Terra Infirma: A Memoir of My Mother's Life in Mine
In the months following his mother's death from cancer at age 54, Rodger Kamenetz (a poet, and the author ofThe Jew in the Lotus) had three dreams in which she appeared to him, offering clues to the secrets of her life.  After the third dream, Kamenetz began writingTerra Infirma: A Memoir of My Mother's Life in Mine, a tragic story about the way his mother's tyrannical passion for her family shaped Kamenetz's life and prevented him from becoming a man until she was gone. The book is a collection of essays modeled after those of Montaigne, and their form is best described as purposeful wandering. The first chapters begin with Kamenetz's dreams, move on to his meditations on her piano (the household object that seemed most "to radiate my mother's spirit"), and then question why his mother hid from him all the details of her childhood, including the identity of her own mother. Throughout, the book contains vivid profiles of his family members and friends, poignant descriptions of his bewildered participation in Jewish mourning rituals, and painful descriptions of the technology that kept his mother alive until she gave herself up as "just a body in danger." Kamenetz's final chapter, a reckoning with his mother's last words--"I love you"--is especially affecting; like the book as a whole, it offers little solace to those who hope that life will make sense in the end, and great encouragement to those who realize that what sense life has is the sense we make of it.--Michael Joseph Gross--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.