Rude Awakening

My mother kept secrets. �Don�t ever let your left hand know what you�re your right hand is doing,� she would tell me when I was little. And I would watch her then as she plunged her hands into warm, soapy water or use them to stretch pizza or pasta dough for dinner, all the while wondering how one of her hands could not possibly know what the other was doing. But my mother knew. Her deepest secret�the one concerning my grandmother�s...
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My mother kept secrets. �Don�t ever let your left hand know what you�re your right hand is doing,� she would tell me when I was little. And I would watch her then as she plunged her hands into warm, soapy water or use them to stretch pizza or pasta dough for dinner, all the while wondering how one of her hands could not possibly know what the other was doing. But my mother knew. Her deepest secret�the one concerning my grandmother�s death�was the one she kept for more than seventy years. Thus begins Rude Awakening, a story about growing up and growing old as it moves from the end of World War II to the post 9/11 world of today. Nearing the end of a relationship, Toni finds herself left with an avalanche of feelings�feelings like abandonment, loneliness, and loss. Confused about relationships and desperate to heal a heart that is breaking, she turns to a therapist to help her wade through the debris.