perch, where today I can look back at that unsteady young woman and appreciate her stumbles, battles and victories. And while I may yet find a way to bring Borderlines back out with a new introduction and modest touches to the text, for now I will sit with the valuable lesson that there is an important difference between bringing fresh context to an old story, and trying to rewrite the past.