Blog (Page 48)

Imagine you are an adolescent struggling to understand your emerging sexuality along with forging a new life in a new community. This is exactly where we meet Mary-Elizabeth Briscoe. Her parents have just downsized from urban to suburban and, in that process, Briscoe has lost everything familiar. Most importantly, her longtime friends.

In her new school, she first meets Kathy, who is “kind enough to talk to” her. Then Joy, a fragile classmate who is often invisible behind the long dark hair that covers her face. As Briscoe forges ahead, she joins into activities her new friends engage in: being a Girl Scout, even though she’s a tomboy, and a member of the drama club.

She is not strongly bonded to her parents and learns to be silent at a young age. Her immediate family, as many, does not express or talk about feelings. Her mother’s sister, Aunt Pat, is similar in that way but is also a constant source of humor and fascination at family gatherings. Even though they are not close in her younger years, Briscoe knows Aunt Pat is someone she can count on.

The author frames this story by weaving two pathways of her life in parallel fashion. Each occurred nearly twenty years apart. When I first entered into this intricate labyrinth, I wasn’t sure it would work. Happily, I was wrong. With skill and poignancy, Briscoe threads the devastating suicide of her first love with the later death of Aunt Pat. During the earlier trauma, Briscoe lives in silence for two decades with the wounds that so profoundly affected her. Later, when she cares for Aunt Pat during her terminal illness,  she’ll discover she’s unknowingly entered into a healing odyssey.

“The First Signs of April” is an outstanding example of the power of writing the truth of one’s life as an act of healing. I highly recommend this beautifully written, deeply honest, and tender memoir.

(I purchased this book at the 2018 Story Circle Network “Stories from the Heart IX” national conference.)