An Interview with Susan Morse (Page 1 of 4)
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An Interview with Susan Morse
 From
the time she was conceived, Susan Morse
was her mother’s “special” child. Now
she finds herself as part of the
sandwich generation, responsible for a
woman whose 85 years have been
single-mindedly devoted to identifying
“The Answer to Everything.” This week’s
Answer looks like it may be the real
thing. Susan’s mother is becoming a nun.
The Habit, Susan Morse’s fresh and funny
new memoir, offers readers a look at a
mother-daughter relationship that is
both universal and unique.
With three soon-to-be-college-bound
kids, a busy television/movie/Broadway
actor husband, David Morse (St.
Elsewhere, House, The Hurt Locker), and
menopause kicking in, Morse, at age 48,
already has her hands full. Her father
has passed and her siblings live far
away, so her mother’s cancer diagnosis
and need for extensive surgery,
radiation, and chemotherapy mean Morse
must become her caregiver and patient
advocate. The job, akin to herding a cat
in a darkened maze, is given the serious
name it deserves: “Operation Ma.”
Susan Morse was educated at Williams
College and has worked as an actress in
L.A. and New York. She now lives in
Philadelphia with her husband and their
three children. She has edited fiction,
although this book is nonfiction.
“Mostly,” she promises.
Gary Barg: I have to
tell you, Susan, I love that you open
the book with the phrase, “Nobody dies
at the end of this book.” I just
thought, with all the caregiving books I
have read, and wonderful books, too,
that’s just so refreshing. Thank you for
that.
Susan Morse: When I
started writing the book, we were in the
middle of a terrible health crisis and
there was no given that my mother
wouldn’t die before I could finish the
book. That was the question
everybody kept asking me when I said,
“We’re going through this thing and I’m
writing a book about it.” They’d
say, “Well, are you going to wait until
she dies to finish the book?” And I kept
thinking, well, we’re just going to keep
going on and see what happens. She
recovered from her health crisis quite
fine and I was definitely ready to wrap
up the book. I just thought, this is
perfect because she’ll get to be there
for the aftermath and enjoy all the fun
of having everybody read it, which has
been great for both of us.
Gary Barg: How did
writing the book bring the rest of your
family together?
Susan Morse: We were
already trying to rally together because
we had this health crisis. I was
emailing my siblings as we went along
because I was the point person on site
with her. I had one sibling in another
country and everybody else was a good
distance from where we were living.
As we realized we were dealing with
something serious, I began to send them
emailed updates after a long day at the
doctor or the hospital, whatever we were
doing. You don’t really want to
make a phone call because you’re tired,
so you just try to get as much
information as possible into an email.
We’re very lucky to have email.
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