BOOKS

Author mourns mother in writing

Reviewed by Andrew Junker | Oct. 1, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

Local author Gloria Guarracino begins her memoir with these sentences:

“Anyone who has lost a mother through death or alienation, especially at an early age, searches knowingly or unknowingly for a mother figure to fill that void. It has taken almost a lifetime for me to discover this.”

“Finding Gloria, Finding Betty” recounts this late-in-life realization for the author. It’s an engaging and touching book, notable for Guarracino’s honesty and sense of humor.

The memoir begins with the author trying to reconnect with Betty, an old friend of hers from a Catholic boarding school in New Jersey decades ago. Guarracino’s mother died when she was very young, and so her father sent her to this boarding school when she was still in grammar school.

While there, she became close to Betty, who, because she was a few years older, Guarracino looked to for guidance and mothering. The author makes it clear right away how much Betty influenced her life, how much she loved her.

With the help of an Internet-savvy friend, Guarracino was able to find Betty, and she began corresponding with her via telephone and letters almost immediately.

And then, a bit of a shock came to Guarracino. Betty had no recollection of her. She simply didn’t remember Gloria or much of her time at the boarding school at all.

While this was an obvious blow to Gloria, she didn’t let it disappoint her too much. In fact, it gave her an opportunity to put down on paper all her memories from her younger days. She began sending letter after letter to Betty cataloging her experiences and stories.

The picture that emerges is one of a warm, vivacious, mischievous, but also heartbroken girl. By the time Guarracino was in high school, both of her parents had died and she moved regularly between aunts and uncles and grandparents.

At the same time, her positive outlook and enjoyment of life was undeniable, and most people who knew her were struck by it. Some of the stories she recounts from the Catholic boarding school exemplify this.

Always a popular girl and a talker, she had her fair number of run-ins with the nuns operating the school. One time, she got in trouble for disrupting the class and was made to sit under her teacher’s desk until the class had ended. (What a bizarre punishment, especially considering the nun taught the class from her desk!)

Guarracino quickly grew bored under the desk and decided to tie her teacher’s shoelaces together — I can’t believe her teacher didn’t foresee this as a possibility. You can well imagine what happened next.

But Guarracino loved the nuns who taught her school and thanks them throughout the book for the influence they had on her life. They even led her to seriously consider a vocation to the religious life.

There are many anecdotes from her time at the boarding school and the reader quickly gathers how important these nuns and her fellow classmates are to Guarracino.

Through writing these remembrances down and realizing how much she relied on people like Betty to fill a void left by her mother’s death, Guarracino embarks on a journey of personal discovery.

It’s fascinating to see this emerge through the excerpted letters to Betty — printed in the book. Slowly, through these letters and phone conversations with her newly found old friend, Guarracino learns about her past.

Feelings she had begin to make sense; her past actions become more understandable. It’s enjoyable as a reader to see this happen during the course of “Finding Gloria, Finding Betty.”

The book shows the power close friendship can have even over the obstacles of time and distance.

At the end of each of this book’s chapters are discussion questions for the reader or readers who might be working through the book as a group.

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Media critic Andrew Junker is a staff writer for The Catholic Sun. Comments are welcome. Send e-mail to letters@catholicsun.org.