Harriette Arnow Sees You
Your father introduced me to you, explained how I’d been at it, writing The Dollmaker in Detroit, which was not about huge people, no, I wrote about the people on the side streets, down by the train tracks. He smiled when he showed you the article about me. So he bought my book for you.
And you forgot. You forgot my book was here, and so I was here, and then forgot the story that ran along your life like a thread with two cans on each side. Here is something good. Here is a way you two lived in tracked time.
About a month back, I saw you study my cover and the pages and you thought, this is a story like Grapes of Wrath, but about here. And I need to tell you, warn you about this. Not just about me. But the easy way you see your past in boxes, things you need to sort through. I am a different book. From a different world. We are not the same.
You are not the same. You are not your father. You won’t become him. And you need to remember the days when you all sat, on Sunday morning, reading the newspapers, and you read my pages because he wanted you to know where you were from. Because he wanted to share a connection with you. Because he loved you. Those were good days. You forget that, too.
Your past is like my book. A place to start. A place that sets your course. A place you have forgotten that was beautiful, too. In my story, Gertie made dolls because she loved them, then to survive. Now tell me, in your story, what are you making, what are you putting together with your own hands to survive, or better still because you love it, because it comforts you, because you want it written in your book of life?
