“Don’t worry, you can write about your mom when you get older. She did a whole revenge book about me,” my mother said to my teenage son, laughing so hard she had to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes.
My kids and I were visiting her, just before my son left for college. He’d shaved his head completely bald, and I was trying gently to tell him I preferred his usual haircut. He shrugged and gave me a look that said, Mom, please stop talking.
My mother watched the exchange from the couch, grinning.
“She used to do that to me all the time —” she said to my son “— get so angry at me for things I said to her. And now she’s written an entire book telling everyone how bad I was.”
It’s become a bit of a family punchline, her calling it my “revenge book.” And I laugh too, but there’s a reason it lands, because it’s not completely wrong.
