Bigger than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder

In the hospital, she was angrier than ever. So we began to hunt for her, and at last we found her in the hospital. Then, about eight years ago, she disappeared. But whenever we tried to get Grandmother to see doctors, the walls went up even higher. I have no doubt there’s a word now for what made her so unhappy, a syndrome of some kind. I’ll forever wonder what might have happened to Grandmother if she’d been born a few decades later, in an age of therapy and medication. It’s hard to love someone who is always hurt, always angry. Though I tried to maintain contact, it was difficult. I’d forgotten how to speak her language, how to have tea parties. And since I was now a grownup myself, I was on the other side of that wall. She would tell me she had “special relationships” with people she barely knew-a waitress at a restaurant she liked, a bag boy at the grocery store-but she seemed incapable of being close to anyone. Cold.Īs time went by, she walled herself off from her children, her neighbors. And that people had always been like this-out to hurt her.

She explained to me that the world didn’t understand her. After her husband passed away (my step-grandfather, a very kind and patient man), she seemed angry most of the time. She loved to read with me in her lap.īut then I grew up and her lap wasn’t big enough anymore.Īt about that time, I began to notice that Grandmother didn’t get along with my mom very well, or any other grownups for that matter. She liked to play dress up, and have tea parties. She talked with me, in respectful ways, about fairies and magic. She and I would take long walks and notice tiny things together-tide pools or fall leaves. Grandmother was a children’s librarian, and in a lot of ways, she was at her best with people my age. She loved me, of course, but beyond that, she spoke the language of kids. When I was very young, my grandmother was my favorite person.

With Seven Stories Up, I went further back and attempted to alter a different family drama. It was a deeply satisfying feeling to give them each a copy of the book, and say, “Here, this is my version.” To add a bit of magic, and say the things to my parents I didn’t say when I was a kid. With Bigger than a Bread Box, I had the chance to revise my childhood memories of divorce. With my last two books, this has been especially true for me.

I say, “You know how you always think of a perfect comeback three minutes after the mean kid walks away? Well, if you write a story about that moment, you have time to dream up the perfect comeback!” Often, when I visit schools, I explain to kids that one of the very best things about writing is that it gives me the power to rewrite history, a chance to tell my own story the way I wish it could have happened.

Bigger than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder