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from London on the Mayflower in 1620. (I had no idea then that hundreds of thousands of Americans had ancestors who somehow managed to stow away in the hold of that hundred-foot-long vessel, unbeknownst to the 102 men and women whose names were actually on the passenger list.) But Grandma had records to prove that Billy Latham really was one of the early settlers of New London. “A pretty shrewd customer,” she said, making me promise not to tell that he was the town tax assessor and he cheated on his taxes! Now Cary Latham, his son, she told me, was even shrewder. He got the lease for the ferry from Groton to the other side of the Pequot River. That made him as rich as a tollbooth!
    Grandma Gladys had married a man named Harold Merritt (like the Parkway) Henion. They had one son, my father, also named Harold Merritt Henion. But until the day she died, my grandmother would call my father “Sonny Boy.” Did that mean he never had to grow up? She didn’t answer my question.
    It wasn’t until I was older that I learned about the Great Depression. Grandma’s husband didn’t have to jump out a window on Wall Street when he lost all his savings. He suffered a stroke at the age of fifty and died in my father’s arms. Grandma Gladys had no money and no skills. She had never gone anywhere except in the backseat of a car or a horse-drawn carriage. But she remained true to the self-reliance of her forebears. She promptly learned how to drive, bought a typewriter, taught herself to type, and marched out to get herself a full-time job as a real estate agent. For the next forty years she went to work from nine to five every day. Still working, she moved in with us when I was a baby. I never heard her complain.
    I would be the first of the women in my family to go to college, something I wanted desperately. My father took me out in the backyard for a serious talk. I planned to be an English major. He said he was prepared to pay my tuition to a state university, but after graduation, immediately after, I would be expected to support myself, and a B.A. in English wasn’t going to earn me carfare.
    â€œThe University of Vermont has a good home economics department,” he said. “Why don’t you study something practical?”
    â€œYou want me to get an MRS degree?” I was crestfallen. I wanted to be a writer. Didn’t he know? Hadn’t he edited my copycat Nancy Drew mystery stories? He’d even read some of my stories out loud to his golf friend. “She’s every bit Hal Henion’s daughter, can’t you tell?” But when it came to money, my father was a tightwad just like my mother’s father. I could not pretend that I could make a living at writing. Who did?
    Because Vermont was basically an agricultural school with a robust government extension service, the home ec department was the closest thing they had to a business curriculum. They told me I could take courses in economics, advertising, design, even public speaking. I agreed to take a double major, English and—the one I never told my friends about—home ec.
    I WANTED THE FRAGMENTS OF MY YOUNG LIFE to link up and convey the satisfying feeling one gets from piecing together a puzzle. I was my grandmother’s child: plucky and selfish, and determined to be a writer. I was my mother’s child: a cute little shrimp who liked being onstage. I was my father’s child: coached to be as competitive as boys and sent out into the world to win, for him. But there are puzzle pieces that I left out, jagged pieces that didn’t fit into a neat coherent picture.
    It was my sister, on reading an early draft of my recollections, who pierced my idealized rendition of our father. I’d always told people that he encouraged my writing, how he’d get down on the floor with me and help me concoct stories. What more could a writer want in a father?
    You forget, my sister said, you became more