In 1978 I remember my dad coming back from his morning jog… in the mornings when I was little he would go out for a run, and occaisionally I would go with him. I would take the small loop and he would take the long one, and we would meet towards the end and run the last part together.
We would bring in the paper, which would usually be delivered while we were out. It occurs to me that back then I was getting up two or three hours before I do now. Hooray for progress! I hadn’t gone with him this time, and he came back to take a shower, like he always did, waiting for my mother to finish with hers… This morning he had the paper with him, and he was talking to my mother while she was in the shower… Something was very wrong. My dad was crying. He kept saying things like “they killed the kids,” and “all those people.” We sat down and he told me that the people in Jonestown had been forced to drink poison Kool-Aid… even the kids there. I think that’s my first memory of my father crying.