making toast
Roger Rosenblatt ’s essays for Time
www.harpercollins.com/rogerrosenblatt Available from HarperCollins e-books
— a n n b e at t i e “roger rosenblatt means, i believe, to teach patience, love, a fondness for the quotidian, and a deftness for saving the lost moment—when faced with lacerating loss. these are brilliant lessons, fiercely learned. but rosenblatt comes to them and to us—suitably—with immense humility.”
—ricHard ford “the blow of the improbable: a highly achieved daughter who is the mother of very young children is tragically struck down in her radiant prime. Husband, children, and grandparents are bereft, and what can come of such a maelstrom of grief? making toast, roger rosenblatt’s piercing account of broken hearts, records how love, hurt, and responsibility can, through antic wit and tenderness, turn a shattered household into a luminous new-made family.”
“How long are you staying, Boppo?” “Forever.”
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magazine and PBS have won two George Polk Awards, the Peabody, and the Emmy. He is the author of six Off-Broadway plays and thirteen books, including the national bestseller Rules for Aging and Children of War, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has written two satirical novels, Beet and Lapham Rising, also a national bestseller. In 2008 he was appointed Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at Stony Brook University.
“Written so forthrightly, but so delicately, that you feel you’re a part of this family, rosenblatt’s writing turns a story that might be too uncomfortable to read, or too sentimental, in the direction of simple facts that require sophisticated, but instinctual, responses. How lucky some of us are to see clearly what needs to be done, even in the saddest, most lifealtering circumstances.”
r o g e r r o s e n b l at t
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—cyntHia oZicK
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive updates on your favorite authors. Jacket painting: Still Life with Kettle, 1977, by Lennart Anderson, courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art, Wishing Well Fund, 1978.17 Photograph of Roger Rosenblatt and his grandson James by Ginny Rosenblatt ISBN 978-0-06-182593-4 52199
Jacket design by Allison Saltzman
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rog er ros en b lat t
W
hen his daughter, Amy—a gifted doctor, mother, and wife—collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-yearold Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies. Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny—Boppo and Mimi to the kids—quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, playdates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though reeling from Amy’s death they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tenderhearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvels at the strength of his son-inlaw, a surgeon, and the tenacity and skill of his wife, a former kindergarten teacher, Roger attends each day to “the one household duty I have mastered”— preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child’s liking. With the wit, heart, precision, and depth of understanding that has characterized his work, Roger Rosenblatt peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create both a tribute to his late daughter and a testament to familial love. The day Amy died, Harris told Ginny and Roger, “It’s impossible.” Roger’s story tells how a family makes the possible of the impossible.