“The Good Slope (Apprentice House, 5/2/23)” is a new collection of essays by writer and journalist Elizabeth Rau that details her unexpected plunge into motherhood in middle age, her Midwest upbringing, and her years spent writing for The Providence Journal. With a reporter’s eye for detail, Rau roots out the extraordinary in the everyday moments we take for granted.
At a time when some writers tend to grouse about raising children, Rau revels in her good fortune and the day-to-day: teaching her younger son how to read using “Garfield” comic books; encouraging her older son to design his grandmother’s gravestone; observing the motley crew of boys who patronize “the yellow house” (Rau’s) for years. Through her luminous storytelling, Rau reveals in “The Good Slope” a life that is joyful and tinged with sadness, but also humorous, as a run-in with Julia Roberts on the set of “Mystic Pizza” can attest.
Why did you write this book?
Motherhood came late in my life. I was 41 years old when I had my first child, 42 when I had my second. Both boys. I never thought I’d have children. I remember the day my doctor told me I was pregnant with my older son. I couldn’t believe it. “Are you sure?” I said, as I sat in his office in a blue-dotted medical gown. “Elizabeth,” he replied, “if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it’s a duck.” I was speechless, but happy.
After Peder was born, in February 2000, I went on maternity leave from The Providence Journal, where I was working as a reporter. A few months into my leave, I found out I was pregnant again. Oh, joy.
One day, I was lying on our living room floor, recovering from three hours of baseball practice, when my husband and sons, now in kindergarten and first grade, told me they were walking to the graduation ceremonies at Brown University, a few blocks from our house in Providence, Rhode Island.
The trio’s goal on that spring day was to glimpse Zak DeOssie, a star linebacker for Brown’s football team, who was graduating and moving on to the NFL. Peder was a fan of the Bear and wanted his autograph. Onward to the ceremony we went, my firstborn clasping a clipboard and pen.
Turns out Zak was a no-show, but that didn’t deter the headstrong 7-year-old. He wrote Zak a letter asking for his signature, and, later that day, I wrote a column about his journey up the street. I sent it to our neighborhood paper, East Side Monthly, and the owner published it.
That column led to more than 100 essays I wrote over the years, many of which centered on my sons and their friends, and the funny, touching, and unstudied moments in their lives. Ideas came along daily: yo-yos, ukuleles, duct tape wallets, fountains pens, birthday blowouts, stargazing, hermit crabs, Little League games, and trips to Fenway and the emergency room.
My first essay for East Side Monthly was published in November 2007, and my last one appeared in July 2018. It was about Olive, a black lab we took care of for a neighbor. Olive and I became best buds, and then she moved to Montana to chase fireflies on the prairie. I wrote about our last day together. There were tears.
Not long ago, while sorting through dusty boxes in the attic, I came across some of my old columns and reread them. I realized I had written a chronicle of my sons’ lives, and that maybe I should bring the boxes downstairs. Those essays are included in the book.
But why stop there? I also included in The Good Slope essays I wrote for The Journal when I was working as a reporter, as well as essays I freelanced to various publications over the years.
One theme seemed to emerge in my writing: My obsession with home. It’s apparent now that all along I’ve been exploring the idea of home and how it’s created and longed for and missed—and that I’ve written a memoir in short essays.
Why is it helpful to read about other people's experience with motherhood?
The years spent raising my sons were some of the best of my life. For the first time, I learned how to live in the present, and that’s a hard thing to do. Sitting on a playground bench watching my sons climb a jungle gym for a few hours brought a contentment that I had never experienced before. This happiness comes through in my essays. One of my favorite essays in The Good Slope is about my son Henry’s fascination with fountain pens when he was in middle school. I tied his hobby to my discovery of The Ink Spots, an American pop vocal group popular in the 1930s and 1940s. I wrote about how he and his dad would visit a shop near our house to look at pens—and ink. Those were beautiful evening walks for both of them. I hope other parents will read my essays and reflect on the special moments they’ve had with their children.
How can paying attention to detail keep us from taking things for granted?
Working as a journalist for many years has given me an appreciation for detail. It’s not enough to write that he was wearing rain boots; I need to know the color—red! Stories long on explanation, but short on description were sent back for a rewrite. Detail came easily to me when I started writing my essays.
The details in my essays are really memories, some from the day before, some from long ago.
Many of my early essays for The Providence Journal were about leaving my small Midwestern suburb after college and making a life for myself, away from what I knew. I wrote about other things—living with my best friend in Florence, Italy, for one—but home seemed to emerge as a theme.
As I wrote about my sons’ adventures years later for my neighborhood publication, my childhood appeared to me in vivid images, and I found myself weaving those long-ago memories into the essays about my sons. I’m so glad I did. Memories sustain us through life.
What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
The title of my book comes from an essay I wrote about taking my son Peder sledding when he was 4 years old. He had outgrown a “mound” at a park near our house, so we ventured to another sledding spot popular with teenagers, but it was too steep.Undeterred, we found another hill, and this time made our way through the crowd to find a starting point. I looked off to the side for a moment, long enough for Peder to disappear. Then I saw him. He was sledding, alone, down a gentle slope in a toboggan two times his size. He reached the clearing and came to a stop: “He was far away, and he was happy.” The essay and the book are about cherishing the moment, then letting go and having the courage to move on with gratitude and grace. Life is fleeting; you can wrestle with that fact, but you cannot win.
Elizabeth Rau is an award-winning writer and former newspaper reporter whose work has appeared in numerous publications including The Providence Journal, East Side Monthly, Rhode Island Monthly, The Boston Globe, and the Providence Phoenix. Her first-person account about her experience in an Amtrak train crash in 1987 was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She grew up in the Midwest and lives in Providence with her family.
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