"On a Duet, Sung Long After the Music Has Stopped" stirs strong emotions, shedding light on what Distelheim calls the "miracle of the ordinary." After reading this essay, the typical woes of day-to-day life are rendered so very trivial.

During the time Distelheim's nephew Ethan was in the hospital, she found the experience too difficult to record on paper.  "I wrote this piece entirely from memory, but had no trouble doing so because I found that, even after we'd closed doors behind us for the first time, that world--especially the people whom I'd met within it--stayed with me."   When she first sat down to write the piece, she found her thoughts and emotions too difficult to translate into words.  "With time, however, I began to realize that, every time I thought of them [John and his mother], I saw the image of them together, which gave me my opening line, and a point from which to work."

Distelheim set out "with the hope that I could use it [the essay] as a tool for subtly conveying a message, which I knew, would be impossible to state without becoming preachy."  I knew I would have to take great care not to hit the reader over the head with that perspective and thus merely hinted at it, in moments such as the one where John and his mother were in the kitchen, he working on his homework at the table and she starting dinner at the stove, both of them knowing such mundane moments as miracles."

In the first paragraph, Distelheim states, "Some are remembered images and some are envisioned," tipping off the reader that she will be employing fictional techniques, recreating a different point of view and imagining scenes in which she was not present.  "At first I was reluctant to assume John's mother's point of view or to envision experiences she had beyond the hospital's walls, for fear of intruding upon her privacy and taking liberties with her story.  However, I discovered that, if I took great care to let the reader know that this was my imagination at work and not literally her point of view or a factual rendering of her experience, there was no danger.  Once I allowed myself that freedom, the piece really took off."

Distelheim tends to revise her work as she writes it.  "Rather than write a full first draft and them go back, I often rework whatever section I'm currently writing a number of times before moving on. Sometimes I leave several versions of a section (or a sentence) in, side by side, with the final version to be chosen once I complete the entire essay."  Initially, she sent a slightly different version of the essay to Creative Nonfiction, and it was returned with the comment that, even though the editors were interested in it, they felt it was a bit too sentimental.  "That comment offered precisely the guidance I needed to help me rewrite it in its current form."

Distelheim was first drawn to writing nonfiction, "by the need to record and to find meaning within the world around me.  However, I found it impossible to tell the stories I wanted to tell or to fully explore the topics I found intriguing by using only the tools of traditional nonfiction."  Creative nonfiction gives her the freedom to blur the lines between fiction and traditional nonfiction.

Distelheim, who has a background as a teacher, a community activist and a lawyer, uses her writing as a tool for representing societies most vulnerable members.  Recently, she has finished a piece about a neighbor who survived the Holocaust and plans to "compile a collection of such profiles of people who have managed to find the fortitude to rise to what could easily be overwhelming challenges."




  Stephanie Susnjara