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Crazy Things My Parents Did
My mother, Chana Cox, was a standard east coast academic in a familiar world, with a predictable life laid out in front of her. Then, one fateful year, she was literally swept off her feet by a force of nature. My father. When my mother refused to go on their first date, he picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her down the street. Not just any street, but Broadway in New York City. Though she was kicking and screaming the whole way, nobody intervened; everyone else who saw them found someplace else to look. As I mentioned, my father was a force of nature.
My father could be resisted as easily as one can shut down a hurricane by using a clever retort. Since he had set his mind to marrying her, he did just that.
My mother’s predictable path was replaced with something entirely different. Within a few years, my parents had left New York. But they didn’t go to New Jersey or Long Island. Instead, they moved to the Idaho Wilderness area; to a place without running water or electricity. They moved into an 8’x12′ shack. And they began to build a new life. The story of that life is told in these pages.
This book represents only a portion of my mother’s remarkable life. Later in her life, she was a professor, and then she spent time in the Canadian Arctic, worked as a mining executive and – eventually – back to academia, where she loved teaching students to think critically and creatively especially about political theory and textual analysis. The whole time, she wrote, almost as an addiction. All of her work, including her powerful academic texts, were influenced by her incredibly diverse and almost otherworldly experiences. Even though she had rejoined the academic world, she could never again be the predictable academic she surely would have been before she met my father.
In March 2019, my mother passed away after a short battle with cancer. She was proudest of her life’s work: her children, her students, and her written work. We, her children, have decided to publish memorial editions of her books, one by one. The first of these is A River Went out of Eden, which tells how it all began. For those interested in how this brilliant woman thought about the essential ideas of both economic, political and religious freedoms, keep your eyes out for Liberty, God’s Gift to Humanity. And for any with a more philosophical bent, my personal favorite is her Reflections on the Logic of the Good, wherein she draws on her mastery of everything from mechanical, electronic, social, and homeostatic biological systems to understand and then comprehensively shred Plato’s theory of The Good.
I lived some of the stories in this book. They have affected every aspect of my life. They have affected the lives of my children and those of my siblings’ children. In a remarkable way, despite each of us choosing very different lives than our parents chose, these stories formed the foundations of our lives. We inherited both the stories and the lessons that one can draw from them.
They, in their way, define all of us.
I like to think that, as you enter the world of A River Went out of Eden, you’ll understand why.
Thank you for sharing in our history.
Published in General
What a story!
By the way, for those who have already read the original printing of this book: this printing contains a bunch of photos, and a selection of her letters (on things like feminism and making matzos) that was not in the first edition.
I’ve read the original version of the book, and their story is really amazing. I’ve ordered my own copy so that I can appreciate and enjoy it all over again!
Ordering.
Oh, how I know that drill.
Also, inquiring minds want to know: is that you, on the left, in the cover photo?
The photograph is not of me.
Now in my Kindle queue.
Your post has totally made me want to read this book. Thanks!
I’ve also read the original book, and several of her others. She is a VERY GOOD writer and the book is a real page-turner (as is Inungilak, available on Kindle). We had a brief email correspondence with her and hoped to get to meet her on a trip to the NW; alas, she died before we could do so. I will also buy a copy of the new book for the additional material, even though we have a copy of the original. Thanks for republishing, iWe, and letting us know about it.
Okay, so I bought this with the idea of being supportive of a fellow member. Then I started reading it.
It’s wonderfully written and engaging.
I would NEVER want to do what your parents did. And yet. And yet. I REALLY wish I HAD done what your parents did. And lived the life you lived as a kid.
Thank you and your family for republishing and for letting us know here. I’ll have to try some of the other books now.
Thank you!!!!