“Don’t say a word!” my mother warned, at the start of it all.
And I didn’t, until I could.
My parents, a perpetually warring, domineering pair in their 80s — a retired Macy’s dress buyer and a dentist — begin wintering in Mexico, where they abandon their usual prudence to embrace adventure and a pair of shyster developers. Normally hypercritical, they are blithely indifferent to the disasters that ensue, leaving the mop-up to me, their permanently indentured only child.
Don’t Say a Word! : A Daughter’s Two Cents recounts our hapless, screwball struggles: theirs with old age and mine with them. The surprising ways in which my parents come undone reveal just what they’d spent their lives trying to hide, thereby setting me free.
Published by She Writes Press
Distributed to the trade by Simon and Schuster
examining our personal lives in the light of the wider world
and the world in the light of our lives
These conversations began when Elizabeth (an essayist) turned to Barbara (a neuropsychiatrist) for help making sense of the wonderful but baffling personal transformation that resulted from writing a memoir. Together the two friends explore the deep, private experience of writing, illuminated by new insights from brain science and psychology, with lessons for everyone.
fascinating side questions raised in the essays
ELIZABETH ROPER MARCUS
For twenty years, I ran a small architectural firm and wrote about design, when not traveling to far-flung places with my psychiatrist husband and two rambunctious children. I decided to concentrate on writing in order to pursue the many quirky questions that fascinated and bedeviled me: Why are butterflies called butterflies? Why can’t I recall the taste of wine? Why are first-love memories so potent? More and more, I found myself examining my personal life in the light of the wider world and the wider world in the light of my life.
My memoir, Don’t Say a Word!: A Daughter’s Two Cents, is the result of a long struggle to answer a personal question I could not escape: Who were my parents, really? It’s my hope that my story will provoke answers to questions you may have about your own life.
This is, in fact, true for everything I write. My essays have appeared in the New York Times and Boston Globe, on online sites such as Cognoscenti and Next Avenue, and in essay anthologies, like Travelers’ Tales.
I currently write for Psychology Today and have two Substacks: a new one, Tiny Stories From Life and an old one with Barbara Schildkrout Two Friends Write About the Brain .
