The world is full of memoirs and many of them are wonderful. One that's just out and needs your attention is Michael Downing's brilliant, harrowing Life with Sudden Death: A Tale of Moral Hazard and Medical Misadventure. Downing was the last of 9 children in a happy family in Western, MA, where everything changed when he was 3 and his father died suddenly. Part I is about Downing's childhood; Part II is about what happens when the same thing befalls one of his brothers: sudden death in the midst of a very full life. Turns out Downing has the same gene lying in wait for him too, which is where the "medical misadventure" comes in. If A Year of Magical Thinking is more your taste than Running with Scissors, I'll go out on the limb and say you'd like Life with Sudden Death, maybe as much as I did.
I'm delighted to post this piece on "going gray" in response to a public invitation to readers of Me, My Hair and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession. Reader Cordelia Manning sent in this lovely piece and titled it "Let It Be." It's more evidence that our hair is a deeply personal public/private matter that has the power to make us reflect on our entire lives. The wonder is that Cordelia Manning has done it so succinctly here. Thank you! "I was a much adored child: first grandchild on both sides; first child of my parents; first niece of all my aunts and uncles. I was the one they had all waited for and I was showered with love and attention. Even later, after my siblings and cousins arrived, I was the first and eldest, the special one. "I like to think all that attention was wonderful, nurturing, but in fact they were all always fussing over me. My hair was too long, short, or thick, my skin was too fair and freckled, my eyebrows too h...
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