Monday, June 15, 2020

Julie Weiss’s “Wish” is #179 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM


*The images in this specific piece are granted copyright privilege by Public Domain, CCSAL, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law, or given copyright privilege by the copyright holder which is identified beneath the individual photo.

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

*** The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished poets for BACKSTORY OF THE POEM series.  Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7

***Julie Weiss’s “Wish” is #179 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote that specific poem.  All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end of this piece. 

Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until the final form? In essence, I’ve been writing this poem almost my entire life, ever since the tragedy occurred. I was 14 when Ilene was kidnapped. There were other girls in the same area who were abducted the same year, as well. It was a sad, scary time for all of us who knew her. As I say in my poem, it could have been any of us, and personally, I think her disappearance left me traumatized in that I´ve always been obsessively aware of my surroundings, of the strangers around me, always frightened that I could be kidnapped, too. As a mother, abduction is, without a doubt, my most heightened fear.
When I sat down to write the poem, I knew there were certain aspects I wanted to highlight: the movie we saw together a week earlier, the twin outfit we had donned that day, quite fortuitously, the investigation surrounding her disappearance (the clues, the search), and I especially wanted to evoke memory gaps, since my recollection of that period was rather hazy after nearly three decades. In fact, there were some details I found on the Internet, which I had forgotten or never knew, such as the backpack or the “elusive car.” I chose the images very carefully, incorporating the park and the creek she walked through every day to get home, as well as ice skating images—we were both competitive figure skaters. Her smile was important, too—she had a beautiful smile that embodied her bubbly personality.

     In the second draft, I added “What I wish for the person who stole you, should / they ever catch him, is better whispered in your ear” to the penultimate stanza; the more times I read the poem, the angrier I became, and the more I felt a pressing need to curse the perpetrator in some way. 

          I wanted to end the poem on a hopeful note, however, because deep down, I know that miracles have happened, kidnapping victims have been found, sometimes many years later, and since everyone is still baffled by the case, and no one has been arrested, I thought, why not? Why couldn´t she be found?

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem?  And please describe the place in great detail. I was at home, sitting at my desk in front of my computer, the place where I write all my poems. I call it my office, since I also teach my telephone English classes from here, but it´s just the third bedroom in our apartment. In the future, one of my children will probably insist on turning it into their bedroom, and then I´ll have to find a new space to create.          
          But for now, my desk faces the window. There´s a tree across the street I often gaze at when I´m blocked, but more times than not, I fail to find ideas falling from the branches, onto my screen. Inside the room, I´m flanked by a bookcase on the right, brimming with everything from books to photographs to board games and art supplies, and by more of my children´s toys on the left.
          We also have an exquisite emerald-eyed black cat called Tizón, who spends an ample amount of time on my desk, nuzzling up to my computer, nudging my hand, or when I´ve spent too much time disregarding him, climbing onto my shoulders. He´s not very forthcoming when I´m at a loss for words, either, I´m afraid.

What month and year did you start writing this poem?
In November of 2018.

How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it? I tend to write slowly, composing and slashing lines in my mind before they ever hit the page. In this case, the poem came out almost entirely finished (I love when that happens!), and I only edited a few small parts, so I´d say two drafts. I write directly on computer, and I never save the words or lines I eliminate, so I don´t have any markings, pen or otherwise, to photograph.

Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version?  And can you share them with us?

--The day my parents joined the search team (a part of the incident I had misremembered)

--a pulse of dreams

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? At first, as I worked my way through the poem, I spent quite a lot of time in la la land, as writers often do. I kept imagining an older Ilene, trapped against her will, oblivious to her true identity, reading my poem, at which point, something would click in her mind. She would call the police straightaway and say “I´m Ilene Misheloff. I was kidnapped 30 years ago.” I also imagined people reading my poem and contacting the police department with important information concerning that fateful day, which would lead to Ilene, or to an arrest, finally putting her family´s minds to rest. Now that the poem has been published for more than a year, I would say I wrote it as a way to remember her, a beautiful, warm, bright teenager with passions and aspirations, whose life was snatched from her. On a more personal level, perhaps it was a way to work through a childhood trauma, an attempt to assuage a very 
real fear.   
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The entire piece is devastating to me, an inexplicable tragedy. Every time I revisit it, I´m whisked back in time, to the day my parents told me Ilene didn´t show up for her skating lesson; that she had gone missing. But perhaps the part that makes me shudder the most is the image of the  “high-flying, body-blurring axel,” which I juxtaposed with the earlier scene of the “predator lurking around the next bend,” in an attempt to express the horror she must have felt when she realized someone was stealing her life away from her.

Has this poem been published before?  And if so where? It was published on January 19th, 2019 in Sky Island Journal, Issue 7.
www.skyisland
journal.com

Wish
--For Ilene Misheloff, missing since January 30th, 1989

I wish I could recall the name of the movie
we saw together, a week before the earth
opened its mouth and swallowed you whole.

I wish I could remember if the popcorn
we shared was drizzled in butter
or if we had popcorn at all. Perhaps we opted

for chocolate bars, since the shells would have
wedged themselves under your braces and mine,
speckling our sprightly teen smiles. Yours

was like noontide sunshine spilling across
creek bed stones, across shadows cast by
oak trees. I´ve often wondered if you passed

through the park, where your backpack
was found, unaware of the predator lurking
around the next bend, impatient to pounce

or if you were lured into that elusive car
as you came strolling out of the alley, thinking
only of the ice your blade would cut, of the air

swirling around you, as you catapulted into
a high-flying, body-blurring axel. When
they were looking for you, I realized

it could have been any of us, heading
to the ice rink for an afternoon lesson,
our lives snatched in a flash, a mass of dreams

wrested from our chest; if only I could see you
again, I´d tell you I´ve never stopped shuddering.
I wish I could unearth the words to describe

the delight in your eyes when you pulled up
to my house and saw I was dressed in the same
gray pullover, the same pink and gray striped skirt,

twins for a day, we surely quipped, unaware
that your outfit would soon vanish without a trace
and mine would hang, lifeless, in my closet

for the remainder of the year. I like to think
we saw a comedy, that we howled at wisecracks,
snorting our soft drinks, that we whooped it up,

raised a ruckus, that you were extraordinarily happy.
What I wish for the person who stole you, should
they ever catch him, is better whispered in your ear.

Sometimes I behold your face in flowers or butterflies,
in a spill of sunlight, in the glint of a blade;
always I wish for the miracle of your return.

         
          Julie Weiss found her way back to poetry in 2018 after slipping into a nearly two-decade creative void. In 2020, she was a finalist in Alexandria Quarterly´s first line poetry contest series, as well as a finalist for The Magnolia Review´s Ink Award. 
          Recent work appears in ArLiJo, Random Sample Review (Best of the Net Nomination, 2019), Sheila-Na-Gig online, The Blue Nib, and Kissing Dynamite Poetry, and she has poems in a handful of anthologies, as well. Originally from California, she works as a telephone English teacher in Spain, where she lives with her wife, 5-year-old daughter, and 2-year-old son.

Twitter @colourofpoetry
yosoyjulie2001@hotmail.com


BACKSTORY OF THE POEM LINKS

001  December 29, 2017
Margo Berdeshevksy’s “12-24”

002  January 08, 2018
Alexis Rhone Fancher’s “82 Miles From the Beach, We Order The Lobster At Clear Lake Café”

003 January 12, 2018
Barbara Crooker’s “Orange”

004 January 22, 2018
Sonia Saikaley’s “Modern Matsushima”

005 January 29, 2018
Ellen Foos’s “Side Yard”

006 February 03, 2018
Susan Sundwall’s “The Ringmaster”

007 February 09, 2018
Leslea Newman’s “That Night”

008 February 17, 2018
Alexis Rhone Fancher “June Fairchild Isn’t Dead”

009 February 24, 2018
Charles Clifford Brooks III “The Gift of the Year With Granny”

010 March 03, 2018
Scott Thomas Outlar’s “The Natural Reflection of Your Palms”

011 March 10, 2018
Anya Francesca Jenkins’s “After Diane Beatty’s Photograph “History Abandoned”

012  March 17, 2018
Angela Narciso Torres’s “What I Learned This Week”

013 March 24, 2018
Jan Steckel’s “Holiday On ICE”

014 March 31, 2018
Ibrahim Honjo’s “Colors”

015 April 14, 2018
Marilyn Kallett’s “Ode to Disappointment”

016  April 27, 2018
Beth Copeland’s “Reliquary”

017  May 12, 2018
Marlon L Fick’s “The Swallows of Barcelona”

018  May 25, 2018
Juliet Cook’s “ARTERIAL DISCOMBOBULATION”

019  June 09, 2018
Alexis Rhone Fancher’s “Stiletto Killer. . . A Surmise”

020 June 16, 2018
Charles Rammelkamp’s “At Last I Can Start Suffering”

021  July 05, 2018
Marla Shaw O’Neill’s “Wind Chimes”

022 July 13, 2018
Julia Gordon-Bramer’s “Studying Ariel”

023 July 20, 2018
Bill Yarrow’s “Jesus Zombie”

024  July 27, 2018
Telaina Eriksen’s “Brag 2016”

025  August 01, 2018
Seth Berg’s “It is only Yourself that Bends – so Wake up!”

026  August 07, 2018
David Herrle’s “Devil In the Details”

027  August 13, 2018
Gloria Mindock’s “Carmen Polo, Lady Necklaces, 2017”

028  August 21, 2018
Connie Post’s “Two Deaths”

029  August 30, 2018
Mary Harwell Sayler’s “Faces in a Crowd”

030 September 16, 2018
Larry Jaffe’s “The Risking Point”

031  September 24, 2018
Mark Lee Webb’s “After We Drove”

032  October 04, 2018
Melissa Studdard’s “Astral”

033 October 13, 2018
Robert Craven’s “I Have A Bass Guitar Called Vanessa”

034  October 17, 2018
David Sullivan’s “Paper Mache Peaches of Heaven”

035 October 23, 2018
Timothy Gager’s “Sobriety”

036  October 30, 2018
Gary Glauber’s “The Second Breakfast”

037  November 04, 2018
Heather Forbes-McKeon’s “Melania’s Deaf Tone Jacket”

038 November 11, 2018
Andrena Zawinski’s “Women of the Fields”

039  November 00, 2018
Gordon Hilger’s “Poe”

040 November 16, 2018
Rita Quillen’s “My Children Question Me About Poetry” and “Deathbed Dreams”

041 November 20, 2018
Jonathan Kevin Rice’s “Dog Sitting”

042 November 22, 2018
Haroldo Barbosa Filho’s “Mountain”

043  November 27, 2018
Megan Merchant’s “Grief Flowers”

044 November 30, 2018
Jonathan P Taylor’s “This poem is too neat”

045  December 03, 2018
Ian Haight’s “Sungmyo for our Dead Father-in-Law”

046 December 06, 2018
Nancy Dafoe’s “Poem in the Throat”

047 December 11, 2018
Jeffrey Pearson’s “Memorial Day”

048  December 14, 2018
Frank Paino’s “Laika”

049  December 15, 2018
Jennifer Martelli’s “Anniversary”

O50  December 19, 2018
Joseph Ross’s For Gilberto Ramos, 15, Who Died in the Texas Desert, June 2014”

051 December 23, 2018
“The Persistence of Music”
by Anatoly Molotkov

052  December 27, 2018
“Under Surveillance”
by Michael Farry

053  December 28, 2018
“Grand Finale”
by Renuka Raghavan

054  December 29, 2018
“Aftermath”
by Gene Barry

055 January 2, 2019
“&”
by Larissa Shmailo

056  January 7, 2019
“The Seamstress:
by Len Kuntz

057  January 10, 2019
"Natural History"
by Camille T Dungy

058  January 11, 2019
“BLOCKADE”
by Brian Burmeister

059  January 12, 2019
“Lost”
by Clint Margrave

060 January 14, 2019
“Menopause”
by Pat Durmon

061 January 19, 2019
“Neptune’s Choir”
by Linda Imbler

062  January 22, 2019
“Views From the Driveway”
by Amy Barone

063  January 25, 2019
“The heron leaves her haunts in the marsh”
by Gail Wronsky

064  January 30, 2019
“Shiprock”
by Terry Lucas

065 February 02, 2019
“Summer 1970, The University of Virginia Opens to Women in the Fall”
by Alarie Tennille

066 February 05, 2019
“At School They Learn Nouns”
by Patrick Bizzaro

067  February 06, 2019
“I Must Not Breathe”
by Angela Jackson-Brown

068 February 11, 2019
“Lunch on City Island, Early June”
by Christine Potter

069 February 12, 2019
“Singing”
by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum

070 February 14, 2019
“Daily Commute”
by Christopher P. Locke

071 February 18, 2019
“How Silent The Trees”
by Wyn Cooper

072 February 20, 2019
“A New Psalm of Montreal”
by Sheenagh Pugh

073 February 23, 2019
“Make Me A Butterfly”
by Amy Barbera

074 February 26, 2019
“Anthem”
by Sandy Coomer

075 March 4, 2019
“Shape of a Violin”
by Kelly Powell

076 March 5, 2019
“Inward Oracle”
by J.P. Dancing Bear

077 March 7, 2019
“I Broke My Bust Of Jesus”
by Susan Sundwall

078 March 9, 2019
“My Mother at 19”
by John Guzlowski

079 March 10, 2019
“Paddling”
by Chera Hammons Miller

080 March 12, 2019
“Of Water and Echo”
by Gillian Cummings

081   082   083    March 14, 2019
“Little Political Sense”   “Crossing Kansas with Jim
Morrison”  “The Land of Sky and Blue Waters”
by Dr. Lindsey Martin-Bowen

084 March 15, 2019
“A Tune To Remember”
by Anna Evans

085 March 19, 2019
“At the End of Time (Wish You Were Here)
by Jeannine Hall Gailey

086 March 20, 2019
“Garden of Gethsemane”
by Marletta Hemphill

087 March 21, 2019
“Letters From a War”
by Chelsea Dingman

088 March 26, 2019
“HAT”
by Bob Heman

089 March 27, 2019
“Clay for the Potter”
by Belinda Bourgeois

#090 March 30, 2019
“The Pose”
by John Hicks

#091 April 2, 2019
“Last Night at the Wursthaus”
by Doug Holder

#092 April 4, 2019
“Original Sin”
by Diane Lockward

#093 April 5, 2019
“A Father Calls to his child on liveleak”
by Stephen Byrne

#094 April 8, 2019
“XX”
by Marc Zegans

#095 April 12, 2019
“Landscape and Still Life”
by Marjorie Maddox

#096 April 16, 2019
“Strawberries Have Been Growing Here for Hundreds of
Years”
by Mary Ellen Lough

#097 April 17, 2019
“The New Science of Slippery Surfaces”
by Donna Spruijt-Metz

#098 April 19, 2019
“Tennessee Epithalamium”
by Alyse Knorr

#099 April 20, 2019
“Mermaid, 1969”
by Tameca L. Coleman

#100 April 21, 2019
“How Do You Know?”
by Stephanie

#101 April 23, 2019
“Rare Book and Reader”
by Ned Balbo

#102 April 26, 2019
“THUNDER”
by Jefferson Carter

#103 May 01, 2019
“The sight of a million angels”
by Jenneth Graser

#104 May 09, 2019
“How to tell my dog I’m dying”
by Richard Fox

#105 May 17, 2019
“Promises Had Been Made”
by Sarah Sarai

#106 June 01, 2019
“i sold your car today”
by Pamela Twining

#107 June 02, 2019
“Abandoned Stable”
by Nancy Susanna Breen

#108 June 05, 2019
“Cupcake”
by Julene Tripp Weaver

#109 June 6, 2019
“Bobby’s Story”
by Jimmy Pappas

#110 June 10, 2019
“When You Ask Me to Tell You About My Father”
by Pauletta Hansel

#111 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Cemetery Mailbox”
by Jennifer Horne

#112 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Relics”
by Kate Peper

#113 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Q”
by Jennifer Johnson

#114 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Brushing My Hair”
by Tammika Dorsey Jones

#115 Backstory of the Poem
“Because the Birds Will Survive, Too”
by Katherine Riegel

#116 Backstory of the Poem
“DIVORCE”
by Joan Barasovska

#117 Backstory of the Poem
“NEW YEAR”S EVE 2016”
by Michael Meyerhofer

#118 Backstory of the Poem
“Dear the estranged,”
by Gina Tron

#119 Backstory of the Poem
“In Remembrance of Them”
by Janet Renee Cryer

#120 Backstory of the Poem
“Horse Fly Grade Card, Doesn’t Play Well With Others”
by David L. Harrison

#121 Backstory of the Poem
“My Mother’s Cookbook”
by Rachael Ikins

#122 Backstory of the Poem
“Cousins I Never Met”
by Maureen Kadish Sherbondy

#123 Backstory of the Poem
“To Those Who Were Our First Gods”
by Nickole Brown

#124 Backstory of the Poem
“Looking For Sunsets (In the Early Morning)”
by Paul Levinson

#125 Backstory of the Poem
“Tracy”
by Tiff Holland

#126 Backstory of the Poem
“Legs”
by Cindy Hochman

#127 Backstory of the Poem
“Anathema”
by Natasha Saje

#128 Backstory of the Poem
“How to Explain Fertility When an Acquaintance Asks Casually”
by Allison Blevins

#129 Backstory of the Poem
“The Art of Meditation In Tennessee”
by Linda Parsons

#130 Backstory of the Poem
“Schooling High, In Beslan”
by Satabdi Saha

#131 Backstory of the Poem
“Baby Jacob survives the Oso Landslide, 2014”
by Amie Zimmerman

#132 Backstory of the Poem
“Our Age of Anxiety”
by Henry Israeli

#133 Backstory of the Poem
“Earth Cries; Heaven Smiles”
by Ken Allan Dronsfield

#134  Backstory of the Poem
“Eons”
by Janine Canan

#135 Backstory of the Poem
“Sworn”
by Catherine Zickgraf

#136 Backstory of the Poem
“Bushwick Blue”
by Susana H. Case

#137 Backstory of the Poem
“Then She Was Forever”
by Paula Persoleo

#138 Backstory of the Poem
“Enough”
by Kris Bigalk

#139 Backstory of the Poem
“From Ghosts of the Upper Floor”
by Tony Trigilio

#140 Backstory of the Poem
“Cloud Audience”
by Wanita Zumbrunnen

#141 Backstory of the Poem
“Condition Center”
by Matthew Freeman

#142 Backstory of the Poem
“Adventuresome Woman”
by Cheryl Suchors

#143 Backstory of the Poem
“The Way Back”
by Robert Walicki

#144 Backstory of the Poem
“If I Had Three Lives”
by Sarah Russell

#145 Backstory of the Poem
“Reservoir”
by Andrea Rexilius

#146 Backstory of the Poem
“The Night Before Our Dog Died”
by Melissa Fite Johnson

#147 Backstory of the Poem
“Pileated”
by David Anthony Sam

#148 Backstory of the Poem
“A Kitchen Argument”
by Matthew Gwathmey

#149 Backstory of the Poem
“Insulation”
by Bruce Kauffman

#150 Backstory of the Poem
“I Will Tell You Where I’ve Been”
by Justin Hamm

#151 Backstory of the Poem
“Comfort”
by Michael A Griffith

#152 Backstory of the Poem
“VAN GOGH TO HIS MISTRESS”
by Margo Taft Stever

#153 Backstory of the Poem
“1. Girl”
by Margaret Manuel

#154 Backstory of the Poem
“Trading Places”
by Maria Chisolm

#155 Backstory of the Poem
“The Reoccurring Woman”
by Debra May

#156 Backstory of the Poem
“Word Falling”
by Sheryl St. Germain

#157 Backstory of the Poem
“Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of 7,000 Jews Detained in an
Arena”
by Liz Marlow

#158 Backstory of the Poem
“Why Otters Hold Hands”
by William Walsh

#159 Backstory of the Poem
“The Invisible World”
by Rocco de Giacoma

#160 Backstory of the Poem
“Last Call”
by Ralph Culver

#161 Backstory of the Poem
“ALIVE”
by David Dephy

#162 Backstory of the Poem
“Mare Nostrum”
by Janice D Soderling

#163 Backstory of the Poem
“Winnipeg Noir”
by Carmelo Militano

#164 Backstory of the Poem
“Needlepoint Roses”
by Jason O’Toole

#165 Backstory of the Poem
“Singing, Studying on Whiteness, This Penelope Strings”
by Jeanne Larsen

#166 Backstory of the Poem
“How To Befriend Uncertainty”
by Prartho Sereno

#167 Backstory of the Poem
“Shostakovich: Five Pieces”
by Pamela Uschuk

#168 Backstory of the Poem
“Bouquet for Amy Clampitt”
by Peter Kline

#169 Backstory of the Poem
“Heartbroken”
by Catherine Arra

#170 Backstory of the Poem
“Silence – a lost art”
by Megha Sood

#171 Backstory of the Poem/ May 09, 2020
“Horribly Dull”
by Mark DeCharmes

#172 Backstory of the Poem/ May 12, 2020
“Celebrating His Ninety-Second Birthday the Year his Wife Died”
by Michael Mark

#173 Backstory of the Poem/ May 14, 2020
“Night Clouds in the Black Hills”
by Cameron Morse

#174 Backstory of the Poem/ May 18, 2020
“I’ve Been In Heaven For Long”
by Evanesced Dethroned Angel

#175 Backstory of the Poem/ May 20, 2020
“Tutti-Frutti”
by Barbara Crooker

#176 and #177 Backstory of the Poem/ May 25, 2020
“My Small World” and
“My Mistake”
by Tina Barry

#178 Backstory of the Poem/ June 05, 2020
“Against Numbers”
by Andrea Potos

#179 Backstory of the Poem/ June 15, 2020
“Wish”
by Julie Weiss

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Karen Lynch’s "GOOD COP, BAD DAUGHTER – memoirs of an unlikely police officer" is #003 in the never-ending series called THE MAGNIFICATION OF ONE MEMORY IN MEMOIR

*The images in this specific piece are granted copyright privilege by:  Public Domain, CCSAL, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law, or given copyright privilege by the copyright holder which is identified beneath the individual photo.

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

***The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished memoir writers for THE MAGNIFICATION OF ONE MEMORY IN MEMOIR. Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7

****Karen Lynch’s GOOD COP, BAD DAUGHTER – memoirs of an unlikely police officer is #003 in the never-ending series called THE MAGNIFICATION OF ONE MEMORY IN MEMOIR. All THE MAGNIFICATION OF ONE MEMORY IN MEMOIR links are at the end of this piece. 
Were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us? I had originally named the book The Floating World, but an editor suggested the final title and I loved it.

What is the description of this memoir? The story is about growing up with a counter-culture family, bi-polar mother in San Francisco and how that experience led me to become a San Francisco police officer.
What is the date you began writing this memoir and the date when you completed the memoir? I began writing the book in 2011 and finished in 2013.

Where did you do most of your writing for this memoir? I wrote at my desk in my bedroom.
What were your writing habits while writing this memoir- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on the laptop; specific time of day?  Because I had just finished being treated for cancer, my impetus was to write my story so my children would have it if I didn’t make it. I binge wrote several sections, writing non-stop for long periods of time. The illness gave me a sense of urgency. I wrote a few sections by hand but mainly wrote by laptop.

How do you define a memoir?  And what makes a memoir different from an autobiography? A memoir is different from autobiography in that memoir generally covers a certain period of time in the author’s life, for instance coming of age, in my case, going through the police academy. The topic can be anything from surviving sexual abuse to living with a spouse who has dementia. An autobiography is a complete life story, usually told by a celebrity, politician, or an individual who is famous for some other reason.

Out of all the specific memories you write about in this memoir, which ONE MEMORY was the most emotional for you to write about? And can you share that specific excerpt with us here.  The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer, and please provide page numbers as reference.  My mother nearly bled to death when I was five and I remember it vividly. That section was one of the more difficult to think about and write.

“Mom had put on some weight since New Jersey. Her belly protruded over the elastic waistband of her stretch pants. We’d only been home a few weeks when she woke up screaming in the dark, doubled over with pain.
“Dave, take me to the hospital!”
We ran to the car and Dad sped to the emergency room. We rushed through the hospital door, blood gushing from between Mom’s legs and flooding her favorite loafers. The red was garish and startling on the fluorescent white of the hospital floor. As I ran behind Mom, slipping in her blood, a nurse grabbed my hand and hurried me to the waiting room.
“Sit here and wait for your dad.”
A policeman was the only other person in the room. He was sitting in a plastic chair, leaning over his magazine, and looked up as I came in. I noticed his hat in the seat beside him. I had never seen a hatless policeman before. He seemed naked without it, an imposter.
“How are you?” His voice was deep and raspy.
During the adventure Mom had warned me not to talk to the police. I wondered if it would be OK to talk to him now that we were home.
“Would you like a Lifesaver?” he asked, holding out his pack.
That settled it.
“Thank you.” He let me take the red one. “I don’t like the green ones.”
“Me neither. Nobody likes them. Why do they even make green ones?” He had a generous smile. “You might as well sit down. Looks like we might be here a while.”
“I’m scared,” I quietly told my shoes. My formerly white sneakers were now mottled with red splotches. I was worried Mom would be angry I got my shoes dirty.
       “Don’t worry. It’ll be OK. Here, take the pack.”
I wondered how he could be so sure Mom would be OK, but I figured since he was a policeman he might have some inside information. I took the candy and decided to think about some- thing else.
After a while, Dad came in. His face was white and his hands were trembling. He took my hand and stared into my eyes.
“Your mommy is very ill. She may die. Do you understand what that means?”
“Like the baby in the park?”

“Yes, like that. Do you want to come with me to see her?”
“OK.”
He led me into the treatment room. It smelled terrible, like the Mr. Clean my mother used to mop the kitchen floor before she stopped doing housework. And there was another smell—a sensation, lingering, filling my mouth with a coppery metal taste.
The nurse shook her head at Dad. A white sheet covered all of Mom except her ashen face. Dad looked over at Mom and let out a small yelp. Then he covered his mouth with his hand, as if to keep more from escaping.
“Say good-bye to your mother, Karen.” Slow-motion tears snail-trailed down his cheeks. I bent down and briefly put my lips on Mom’s cool cheek. Her eyes were creepily glassy, and she didn’t move when I touched her.
“I love you, Mommy.”
A week after our trip to the hospital Mom was back home, and Dad and I were perched on the end of her bed.
“Let me tell you. Bleeding to death is a horrible way to die!” Mom always said “haarrible” with her New York accent. “I was so thirsty! I was dying of thirst! Then I was floating around above my bed, looking down at my body and the doctors and nurses trying to save me. I could have just floated away. But I thought about you, Karen, and I knew I had to come back. I came back for you!”
Wow! Mom turned down heaven for me? I felt a surge of relief that Mom had kept her promise.
          Karen Lynch was a police officer and an investigator for the San Francisco Police Department for 29 years. After a bout with breast cancer, she decided to retire and write.
Her memoir, “Good Cop, Bad Daughter-memoirs of an unlikely police officer, is being developed as a television series.
       A native San Franciscan, and proud Cal Bear, she has been married to Greg for 30 years. They have three children. Their youngest adopted from China, was the subject of an award-winning essay “The Road to Kyra.”
Other publications include: Lucky Drive essay in Transitions anthology, NBTT    
Publications In the Long Run essay published on Manifestation
       Thorazine essay in Shades of Blue anthology, Seal Press
  Last Tango in Toontown essay in Orange County Register
 http://www.karenrlynch.com



THE MAGNIFICATION OF ONE MEMORY IN MEMOIR links

001
03 18 2020
“Two Minus One”
by Kathryn Taylor


002
03 19 2020
“HeartSnark”
by Terry Kroenung

003
06 14 2020
“Good Cop, Bad Daughter – Memoirs of an Unlikely Police Officer”
by Karen Lynch