Tired of being Quiet: A Memoir

This is a memoir about what happens when a boy who was raised to be quiet finally decides, in his fifties, to say everything he had been afraid to say - to the father he could not reach, to the wife he could not stay married to, to the children he loved without knowing how, and finally to himself.He is American and Brazilian, by parents and by birth. He grew up on a mission campus in southern Brazil, fluent in two languages and at home in neither. He ate at a dining-hall table where everyone seemed to have a seat except him. His father was always studying. His mother was always feeding everyone else. And on Sunday afternoons, when the campus went silent for rest hour, a small boy stood outside his empty house and wondered if Jesus had come back and taken everyone but him.He learned, early, to take care of himself. To eat fast. To take up no space. To stay quiet.It is a book about absence and presence. About the love that arrived in forms he had not been taught to recognize. About a man learning, late, to receive what had been there all along.For every Third Culture Kid who grew up belonging everywhere and nowhere. You were never left behind. You were never not enough.

Pages: 113, Paperback, Independently published