‘Little Caboose’
Judd recounts, “For all of my childhood as a Mulvaney I was the baby of the family. To be the baby of such a family is to know you’re the last little caboose of a long roaring train.” ‘The little caboose’ is figurative of the ‘last born’ position whereas ‘ a long roaring train’ exemplifies Judd’s older brethren. The rhetorical ‘little caboose’ gathers that Judd was overly adored by the intimate household members.
Confession
Judd avows, “But this document isn’t a confession. Not at all. I’ve come to think of it as a family album. The kind my mom never kept, ab-solute truth-telling. The kind no one’s mom keeps. But if you’ve been a child in any family you’ve been keeping such an album in memory and conjecture and yearning, and it’s a life’s work, it may be the great and only work of your life.” The comparison of ‘confession’ authorizes that the text is outright veracity which is based on Judd’s idiosyncratic perspective. The book précises all the reminiscences about the Mulvaney household; hence, it does not dwell on downright concessions.
Chickadee
Judd observes, “At least, Corinne didn’t embarrass her daughter Marianne. Sweet good-natured Marianne who was Button, who was Chickadee, who was—everybody’s darling. Never judged her mother, or anyone, with that harsh adolescent scorn that so wounds the parents who adore them.” The emblematic chickadee portends that Marianne was an enigmatic lass who naturally appealed to other people’s fondness and admiration.
‘Electromagnetic Waves’
Judd elucidates, “Secrets! As a child you come to see the world’s crisscrossed with them like electromagnetic waves, maybe even held together by them. But you can’t know. Not, as kids say, for sure. And if you blunder by accident into a secret it’s like you’ve pushed open a door where you thought was just a wall. You can look through, if you’re brave or reckless enough you can even step inside—taking a chance what you’ll learn is worth what it costs.” The Electromagnetic waves embody the bewitching eminence of secrets. Even youngsters are mesmerized by family enigmas and would endeavor to disentangle them.
