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What does a mother do when her teenaged daughter is spinning out of control and nothing is bringing her back? Here is a searingly honest memoir of motherhood and a testament to the power of love and family. When Adair Lara's daughter Morgan turned thirteen, she was transformed, seemingly overnight, from a sweet, loving child into an angry, secretive teenager who would neither listen nor be disciplined. The author, her youngest son, Patrick, her ex-husband, Jim, and her new husband, Bill, all stepped on a five-year roller-coaster ride in which Morgan incarnated the chaos principle in torn jeans and dyed hair. Drinking, drugging, disappearing, suspicious companions, failing and cheating at school, joy riding in a stolen carthere was no variety of adolescent acting out that she didn't indulge in. For Adair Lara it became an endless sojourn at the end of her rope, a trial immensely complicated by the reappearance in her life of her aging father, a man who had abandoned his wife and seven children decades earlier. Inevitably, Morgan's misbehavior revives memories of her own headstrong adolescence, while her father's presence makes agonizingly real for her the consequences of giving up. Paradoxically, he also becomes the source of her best advice. Hold Me Close, Let Me Gois an emotionally charged, often brutally honest memoir that all parents (and anyone who was ever a teenager) will experience shocks of recognition from while reading. It imparts invaluable lessons about holding loved ones close through the roughest passages and about the power of family to overcome the most grievous obstacles. Adair Lara is a clear-eyed and eloquent witness to the complex costs and rewards of motherhood, and her book will redefine for readers their idea of what being "a good enough mother" really means.

Adair Lara is an award-winning newspaper columnist whose column appears twice weekly in the San Francisco Chronicle. She is the author of five books, including Welcome to Earth, Mom; Slowing Down in a Speeded-Up World;and her latest, The Best of Adair Lara. Her articles and essays have appeared in Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, Parenting, Good Housekeeping, Reader’s Digest and other national publications. She lives in San Francisco; her daughter Morgan has just graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

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> MORGAN was still asleep, though it was almost eleven. The light from > her > west-facing window washed the top half of her face and her tumbled > hair, the > same brownish-blond as her brother Patrick's. One pink foot stuck out. > I sat > on the edge of the bed and shook it. > > > "Mom, I was sleeping." She smiled lazily at me. > > > "Is it true that last night you and Tara went into Dolores Park?" > > > "Mom, what are you talking about?" Morgan, caught off guard, sat up, > trying > for an expression of injured innocence. > > > "Did you?" > > > "What park?" > > > "Dolores. Where the drug dealers hang out." > > > "Well, yes, but we were totally safe." She said it with a little > shrug. > > > "What about the beer?" I said in a tight voice. "Tara said something > about a > six-pack." > > > "It was just sitting in a bag in a parking lot. I didn't drink any of > the > beer. It was sour. I just sprayed it on the ground. God, Mom. You're > overreacting, just the way Daddy always does." She slumped down, then, > in a > sudden change of mood, grinned at me. "It was worth it. It was the > most fun > I ever had in my life. The only problem was getting caught." > > > "Fun? You could have been raped or murdered, two young girls out on > the > streets. Don't you remember those two girls on Potrero Hill who were > just > standing on a corner when a gang of boys took them off to a shed and > raped > them five or six times each? They were only thirteen, like you and > Tara." > > > "I'll be fourteen in two months, and anyway my friends wouldn't let > anything > happen to me," Morgan said confidently. "If anybody tried to hurt us, > we'd > kick them in the you know where." > > > I was getting nowhere, so I stood up. Having a thirteen-year-old was > like > having your own personal brick wall. The phone rang. I found it under > a pile > of junk on Morgan's floor. > > > "Hello?" > > > "Hello!" said a familiar gravelly voice. > > > "Dad?" > > > "In the flesh." > > > "Where are you?" > > > "In the valley, in my hidey hole." > > > "Your hidey hole?" My head was still full of Morgan. It had been years > since > I'd seen my father or heard his voice. I swallowed. "How long have you > been > back?" > > > "Couple of months. I was wondering if you could find it in your heart > to > come out here today to see your poor old dad." > > > "I can't. I'm on deadline." I wrote a column for the San Francisco > Chronicle > on Tuesdays and Thursdays. "And the kids start school tomorrow." > > > "I know you're busy, but I need you to come out here. Jesus Christ, I > haven't laid eyes on you in five years. For all I know, you're > taller." > > > "Dad, I told you . . ." > > > "Besides, it's an emergency." > > > "An emergency?" I couldn't help the frosty tone of my voice. "Are you > in > jail?" > > > "No, I'm not in jail. Tell you when you get here." > > > "Hey, let me talk to my grandpa!" Morgan yelled. > > > "Shush! I can't hear him!" > > > My dad had said something, but I missed it. "I'm sorry, Dad, I was > talking > to Morgan. Listen, I'm not coming out there." > > > "Come on," he urged. "You can tell me what a rotten father I've been." > > > "You have been a rotten father." > > > "Come on. You'll be back by early afternoon." > > > "Maybe next weekend." > > > I could hear Dad sigh. "Why are all you kids so angry?" he asked. "I > gave > you everything you ever asked for." He paused. "Except, of course, for > the > basic necessities. Those I left to your saintly mother." He paused, > and I > heard him sigh again. "All right, see you when I see you." > > > The phone clicked in my ear. > > > "I thought Grandpa was in the desert. Is he back? Where is he?" Morgan > was > up, pulling a pair of corduroy overalls over the T-shirt she had slept > in. > > > "I'm not sure. In Marin County somewhere. I'm going out to see him." > > > "I want to come!" > > > "I'm sorry," I said in the snappish new way I had of talking to her. > "You > are grounded for the rest of your life." She had been sneaking out of > the > house for months now, and I always grounded her, for what little good > it > seemed to do. > > > I left her and tried to return to my column. But the sound of > jackhammering > outside the window kept distracting me, and I was restless and unable > to > concentrate. Outside a man lifted a piece of cardboard out of a stack > someone had left on the corner. I watched as he shaped it back into a > box, > then flattened it again and walked off with it. > > > I called my twin sister, Adrian, reaching her at the Ukiah County > Courthouse, where she was the civil clerk. She wasn't surprised to > hear from > me. We talked to each other three or four times a day. > > > "Hey, hag." > > > "Hag yourself." > > > "Guess what." > > > "What?" > > > "Dad's back." > > > "He is? Where is he?" > > > "In his hidey hole, he said, which I guess means somewhere out in the > San > Geronimo Valley. He just called, wants me to go see him. Says it's an > emergency." > > > "Are you going?" > > > "No. I have my hands full here. Guess what Morgan's done now. Sneaked > out > last night with one of her little friends and went out roaming the > streets." > > > "How did you catch her?" > > > "Tara spilled the beans to her mother this morning, and her mom called > me." > > > "And now Dad's back." > > > "Yeah." > > > "Well, good luck." > > > I hung up, went into the kitchen, and grabbed my purse and keys. Since > I had > to finish a column, my husband, Bill, had gone off early for a hike on > Mount > Tamalpais with friends. Bill was not Morgan's dad but my second > husband > (well, technically my third), who had arrived on the scene when Morgan > was > eleven and Patrick ten. Today Patrick was playing basketball down at > the rec > center. > > > Where had Dad said he was? > > > I drove north across the Golden Gate Bridge, and followed Highway 101, > Mount > Tamalpais looming on my left. I took the exit to Sir Francis Drake > Boulevard, which runs north and then west through central Marin County > and > out to the ocean. The air was warmer, and I rolled down the window. > > > After Fairfax, the foothill called White's Hill reared in front of me, > warning me and everyone else that we were leaving the land of lawns, > sidewalks, and brunch and entering San Geronimo Valley, in the last > pocket > of hills before the rolling grasslands that lead to the coast. > > > The road flattened out on the other side. Coming into the valley with > its > golden hills felt like driving into my own childhood, into those > scenes that > lay in the back of my mind like short videotapes, jerky and slow, like > the > Super 8 movies my mother used to take of us. > > > When I was little, Dad was the sound of hammering, the stray scent of > tobacco and sawdust, the roar of a truck starting up, a man holding an > anvil > over his head for the camera. "I couldn't stand myself then," he told > me > once, "but I had all those lovely muscles." He was on the edge of my > world, > as I was on his: "You were always twisted around something in the > foreground," he told me in a letter, "part of your mother's > entourage." We > were living in this valley then, a large unruly Irish-American family > struggling along on the wages of a journeyman carpenter who only > worked in > good weather. Dad stayed until I was ten, when he was carried away on > a > high-cresting wave of Schlitz. Mom tried for years after he left to > get the > seven of us to call him Gene and hate him for deserting us, but we > still > sometimes slipped out, in ones and twos, to wherever he was, to drink > his > instant coffee and watch him strum the guitar that he never did learn > to > play. > >

Excerpted from Hold Me Close, Let Me Go: A Mother, a Daughter and an Adolescence Survived by Adair Lara
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