Memoir Craft: Grappling With Memory in Warm Springs (Part 2)

In Part 1, I wrote about the first example of Susan Richard's Shreve's craft technique of making transparent her process of grappling with memory. In her memoir Warm Springs, she employs the metaphor of being examined by doctors to find "traces" of muscle movement in her legs, which have been decimated by polio. Each muscle requires her complete concentration, patience, and focus; recovering her memories, she says, requires the same effort, even if it is only to find "traces" of them.

The second example is a stunning, one-page chapter titled "Memory in Process" in which Shreve recalls her first memory. She is one and half years old and recovering from polio. Her mother walks in and approaches her crib: