Hillbilly Elegy

the letters I received from my family.
Many of them shed an interesting
light on the home I left behind. A letter
from Mom, asking me what I might need
and telling me how proud she is of me.
“I was babysitting [Lindsay’s kids],” she
reports. “They played with slugs
outside. They squeezed one and killed it.
But I threw it away and told them they
didn’t because Kam got a little upset,
thinking he killed it.” This is Mom at her
best: loving and funny, a woman who
delighted in her grandchildren. In the
same letter, a reference to Greg, likely a
boyfriend who has since disappeared
from my memory. And an insight into our
sense of normalcy: “Mandy’s husband