A Memoir for another.

When a memoir is written for only a handful of eyes, it carries a different kind of responsibility. Not the grand, trumpet-blowing kind meant for book tours and critics, but the quiet sort, the kind that sits at a kitchen table and says, this is who we were, and how we came to be.The hope is that those who read it might find a little healing in the understanding. That they might see how a person is shaped not only by the landscape around them, but by the invisible luggage they inherit, those curious genetic markers that travel through generations like uninvited but inevitable guests.

Writing a memoir about yourself is easy. After all, it’s your memory. Your version of events. Your slightly polished, occasionally selective recollection of what really happened.But writing someone else’s story, especially someone you love, is a far trickier dance. Which threads do you gently tug loose so the tapestry reveals its pattern? And which ones do you leave alone, knowing they were woven in private and meant to stay that way?

This memoir began as a gift to my stepchildren and Corin, a way for them to know their father more fully, beyond the ordinary rhythm of daily life. But somewhere along the path, the journey surprised me. Thirty years later, it unfolded into discoveries I never expected. Little collisions across time. Places we had both passed through in the 1980s, unknowingly crossing the same landscapes in opposite directions, like two time travellers reading different maps of the same country.

Thank you, Gordon, for gifting me this story—The Tao of Teague.

This book was never meant for the world at large. It belongs to the small circle who already carry pieces of it in their bones. Private copies for family only. No public editions. Just the quiet passing on of a life, understood a little better.