Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
Ruth Young is 30 and newly single, a state that snuck up on her. Poised to move to a new apartment with her longtime boyfriend (for whom she dropped out of college to follow) she finds herself moving alone “Joel had taken great care to pack his things separate from mine, and I had thought that he was only Joel being Joel, when actually, it was Joel not coming with me.”
After years of staying away from home for the holidays she finally does return to find her father in deteriorating health from Alzheimer’s and a mother struggling to manage. Her mom, asks her to stay, just a year, to “keep an extra eye on things.”
Don’t be concerned that you are in for a heavy dose of father-daughter angst as the ravages of this, cruelest of illnesses takes hold. Yes, her parents have had their struggles even before the disease, drinking and dalliances, something Ruth has not wanted to acknowledge and that probably kept her away. Linus, her much younger brother blames her for not believing this was going on when she left for college. Ruth’s life is upended by the end of her relationship and it’s as if staying to look after her father gives her cover to reassess everything.
In a quirky, fun, loving, challenging journal of a year in that new life, writer Khong has managed to write a novel that is both whimsical but also incredibly moving.
On Christmas morning her father gives her “worn red notebook” which he has kept since Ruth was little, writing letters to her throughout her childhood.
"Today you asked me where metal comes from. You asked me what flavor are germs. You were distressed because your pair of gloves had gone missing. When I asked you for a description, you said: they are sort of shaped like my hands."
We revisit these letters throughout the book, allowing us a glimpse into the inquisitive mind of a child growing up and her father’s pride in her curiosity and logic.
"Last week I played you the Beach Boys and today. You sang the wrong lyrics. You were singing, “I guess I just wasn’t made for these tides” and when I tried to correct you, you said, “well, they were the Beach Boys, weren’t’ they?” You made a very good point.”
There is a light touch to the story that unfolds of her father, once a thriving college professor, felled by his disease and now ordered to stop teaching by Dean Levin “These past several months, Dad’s missed several classes, insisted on another professor’s parking spot, and wept in the lecture hall without apparent cause. There had been, Levin said, complaints. Further “inconsistencies” as he put it, couldn’t be risked.
As Ruth begins to handle the task of helping her father and giving her mother a break she re-evaluates what happened with Joel, but more importantly she learns to read her father as he lives with this disease, and tries her best to understand what her mother is going through – torn between her concern and responsibility as a wife and assessing their marriage in a harsh light.
There are beautiful moments of love and care for her father. Ruth helps one of her father’s graduate students, Theo, to organize a ‘fake’ class with a bunch of students “the students wouldn’t get credit, of course, and they were fine with that. It would be a way for my father to continue teaching, stay occupied, keep his mind off, well losing it.” High jinx ensue as they try and organize the classes while avoiding the hated Dean Levin, hopping from room to room on campus and then taking the class on field excursions. It’s such a thoughtful gesture on the part of the students who value him as a teacher and allows Ruth to learn something about her father.
Khong was the executive editor of the beautiful food magazine Lucky Peach and her knowledge of food and its power to calm and revive and connect people is evident. From peanut butter to the brain building power of broccoli to lamb with rosemary, ‘the herb of remembrance’ and the antioxidants in berries, food is a recurring motif in this experience that Ruth is living.
As Ruth works through her analysis of what went wrong with Joel and figures out how to look after her father the reader can’t help but be captivated by this insightful examination of a young woman re-assessing her life and her family’s need. Soon Ruth is writing everything down too as she gets into the rhythms of her new life and caregiver role as her father’s disease progresses.
“Today you wandered to the park, and I found you sitting on the sloping part of the hill, in the clover blossoms, eating from a big bag of chicharróns and drinking a Coke and watching kids on the diamond throw a ball around.”
“Today you washed your shoelaces. Today you spoon-fed the neighbor’s cat tuna from a can.”
“Today you disappeared again, and scared the shit out of us.”
This is a book about love, heartbreak, family, coping with illness, understanding and growth but it’s not sappy at all. It is beautiful and makes you love her and her family and makes you think about the love you have for your own family too. And it made me want to hug my dad just a little more tightly.
BEFORE YOU READ
Length: 194 pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Themes: family, romance, illness, parents, life changes
Commitment: A book that may appear short and slight but is in fact beautifully deep and moving.
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