Thursday, September 13, 2012
the last book I ever read (Katharine Graham's Personal History, excerpt fifteen)
from Personal History by Katharine Graham:
My son Steve was still another concern. He was lonely at home, since Bill, four years his senior, had left for college. Steve was a classic member of his generation—his class at St. Albans was the first really to confront drugs in school—and few of us parents knew how to cope with the social revolution that we saw reflected in our own homes. Unfortunately, since our house was the biggest and the least supervised, it became the place where Steve and his friends gathered, and his room became the local pot parlor. I would return home to find the windows all open in an attempt to get the fumes out and cover up the telltale signs of smoking. I begged him to stop, threatening that, if caught, he and his friends would find themselves right on the front page of the Post. It had little effect.
My social life was escalating. Some of it had to do with new friends I was making within the industry, some with maintaining a life in two cities—Washington and New York. Much of it was work-related, but part I did from sheer enjoyment. There remained an element within me of disbelief that I would be included by people I thought remote and glamorous. I wasn’t pursuing either famous or wealthy people, but my son Bill later told me that he remembered thinking on occasion that there were too many famous people around the house. I suppose that I fell somewhere between the way I had grown up and the way my children now live.
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