Beginnings

Nine and a half years ago I began writing SANDY MY NAME. It was the summer of 2003, when Sandy and Jojo had left rehab and disappeared into the metro area haze. Molly and I went to language school in Oaxaca, Mexico. We rented a tiny studio apartment near the gracious old town center. In the mornings we attended our Spanish classes. After lunch Molly would head out to conversation exchanges or volunteer work, and I would set up her old laptop on the kitchen table and pour out my grief, our laundry drying on lines criss-crossed above my head.

I began to relive Sandy’s life, struggling to get the details straight, emotions flying. I worked at a fever pitch for hours to make the most of this opportunity to focus on a project I’d been contemplating for a long time. As dusk fell, Molly would return, pry me away, and walk me around town, holding my arm and reminding me to breathe. We’d often end up at the cathedral of Santo Domingo with its garden of stunning, tall spiral cactuses and resident colony of murcielagos (bats), where I decompressed surrounded by white-shawled women and ancient stone walls.

Though Molly learned more Spanish than I did that summer, my writing project was launched. It drew me back day after day. It felt like therapy. It helped me believe that something positive could come of Sandy’s life. It was another way to save the child. As I composed, I would sometimes stop to gather my thoughts and gaze out the window at the cracked tile fountain in the sunny courtyard, daring to hope that one day I might be able to call myself a writer.