Thank You for Drinking, Mom

What I lost, what I learned, and why I still love her. My mother drank. She was also a painter and a pianist, and she lettered the signs over the buffet at the restaurant my parents managed. This book is about both of those mothers. I was eleven when a worksheet in health class gave me the word for what she was. In seventh grade I decided that if I was good, she would stop drinking. At fourteen I found a bottle she had hidden behind the bleach under the bathroom sink. That summer I started pouring her bottles down the sink. At sixteen I took her to a meeting in a church basement. She did not go back. In college I went to a counselor, and after college I wrote about her.