It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks: A Memoir of a Mother and Daughter - Hardcover

Burns, Catherine Lloyd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865477086 ISBN 13: 9780865477087

Publisher: North Point Press, 2006

Synopsis

Life is a series of losses. I’ve decided to be very Zen about it. I have lost two husbands, my parents, my brother, countless friends; it is just one loss after another. You might as well get used to it.” So muses the author’s mother in this poignant and humorous memoir about mothers and daughters. Loss is a way of life for both Catherine and her mother. But where it made the daughter ravenous for contact, it made the mother lose her appetite for people. While the two always had a fierce attachment, by turns intimate and tumultuous, decades of fractious and contentious and frustrating interactions found a reprieve after the birth of Catherine’s daughter, Olive. Witty and direct, weaving back and forth in time, the book charts the transformation of this volatile and unique mother-daughter relationship from longing to connection. A book about love, mortality, and the nature of family bonds, It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks is a must-read for anyone trying to navigate their way through the distance between their fantasies of love and the realities of family relationships.

About this title

About the Author

As an actress, Catherine Lloyd Burns has appeared on numerous television shows, including Malcolm in the Middle, E.R., Law and Order, and Al Franken’s Lateline. This is her first book. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughter.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpted from It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks by Catherine Lloyd Burns. Copyright © 2006 by Catherine Lloyd Burns. Published in May 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
 
SOMETHING NICE ABOUT MY MOTHER
 
My answering machine is ablaze. I have sixteen messages, all from her. She needs to see me right away. What a pain in the ass. She lives in the Village. I live in Harlem. “Please hurry,” she begs.
 
I walk in her front door an hour and a half later. She is in tears. I have been her daughter for nineteen years and this is the first time I have ever seen her cry. I don’t like it. I thought I would like it. I concentrate on hanging up my vintage faux fur coat. “I thought you were dead,” she tells my back.
 
“Well I’m not,” I say. She leads me to the living room, to the center of the U made by her three white Knoll sofas. There are tissues everywhere. She is shaking, clinging to me.
 
Oh my God, I think, this is it. This is the moment I have steered my whole little life toward.
 
“I’m so glad to see you,” she says, blowing her nose. “I thought you were dead. I was terrified you were dead.”
 
“I’m not,” I repeat.
 
“And then it hit me like a ton of bricks.”
 
I sit down next to her. She is going to reach out to me. She is going to apologize. I look into her bloodshot blue eyes.
 
“It suddenly hit me today,” she says. “I don’t know why, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. This has nothing to do with me. If you kill yourself, it is simply not my fault. I am off the hook. None of this is my fault. I am not responsible.” She looks almost euphoric as she takes my hand. “And I couldn’t wait to tell you.”

Edition details

• Publisher: North Point Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0865477086
• ISBN 13: 9780865477087
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240