The point of trotting out a family album is to give a visual example of the memories we all carry with us everywhere. We know what our loved ones look like, and who they are, and what they mean to us. Knowing them and having experiences and adventures with them make up who we are. My past would not be the same without these people, and with a different past would come a different present. In cases of memory loss, a person will lose what she knows about her friends and family, and with that loss, a part of herself. Those same loved ones can perceive that loss, and experience it as a tragedy. This segment of the webpage is meant to represent a portion of me, one I hope never to lose.
This is Kristie Miller, my sweet mama. She's a journalist and free lance historian. She has led a fascinating life of adventure and travel, and knows at least a little bit about everything, from photography to Spanish profanity. She writes about women's partisan politics, and writes a weekly column for a tiny, tiny newspaper that my uncle runs.
This is Bill Twaddell, my dear papa. He works for the State Department, and is currently posted in Nigeria. He'll be retiring to Rhode Island this summer, to read Emerson and build rustic furniture and maybe raise a little Hell with his two kids, my brother Sandy and me. He used to get into all kinds of trouble in his old neighborhood in Providence, like the time he filled his aunt's bathtub with garter snakes.
This is my brother Sanderson, on his twenty-first birthday. He is the bearded fellow with the bottle, which could be iced tea for all we know. The fellow with him is his best friend Ben Turek. Sandy will be going to med school at Columbia in the fall, and Ben will be at Yale for physics. You wouldn't believe the stupid things this brainy pair have done in their shared past. It's really quite scandalous.

This charming fellow is my boyfriend, Will. He's got devilish good looks and a personality that wins. He's studying film and fiction here at Sarah Lawrence and has a variety of other interests, such as street performance and contraversial cuisine. Over the course of the year, he's fed me everything from carbonated pickles to crickets in a parsley and butter sauce. He has a fine collection of The Talking Heads on vinyl, and he keeps saying he'll make me a tape of all of them, but he has yet to deliver.
This is Will again, dancing like Mr. Roboto. He and my dear friend Jen get into a lot of heated arguments, but yesterday I thought their disagreement about the meaning of Mr. Roboto would come to blows. Will maintains that the singer is thanking Mr. Roboto for turning him into a robot and making his life less complicated and more beautiful. Jen thinks Mr. Roboto is thanking the humans for bringing him to life and giving him a richer life. Or something like that. I try to keep out of these disputes.
This is my stepfather, T.L. Hawkins. He seems jolly in this picture, but he usually keeps an enigmatic and austere countanence. Whenever I bring boys home, he glowers at them meaningfully with those eyebrows of his. He's talented with photography and computers, and is an avid Hi-fi fan. Since my mother hates violence in the movies, he takes me all the time to all the action/crime/historical/horror films he wants to see. That's a fine education in and of itself.
Jen Winkler is one of my oldest friends at school. She's the one with the arange scarf. She studies writing on an academic level and the complexities of human nature on her own time and budget. She has a vast collection of excellent graphic novels and pronography, but beneath the teenage boy exterior lies a heart of pure gold.
This is Gina Gaglia, a lucky woman who graduated last year and is currently in the real world. Her studies here at school were of contemporory poetry, and now she teaches at Compton High in L.A., but is soon to become a rich and famous television writer, a job that will employ her two great loves- writing and daytime tv.
This is Manning Savage, a pal of mine from high school. He's still there, working on getting his driver's liscence back and graduating so he can get out of Virginia. He works at a barbeque place called three pigs and plays lacrosse and has had a cold for the four years that I've known him.
This is Stephanie Born, a good good friend of mine. We've been pals since I was a freshman. She's the one in the black sweater. She studies art and is a talented sculptor and painter. She likes to play with her food and procrastinate, and has a genuinely adventurous soul.