My career as a scientific researcher working for the Department of Energy, DOE, formerly called the Atomic Energy Commission, AEC, blended into my status in 2000 when I retired and returned to Albuquerque, NM, my long-term residence of choice.
At that time, my life experiences, covering scientific research projects in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California, New Mexico and Munich, Germany seemed broad enough to, perhaps, serve as general background material for a literary exploit into the realm of a personal memoir.
Although I, then, temporarily flirted with the idea of joining a local writer’s group, my fanciful aspirations were put aside for the usual assortment of home repair projects, which can easily become the bane of an American’s life in the suburbs.
Besides, I was, then, sharing a spacious, 2,400 square-foot house in the foothills of the Sandias with my sister, Denise, her husband, and my young niece. We had become a close family unit in Southern California back in 1998.
At that time, the house’s decor and ample backyard needed some concentrated, family-style attention. Writing a memoir seemed a bit frivolous when so much work needed to be done to our surroundings. A fanciful tract in a standard memoir approach took second place to the nuts-and-bolts project that my family and I tackled in the early years of the 2000s.
Also, unlike the usual, terse, and succinct tract of a technical presentation, which had served me well as a researcher over the years, I suddenly faced the need to fashion a new approach to telling a story and in developing an emotional, human plot or storyline.
Perhaps, the Southwest Writers located in Albuquerque could help me fashion a more humane and congenial style of telling a story.
However, in the summer of 2005, our pleasant home situation suddenly took a sharp downturn. Denise had experienced a loss of consciousness while visiting a church in our neighborhood. A male passer-by had, fortunately, witnessed the event and had helped her to regain her footing. She then had made her way home on foot.
However, a similar loss of consciousness occurred again, a week later, as she was entering the main bathroom of our home.
This latest event marked the beginning of a grim, six-month ordeal of cancer-related tests where a lung cancer had metastasized into a deadly brain cancer that slowly was eating away her cerebral capabilities.
This tragic health crisis in the summer of 2005 radically changed all the plans that we were making for the future. Also, the daily bombardment of new medical prognoses, breakthroughs and miracle drugs kept us all groggy with information overload.
Like it or not, I was quickly involved in keeping many relatives, scattered across the East Coast, up to date in a series of humane and informative emails regarding Denise’s physical and emotional status, daily.
This gate-keeper process can be extremely draining. However, I found some solace by sharing my thoughts and feelings with other writers, who were also dealing with human condition through the process “writing to gain wellness.”
Albuquerque’s Southwest Writers association designed by published authors, who help new writers learn the trade, became my first source of professional assistance in the challenging world of story tellers and authors.
My first attempt at reaching this wrter’s goal of publishing a memoir happened as described in the words of the previous text. I hope that you, the reader, will find personal sustenance in these pages.
Please look for this memoir in the racks of your favorite bookstore. It’s title is: “Discoveries and Lessons in a Ghetto Town”.
I hope that you will find the contents entertaining and informative.