Reminded suddenly of how I came to know the writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr.. I was in my Ph.D. program, you finishing up your EE degree. Your dad was driving down to Miami for spring break, for a meeting. You invited me to go, along with Grandma and your brother B. To kill time we played backgammon and read books. There was a lot of time to kill; no one anticipated Grandma would want to stop every evening for dinner by 5p, and bed by 8p.
You were reading Breakfast of Champions, which you loaned to me when your brother refused to play backgammon with me. You’re too lucky, he claimed, after I rolled my sixth set of doubles.
I had no idea who Vonnegut was. I was shocked, amazed, appalled, riveted. What are you reading, Grandma said, looking over my shoulder at the page where Vonnegut explains what a beaver is, then a wet beaver, then a wet split beaver, with helpful illustrations. Oh my, she said, and resumed looking at the scenery. I have no idea if she understood what she was looking at.
I was betting she didn’t know what she was seeing because it was only upon reading the book that I suddenly grasped the significance of my middle school cheerleading coach calling out “beaver!” when one of us did a backflip without our legs carefully seamed together from ankle to crotch. To me, to ‘beaver’ simply meant, for no reason at all, “your legs are split a bit during a back handspring”. It took Vonnegut’s precise language and pictures to make me realize how we sixth graders were casually yelling about our vaginas at the top of our lungs.
I still cry every day but now sometimes I laugh too. I miss you.