It all started with a newsletter…
My wife and I woke up this morning to her reading Mrs. Luti’s newsletter to all the parents of the children who go to her school. She shared a link to my book and talked about the reading I am doing this Friday on ZOOM. My wife and I don’t get a ton of opportunities to talk in between her work schedule and our kids, so she was SO proud to see that Mrs. Luti had wanted to promote the book. “You’re dedicating your reading to James?” I also didn’t get the chance to tell her that I wanted to do something special for the Luti family, as small of a gesture as it probably is…but yes, I want to dedicate the evening to his memory and to address a few issues regarding the stigma of mental illness and talk about the families before I am off to the races. Look, this novel deals so heavily with mental illness and the detriment of ignoring it that I saw an opportunity to speak up for James as someone who has survived and is still trying to navigate his way through mental illness. It would be irresponsible of me to have an opportunity to be heard, and not acknowledge the amazing people and families who are coping with loss daily. So, my wife clicked on the Barnes and Noble link I provided and saw that the Saugus location was listing physical copies on hand. My wife being my wife, sent me out on an assignment to track down these copies and send her pictures.
What happened next is simply….I wheeled the stroller over to the magazine section with the hope of finding a depressed nineteen year old with a long mop of hair who was too poor to afford magazines to help him get published so he was scribbling addresses in a notebook and looking over his shoulder like he was committing a crime. I wanted to find that nineteen-year-old and scream at him…GET UP! WALK OVER TO THE FICTION SECITON! EDDIE! YOU DID IT…GO OVER THERE AND LOOK AT IT! Instead, I had my two boys and then another thought entered my head. This is all they know. At one and three? I am not the father who wants to be an author or is struggling to get through his book…. they can fucking hold it. We are in the store I spent so much time in as a young man trying to figure out how to become an author…and my name is on their shelves.
I was checking out (had to get Dylan some prizes for being so good) when I joked about the surreal nature of the visit to the clerk who immediately wanted me to track down her manager so I could sign the books they had on hand. I was awkward and uncomfortable about the idea, but then I looked at my sons and thought…don’t be awkward, this is not a walk out of here avoiding the situation moment, this is you’re kids are fucking watching you. I approached the manager, she asked if I knew where the books were, and I brought them to her. She handed me a sharpie and had “signed copy” stickers ready to go. Both women were so congenial, so supportive, and absolute sweethearts to the nervous disheveled father of two in the Bret Hart hoodie. I didn’t feel like I had made it, I felt like I was again, doing something bad. I was scribbling in their merchandise. When I got to the car and recorded the video on Instagram…I couldn’t help but notice my kids again and think…wait, this is normal to them. I grew up seeing the sadness and the unmitigated sense of failure of someone who wanted to write a book and sabotaged herself every chance she had. My sons are growing up with me bringing them into bookstores and being asked to sign my name. That is the greatest feeling about this whole experience to date…to my sons? I am not someone trying, I am not someone failing, I am. I am a writer. I walked into that store today, haunted by the specters of pain, rejection, sadness, destitution, and just really bad memories of how hard I was trying and getting nowhere both creatively and personally…and I walked out with my babies, who know that I am a daddy…and a writer. I walked out of a Barnes and Noble today a published author. I can’t wrap my head around that.
This is my son...holding a copy of my book in a Barnes & Noble, that I later signed because the sweetheart clerk encouraged me to seek out her manager and talk about doing so. He saw that today. That is something my son saw me do today. The buck toothed, crooked feet, creepy Kurt Cobain kid who Mrs. V. tortured in 4th and 5th grade took his babies to one of the biggest book chains today to find his book and was told he should sign it by the staff. If it gets better than that? Then I am not ready for it because I could barely handle what happened today. What I am is what I am...and to my kids? That's a dada and a guy who signs books.
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