Dunkle - Hope and other luxuries : a mothers life with a daughters anorexia

To all the parents who lie in bed and agonize every night, thinking,
What should I do?
... and then get up the next morning and do it.

But especially to two of the best mothers I know,
Grace D. and Cathy A.

Copyright 2015 by Clare B. Dunkle.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Dunkle, Clare B.
Hope and other luxuries : a mothers life with a daughters anorexia / Clare B. Dunkle.
pages cm
Summary: Clare Dunkle seemed to have an ideal lifetwo beautiful, high-achieving teenage daughters, a loving husband, and a satisfying and successful career as a childrens book novelist. But its when you let down your guard that the ax falls. Just after one daughter successfully conquered her depression, another daughter developed a life-threatening eating disorder. Co-published with Elena Vanishing, the memoir of her daughter, this is the storytold in brave, beautifully written, and unflinchingly honest proseof one familys fight against a deadly disease, from an often ignored but important perspective: the mother of the anorexicProvided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4521-2156-7 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4521-3697-4 (epub, mobi)
1. Dunkle, Clare B. 2. Dunkle, Clare B.Family. 3. Anorexia nervosaPatientsFamily relationships. 4. MothersUnited StatesBiography. 5. Mothers and daughtersUnited States. 6. Anorexia nervosaTreatment. I. Title.

RC552.A5D875 2015
616.852620092dc23
[B]

2014047354

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Jacket design by Jennifer Tolo Pierce
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Also available:
Elena Vanishing: A Memoir,
by Elena and Clare B. Dunkle

: We Should Talk about This Problem, from I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy, renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky. Copyright 1996, 2006 by Daniel Ladinsky. Reprinted by permission of the author.

: Excerpt from The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens.

Excerpts from Elena Dunkles journals. Copyright 20052009 by Elena Dunkle. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Excerpts from correspondence appearing in the book have been reprinted by permission of the authors.

Excerpt from The Hollow Kingdom 2003 by Clare B. Dunkle. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from In the Coils of the Snake 2005 by Clare B. Dunkle. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from By These Ten Bones 2005 by Clare B. Dunkle. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from The Sky Inside 2008 by Clare B. Dunkle. Reprinted by permission of Atheneum Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from The Walls Have Eyes 2009 by Clare B. Dunkle. Reprinted by permission of Atheneum Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from The House of Dead Maids 2010 by Clare B. Dunkle. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.

This is a true story. But it is also a work of fiction. Every memoir is.

Every incident, thought, and work of creative imagination in this story happened as described. But my memory doesnt work like a security camera. It records the things it notices, but it cant necessarily tell me when they occurred. During important or dramatic events, it does a better job of saving that information, but during long, similar months, it cant tell me exactly when minor events happened.

The same problem occurs when I try to remember conversations. Because I work with words, I have a good memory for conversations: I easily remember the gist of what was said, and I remember the things I was thinking about as the conversation went on. My mind doesnt record exactly what someone said, though, unless those words struck me as particularly important at the time. So, rather than stop the narrative to explain exactly what I do and dont remember, Ive strung together events that I do remember as accurately to my memories as possible, and Ive filled in conversations with what I think was said, even if Im not entirely sure.

I have not intentionally moved any events, and I have not changed the sequence of events. I have not moved events closer together in order to make the story more dramatic. If the story says that three dramatic events happened on the same day, then, to the best of my knowledge, those three events did all happen on the same day.

All manuscript, book, journal, and letter excerpts are real, with only clerical changes. While all the people in this book are real, all names outside the immediate family have been altered.

A few very minor plot or physical description details have been altered solely to protect the identities of others. And very minor physical details have been created, in a few cases, where such details have been forgotten.

M y daughter Elena called me up last week, crying. Shes twenty-four now, and she just broke up with a boyfriend she needed to break up with. It was a good thing, but that doesnt mean it was easy.

Can you come out to see me? she said. If I had some company for a few days, I know it would really help. It could be an early Christmas present.

How could I resist? What mother doesnt want to be her daughters Christmas present?

Three days later, my plane landed in Texas, and Elena picked me up and drove me home. We walked around the house together and admired how she had decorated it. The house belongs to her father, Joe, and me, but Elenas living in it while Joe and I are stationed overseas in Germany. That way, Elena has a rent-free home while she goes to nursing school, and we have peace of mind.

After the house tour, Elena moved on to what really mattered. She introduced me to her new fish.

My daughter doesnt have just one aquarium. Depending on whats going on at the moment, she has at least four, and as many as six. She can take up to an hour to choose a new fish, although nowadays, her finest beauties have hatched out in one of her own tanks. The colors of Elenas fish are rich and brilliant: turquoise, fuchsia, lemon yellow, or blood red. Her aquariums are bold, fantastic worlds where the normal rules dont apply. In these mysterious realms, the artwork lives and moves. It drifts through its liquid landscape, rearranging itself second by second in an endless series of fascinating patterns.

I watched my daughters expressive face light up as she explained their little quirks and habits. If her fish act like pampered darlings, thats because they are. But I wasnt thinking about the fish. I was thinking, Elenas thinner than she was when I saw her three months ago. Shes stressed. This isnt good.

When this young woman was seventeen years old, you would have thought she had it all. She was a beautiful, cosmopolitan teenager fluent in two languages and at home in two cultures: the United States and Germany, where Joes Air Force job had taken us when she was eleven. She made top grades among the students at the military base high school overseas, but she read her Stephen King novels in German so she could discuss them with her German friends.