The Tell (Oprah's Book Club)

by Amy Griffin

my father himself, for whom accomplishments reigned supreme and to whom comparison was not the thief of joy but the only accurate measure of success.

Memory is a sieve that catches only the most important moments. The insignificant details of daily life don’t stick; instead, they flow through the sieve. Then there are experiences that are unusual, set apart from the everyday, that carry an emotional charge. These we often hold on to, turning them over and over.

But the truth was, I was the real taskmaster. I knew that what I was rejecting when I didn’t go out was the unpredictability of not knowing what might happen.

Behind the wheel, staring out at the long, flat landscape, with Garth Brooks blaring on the radio and the dash slick with Armor All, Texas sun shining through the windshield, I felt a new sense of freedom. But this freedom wasn’t what I’d felt as a little girl on my banana-seat bike; the definition had changed. Back then, freedom was a kind of abandon—wild, reckless, unselfconscious. Now I felt free when I could control every detail, from the temperature to the song on the stereo to where I would go next.

The message was received: My brain would be a cracked egg frying in a cast-iron skillet if I partook.

It was a reminder that multiple stories could be true at the same time, that we select our narratives in accordance with how honest we want to be and how honest we can be with ourselves.

Isn’t life funny that way? You start off running from something, the point where it all began, and then, as it approaches on the horizon, you realize that you haven’t been running from it at all. You’ve been running toward it.

I had to stay present in this moment while the memories were all fresh, instead of letting them drift away. I had to sift through what had surfaced.

could feel my mom’s pride in me, and her love, deep and unwavering. It was a perfect love, one that had nothing to do with my accomplishments—a love that was a birthright, not something that had to be earned.

For the same reason that we, as parents, do anything. We want to keep our children safe.

My edges had softened. Even my militance about the salt and pepper shakers being passed together and clockwise at a dinner table, which any southern belle could tell you was basic common decency, had lessened. The salt would be fine traveling around the table on its own.

There were a lot of things that just weren’t talked about—not out of insensitivity but more to insulate the kids from adult realities.