Beginning ~ with a lost tooth

Making Toast: A Family Story ~ by Roger Rosenblatt, 2010, memoir (Maryland)

The trick when foraging for a tooth lost in coffee grounds is not to be misled by the clumps.

His granddaughter lost a tooth, which he had wrapped in a napkin for safekeeping.  You see what's going to happen, don't you?  It did, so now he and his wife have been searching through the kitchen trash can for twenty minutes.  My friend Jane left this book out for me to read while I was staying at her house in November.  I glanced at the first page and didn't stop until page eight.  I think it will be good, in spite of the sad events that led up to the grandparents being there in the first place.

When Roger's daughter, Amy — a gifted doctor, mother, and wife — collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition at age thirty-eight, Roger and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren:  six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies.

Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny — Boppo and Mimi to the kids — quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children:  bedtime stories, talking toys, play-dates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought.

Though reeling from Amy's death, they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tenderhearted children through the pains and confusions of grief.  As he marvels at the strength of his son-in-law and the tenacity and skill of his wife, a former kindergarten teacher, Roger attends each day to "the one household duty I have mastered" — preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking.

Now let me tell you "the rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say.  It was November of 2011 when I stayed at Jane's house to take care of her cat while she was traveling.  Yes, eight years ago.  I can't find any indication I ever finished the book (not on my list of books read that year or the next), so I must have left it at Jane's and never picked up a copy for myself.  That is, until more recently.

Jane died a couple of years after that, and I moved to St. Louis in 2014.  Yet I have a copy of the paperback edition in my apartment.  When did I acquire it?  I have no idea.  Why didn't I recognize it?  Look at the cover above and the cover of the hardback that I wrote for Book Beginnings in 2011.  I suddenly made the connection when I read Sue Jackson's review last week; she had the audio book.  I recognized the cover picture she used (this one), and suddenly I realized it was the book I had on my shelf.  Same book, different cover.  I searched my blog and found the old post from 2011.  Mystery solved.  Sort of.  I must not have read beyond those eight pages (mentioned above), yet I remembered this earlier cover that was on the hardback edition.  Since I own the book, I can count it for the Mount TBR Challenge, where I'm reading books from my own shelves.



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