Summer reading

This weekend I got my hands on my grandmother’s memoir manuscript. My mother has been keeping it unavailable for as long as I’ve known about it. That’s because it is my grandmother’s first-person account of her descent into what she straight-up calls insanity, and that is a particularly and understandably painful subject for my mom. Nana was bipolar (I) and schizophrenic, with a long stretch of alcoholism thrown in there. She spent some time in mental wards and received shock treatments. I know all these hazy stories about her past and the unbelievable things she did when my mom and aunt were kids, and I have always wanted to know these stories from my grandmother’s perspective. Now, in my bookbag, is a double-spaced, typed manuscript, complete with pseudonym key and chapter outline.