My Mother's Toenails
An Interview
with author Marcia Aldrich

During college, Marcia Aldrich had an intense impulse to write.  She would sit at her electric typewriter, and fill a page with poetry. "The whole process was a mystery to me then and now,” she explains.  “Unbeknownst to me, forces were taking shape in words, in images, in sounds and rhythms that formed a pattern, and yet I was unaware of the internal process."  Now Aldrich finds herself most at home with the short lyric essay.  Because of her fluid style, even her longest essays move more rapidly than most other writers' works.  "What I desire to achieve in my writing is the effect of effortlessness,” she says.  “I want the reader to be carried along in the stream of writing, to become one with the fast-moving flow."

"My Mother's Toenails" was originally longer and part of a larger essay.  Then, Aldrich decided to cut it to the bone.  She revised it to be a stand-alone piece.  "I subject much of my writing to this severe scrutiny and often discover that the end result is superior to the original."  The essay chronicles Aldrich’s mother’s dementia.  During her mother's illness and death, Aldrich kept a journal, so that she could later write about her mother’s disease and how it affected the family.  Aldrich quotes John Berger from an essay about his own mother's death:

"Of how many deaths-though never till now of my mother's-have I written?  Truly we writers are the secretaries of death."

Aldrich feels that this phrase describes her role as a writer and daughter—"part witness, part elegist."

Aldrich offers this advice to other writers: Train yourself to notice things; keep writing and publishing separate from one another and never forget publishing is secondary to writing; devote yourself to the life of writing rather than your career, and finally, believe in the discretion and discernment of strangers.

—Katie Kurtzman and Rob Markowski