OK, so here’s a dilemma.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago I was in San Francisco to attend a conference. I stopped into a toy store in “Pleasant Valley,” as Laird calls the suburb where I grew up. While I was looking at Brio trains, I became aware of a guy standing next to me holding a chemistry set. I got the impression he was checking me out. For the longest time I stood there, unable to turn and face him — maybe because in my subconscious I already knew who he was. Finally I turned and, sure enough, recognized my brother.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If “brother” is the word. I’m not sure there is a word for someone you live with for several years because your mother and father have married his mother and father in an illegal ceremony.<\/p>\n
He was taller than I remembered, and he has lost the hexagonal glasses he had as a kid, and grown a fuzzy beard. But he still has the same blinking stare, like he is classifying you in a taxonomy of his own.<\/p>\n
Anyway, that’s “Matt” in the book Fallen Lake<\/em>. Seeing him, I felt as if I had stepped into an elevator shaft, plunging me into the basement of my recollections.<\/p>\n I had an impulse to run out of the store, but he said my name and in a moment he had his arms around me, and I was squeezing him back and crying a little bit.<\/p>\n We must have stood there talking for over an hour. He is married, which to anyone who has read Fallen Lake<\/em>, may come as a surprise. He does research for a gene therapy company. I’m a doctor, so for a while we chattered shop talk. Then my phone rang. One of my patients was in cardiac arrest. Matt signaled that he had to leave and was gone before I hung up.<\/p>\n But since then, and especially since Fallen Lake<\/em> was published, I’ve been thinking about giving him a call. I want to know if he remembers those events the way I remember them, or the way they are in the book. Most of all, I want to know how he overcame the condition he was diagnosed with as a child. But how do you even start a conversation like that? If anyone has ever been in a situation remotely like this, please give me some advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OK, so here’s a dilemma. A few weeks ago I was in San Francisco to attend a conference. I stopped into a toy store in “Pleasant Valley,” as Laird calls the suburb where I grew up. While I was looking at Brio trains, I became aware of a guy standing next to me holding a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14,10,22,27],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrienne","tag-group-marriage","tag-polyamory","tag-polyamory-novel","tag-repressed-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}