Things That Pass Away

"Things That Pass Away" is a memoir of family dynamics and my growth from childhood through my adult years. Through a series of essays about my father's failing mental state, my mom's death, my first marriage, and finding out about a longtime affair Dad had with a woman with whom he worked, I deal with the mechanics of my family and how they handled -- or not -- situations that defied being handled. They're stories that I tell as much out of a felt need to record them, to get them down before they dissolve into vapor, as to pay tribute to a series of ghosts -- ghosts of my mother, of my father, of my first marriage, a girl I thought of as my daughter, a baseball park and, finally, of Sept. 11 -- and the many lessons they taught me. "Tearing Down My House" is the story of the demolition of Riverfront Stadium, the home of the Cincinnati Reds baseball club from 1970 into the 21st Century, set against my father's bout with Alzheimer's Disease. "Out There in the Dark" is the story of my trip home to my mother's deathbed shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. After finding out that her failing health had taken a bad turn, my wife and I set out by car in an attempt to be by her side in her final hours. "My Secret Life" deals with my first marriage and the girl I knew then as my daughter. It reconstructs events from that period, in part, through legal documents that tell the story of a messy divorce and the loss of the girl. "Certain Freedoms" tells the story of the family's discovery that Dad had an affair with a longtime coworker in light of my own secret-keeping. "Stadium: A Postscript" draws the work to a close and examines the shadows of Sept. 11 as they were summoned by a video of the demolition of Riverfront.