My first book

Well, it’s been a ride. I started writing this story in 2020 but it’s a story that I’ve really been writing my whole life. I wrote it two years after my mother died, seventeen years after my father died, started it when Bruce was first diagnosed with throat cancer and finished it almost two years after Bruce died. Lots of death, but so much life, too.
Why did I want to tell this story? I’ve always liked to write – I wrote a lot as a teenager, short stories, bad poetry (doesn’t every teenager write bad angsty poetry?). And then I stopped. For decades. Who has the time? You work ridiculous hours, you commute, you spend time with your family, you take care of a house, you vacation, you wind down after an exhausting day. When I retired, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. After working for thirty plus years, you mostly just want to sleep. And do nothing. But Bruce started to gently nag me to finish my degree. So I did. Then he started nagging me about what I was going to do with that shiny creative writing degree. So I did.
In writing classes, I started several short stories – I am a bad short story writer; I never knew when to stop. And as much as I love Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus, I never got the hang of the rhythm of short story writing. But one of those short stories was a bit of the Dad legend. He took off for California when he was eighteen and he got stopped for speeding (of course, the man had no idea speed limits existed for him.) And because he was deaf and the CHIPS cop didn’t understand him, the cop just waved him off. It didn’t work at all as a short story, but the Dad legend works as a book. And there were so many Dad stories over the years that I thought, why not.
So I sat down and for three months, threw words on the page every day. If I was busy with Bruce and appointments, and was just tired, he’d say, take a break, go write. You can’t stop. And after realizing that you can make a good piece of fiction from the bones of experiences, I kept going. And I wrote for two reasons. For my dad and my deep wish to show that deaf people aren’t weird or unusual or no weirder or unusual than the rest of us. They’re not any more sinner or saint than the rest of us either. They live, laugh, love, make mistakes, do bad things, learn and grow. And I wrote it for Bruce, of course.
Bruce was always my biggest cheerleader, who never let me say in a whiny voice, ‘I can’t.’ He was a little like Yoda I think – he would just tell me he knew I could do it. I wish he was here. I wish my dad was here. I like to think, somehow, they know and that they are proud. I know women aren’t supposed to brag about themselves but I’m too old now to worry much about the societal norms that dictate women should be sweet and retiring and never say yay me, look what I did. Well, screw that. Yay me. For once, I am wholeheartedly giving myself a pat on the back for writing a book. This book. For Dad, for Bruce and for me.