Terra Infirma: A Memoir of My Mother's Life in Mine

by Rodger Kamenetz

Ter'ra in'fir'ma, n. 1. Shaky ground. 2. The uneasy shared territory of love and painful separation that defines mother and son. 3. The border between life and death. 4. The precariously emotional place in which we are left after the death of a parent. 5. The mythic terrain a boy passes through on the way to becoming a man. 6. The material from which a writer must craft his story.

"Inside a mother, each of us begins a dream," writes Rodger Kamenetz. Actually, a mother's dream for her child, and the dream that will become a person. For Kamenetz, crossing the terra infirma--the place where the two collide--was not his mother was a difficult woman who had loved her family with a tyrannical passion. Only as she was losing her battle with cancer at age fifty-four could her son begin to take the essential first step toward becoming a man, thereby fulfilling both of their dreams.

Rich with humor and insight, Terra Infirma is a deeply moving account of one man's spiritual passage to the firmer ground of maturity and self-understanding.

128 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1985

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very much. At first I wasn't sure how to handle it simply because it isn't a typical memoir. There is no chronological order. It is about his mother but it isnt. It is about him but it isn't. I realize I make it sound complex and to some degree it is but not really. It's about a son who tries to tell the story of his mother but by doing so really tells about himself and by doing so about his mother. The edition I have isn't hardcover it is paperback and it is also a uncorrected bound proof, so perhaps that is part of the reason why I enjoyed it as much as I did because it seemed to me to be untainted. It felt very much as a diary entry or as a conversation the author is having with the reader. He writes the story for his mother but for himself more, and by stating what other philosophers and writers believe about life and death only adds to the personal connection or disconnection the author's relationship is with himself and his mother. When I started reading it I didn't enjoy it, I felt it was more factual than narrative but by the third chapter I was sucked in to this family and how they are able to connect to eachother by disconnection. Would other people like it? Maybe not, because it isn't a typical memoir but that is all the more reason why I think it should be read.

[Ella Bloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a poignant read. I didn't expect to be touched so profoundly, in this way, by a death of someone's mother whom I have no relation to. Perhaps it made me consider my own mortality, and think about the various ways that the strength of our wills slowly chip away at our bodies until they disappear entirely.

I loved the various authors that Kamenetz referenced as he spoke about the end of our earthly lives. His insights were layered, and infused with symbolic meaning. To an author, everything has the possibility to mean something else. It is all in the descriptions, which he masterfully extends to his readers. I've been reading a lot of memoirs recently, and I'm more than satisfied that my hands found their way onto the pages.