May Your Children Be Like You, a Festooned Memoir

This sequel, "May Your Children Be Like You, a festooned memoir," by Nanette Jordan, is a collection of 28 bite-size stories. At first, her virtually unsupervised childhood in 1950s San Francisco teeters on the brink of mischief at every turn. Little Nanette and her latch-key cronies bake a cake, accept chocolate from a shady stranger, and a questionable friend leaves smelly surprises on "enemy" doorsteps. We experience the home life of Nanette's beatnik parents who view "play" as a...
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This sequel, "May Your Children Be Like You, a festooned memoir," by Nanette Jordan, is a collection of 28 bite-size stories. At first, her virtually unsupervised childhood in 1950s San Francisco teeters on the brink of mischief at every turn. Little Nanette and her latch-key cronies bake a cake, accept chocolate from a shady stranger, and a questionable friend leaves smelly surprises on "enemy" doorsteps. We experience the home life of Nanette's beatnik parents who view "play" as a core family value, revisit the kookie cult, Synanon, and follow Nanette's elderly Viennese mother who thwarts numerous scammers and reinvents driving rules of the road. Nanette's daughter grows up firmly rooted in the family tradition of "play," and eventually, the two launch their own mother/daughter enterprise. Finally, glimpse a bird's eye view of Argentine Tango by way of transgender dance instructor, Jurni, who eventually becomes the author's significant other. Nanette's adventures make the absurd seem routine and the ordinary seem extraordinary.