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setting the record
Dec. 14th, 2013 04:55 pmThis journal makes a very poor record of my life; I am not good at describing things that happen to me. (I mean both that I am unmotivated to do it and that when I do, I don't do it well. Creative nonfiction is alas not one of my talents. I can't even manage "here's a photo of what I ate today!" with skill or regularity.)
However, in case someone in the future attempts to use it as a record (descendents, biographers, or more likely me because I've forgotten something, although even this is not truly likely), two factual corrections based on new information:
1. I previously said Ciro's father died after he refused surgery on a stomach hemorrhage. In fact, he agreed to surgery but asked to be transferred to another hospital. Everyone, doctors included, thought his condition was stable enough to permit this, but he died in the ambulance en route. Which is a different kind of sad, but I think an easier one to come to terms with - one that suggests he was taking care of himself to the end, not abandoned and raving. Incidentally, the hospital he wanted to move to is beautiful.
2. Ciro now believes his father was not schizophrenic; from talking to his Italian family (which he can do now; age 30, he successfully taught himself a new language) it seems there is no history whatsoever of this kind of madness in the family. It was likely not genetic at all, but instead rooted in brain damage stemming from savage beatings Tommaso endured as a child. (His father and stepmother were horrible people and he ran away from home very young. His mother died when he was very young, and it's her extended family that is now our family. The larger story is too large for this note, but the fact that Tommaso became a world-class, cosmopolitan chef despite coming from poverty and little education is perhaps less remarkable than the fact that he did not pass on any of that violence. Hopefully Ciro will someday have time to write it all down.)
However, in case someone in the future attempts to use it as a record (descendents, biographers, or more likely me because I've forgotten something, although even this is not truly likely), two factual corrections based on new information:
1. I previously said Ciro's father died after he refused surgery on a stomach hemorrhage. In fact, he agreed to surgery but asked to be transferred to another hospital. Everyone, doctors included, thought his condition was stable enough to permit this, but he died in the ambulance en route. Which is a different kind of sad, but I think an easier one to come to terms with - one that suggests he was taking care of himself to the end, not abandoned and raving. Incidentally, the hospital he wanted to move to is beautiful.
2. Ciro now believes his father was not schizophrenic; from talking to his Italian family (which he can do now; age 30, he successfully taught himself a new language) it seems there is no history whatsoever of this kind of madness in the family. It was likely not genetic at all, but instead rooted in brain damage stemming from savage beatings Tommaso endured as a child. (His father and stepmother were horrible people and he ran away from home very young. His mother died when he was very young, and it's her extended family that is now our family. The larger story is too large for this note, but the fact that Tommaso became a world-class, cosmopolitan chef despite coming from poverty and little education is perhaps less remarkable than the fact that he did not pass on any of that violence. Hopefully Ciro will someday have time to write it all down.)
