Liminal Spaces of Struggle and Not Knowing: An Interview with Casey Mulligan Walsh by Camille U. Adams
Our tenth anniversary interview this week is with Split Lip contributor, Casey Mulligan Walsh. Casey is a writer who lives with her husband and two cats in upstate New York. Split Lip nominated her powerful memoir, “Still,” for Best of the Net. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, HuffPost, Barren Magazine, Modern Loss, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Daring to Breathe, an anthology exploring how grief morphs through time. Casey has completed a memoir, The Full Catastrophe, about the search for belonging, the fight to save a struggling child, and the quest to find meaning in the wake of repeated loss. She plans to spend her next life as a talented singer-songwriter. Casey and her husband are avid travelers and enjoy frequent visits from their children and grandchildren—the very definition of “the full catastrophe.”
I first read Casey’s memoir writing in Split Lip’s June 2022 issue. Her flash memoir piece, “Still,” is about the loss of her beloved son. It’s comprised of one heart-breaking, gut-wrenching, propulsive sentence. That one, deeply immersive paragraph moved be greatly. The outpouring of grief brought tears to my eyes, while the craft deployed so expertly excited me. I couldn’t help but admire the wealth of imagery, movement, and interiority and vulnerability Casey embedded in one sentence. And I thought it’d be lovely to get some more insight into Casey’s writing of this wonderful flash memoir piece. We spoke via email and Zoom, chatting about what inspires her writing, what she’s working on currently, about sweet treats while writing, and more.
Camille U. Adams: Hello Casey, thanks for taking time to talk with me. Can you say where are you writing from currently? And can you go to your window and tell us what you see as you look out now?
Casey Mulligan Walsh: We’re fortunate to live in a neighborhood with many ponds and all sorts of flora and fauna. As I write at the kitchen island, my usual spot, it’s a spectacular late-October day in upstate New York, and though some trees and shrubs have shed their foliage, others are still showy and seem unusually vibrant this year. A new dwarf hydrangea tree has rewarded us with cone-shaped blooms that have turned from cream to antique pink, which I’ll cut and enjoy inside as they dry. The deck where we spend as many hours as we can during our always-too-short summer is covered with dropped leaves and fading plants. But soon I’ll bundle up and carry my laptop out to sit by the fire table, breathing in the scent of fall as I watch the flocks of turkeys and neighborhood deer that wander through our yard and the woods that surround us. Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for this world outside our window.
CUA: Awww, that sounds beautiful. What a great place to sit and write and breathe. Perfectly inspiring and transportive. It puts me in mind of Ada Limon talking about her recent book, The Hurting Kind, and how the poems in that collection were largely generated by her sitting in her back garden in Kentucky after having left the urban sprawl of NYC. It feels like your similar enjoyment of and attentiveness toward nature shows up in “Still” in the internal quiet, “as if snow had fallen all around,” and in the appearance of the breeze and tops of the trees. I’d love to know where you grew up and does this place or these places also make their way into your writing? And how so?
CMW: “Where did you grow up?” is something of a loaded phrase for me. Was it northern New Jersey, where I lived in various towns until I was twelve, when both my parents died? Was it the small upstate New York village where I lived with relatives from age twelve until I moved out completely at twenty, though I’d been sidling out the door for several years? I suppose those both qualify. But when someone asks me, “Where are you from?” the answer’s more complicated. At twenty, I married and moved to another New York village on the Vermont border. My husband and I bought a house, raised three children, and made a life there for twenty-five years. Though I haven’t lived there in more than twenty years, I often say I’ll never be as much a part of a place as I was in that community where my kids—and in many ways, I—grew up. Each of these places appears in my memoir and in all of my writing, but of the three, the last feels most like my hometown.
CUA: That’s so intriguing, that idea of what becomes home and how. Thanks for that detailed answer. As an immigrant, I’m always interested in memoirists’ concept of home. Where do we write to and from and for? Your answer makes me think of one’s decided-upon hometown as being the place where your life has most been filled with love and peace. And isn’t where we’re from one of the most prevalent obsessions of those who write memoir? So, in speaking of obsessions, can you share any that you have and tell us how they show up in your writing?
CMW: Music has saved me again and again. My favorite songwriters’ lyrics pierce my heart or soothe or energize or inspire me in ways nothing else does. References to these artists and their words are scattered throughout my memoir and give readers a more authentic sense of who I was at various points in my life, who I am today, and how I got here.
And I’ve been obsessed with photography since I was a little girl. Carrying my Brownie camera, later an Instamatic, I snapped photos of everything, intent on capturing what refused to hold still. When my camera wasn’t handy, I often vowed to “freeze this moment in my mind and remember it forever.” The interplay between this need to record moments to reexamine later and my conviction that we choose how to see the things that happen in our lives is a major thread throughout my book and appears in much of my other writing as well.
CUA: That’s so cute, a little Brownie camera. I feel as if your obsession with visual images and capturing a moment is evinced in “Still.” It’s powerful to me the way in which you’re able to evoke stillness within the speaker and for the reader even while the breathless sentence is pulling us toward the inevitable. The pictorial does so much work in your flash piece—setting, mood, reflection, etc.—that I can completely see an adeptness with photography there. And music as savior. Oh. I think that would also resonate with several readers. Can you name a song you love? And tell us what makes it so lovable to you?
CMW: Dar Williams’ The Mercy of the Fallen may be my favorite song of all time. Her voice. That guitar. And those intelligent lyrics—around themes of finding rest within uncertainty and showing empathy for those who search and dream—are genius. Each time I listen, I’m steeped in the early 2000’s, when Mercy and a number of other songs, playing on loop tape, held me together and gave me hope. But I hear something new each time I listen, a turn of phrase that speaks to whatever it is I need at that moment. I believe the real magic in life happens mostly in the in-between, in the liminal spaces of struggle and not knowing, and Dar lays this out for us with brilliance and subtlety. We, who don’t pretend to have the answers, have mercy for those who follow us as seekers on the journey. We each have stars that guide us, she tells us. Some of those dwell inside us. Isn’t that the reassurance we all long to hear?
CUA: Thanks for sharing that, Casey. I’ve never heard of this song and now that I’ve looked it up, how rich and…real. You said that you scatter lyrics throughout your writing. Is this where the star at the end of “Still” comes from?
CMW: Oh, I hadn’t really thought of that. Perhaps subconsciously.
CUA: So, having asked about obsessions and inspiration. Time for the all-important, deepest, most crucial question all. Ready? What is your favorite snack food and why?
CMW: Conceding that this is not as much a snack food as a dessert-turned-snack, I can think of nothing more satisfying than a warm, melty cinnamon bun. And it passes what I consider the true test of a favorite snack—I can’t keep one in the house, or I would be compelled to devour the quintessential comfort food post haste!
CUA: Ooooouuuu, that does sound yummy. Especially on an autumn day. I can see why you can’t keep them in the house. It’s like everytime you write something heavy, cinnamon bun treat, ha. And here’s a question I always like to pose: are there any questions about “Still,” published in Split Lip or any of your other published pieces that you wish someone would ask?
CMW: I’d love it if, in response to “Still” or any number of other pieces I’ve written about my son, readers were curious about the years of our lives outside of what was clearly the worst day. Who is this mother, this young man, and how did they get to be the people they were on this terrible day, behaving and reacting in the ways they did? How did she come to believe so deeply that she and her son would always be connected? And who did she become, since life is never static and won’t stand still, even when we wish it would? What was her grief like five, ten, twenty years or more after she left that room?
CUA: Hmm, that’s touching. Then is it okay if I do ask, what are ten things you most love about your son and would like to share with Split Lip readers?
CMW:
1. Not quite three when his brother Kyle was born, Eric memorized a two-stanza poem, “When I Was a Bachelor,” and recited it to him often, much to Kyle’s delight.
2. At four, Eric loved to break dance to the songs in the TV show Fame and shout, “Goodnight Dan!” back to Dan Rather at the end of the nightly news. Saying his prayers at night, his opener—“Hi God, whatcha doin’?”—always made me smile.
3. In elementary school, Eric loved to hang out in the front yard, watching for the big boys who walked past on their way home from sports practice. They called him Mayor, because, they said, “You know everyone…you’re the leader of all the cool little kids in town!”
4. Released a year before he was born, Eric’s all-time favorite movie was Grease.
5. At fifteen, Eric visited friends out of the area, where he heard the band Wilco for the first time. When he returned home, he called our regional radio station, WEQX, to insist they play them. He liked to think he was responsible for bringing Wilco to upstate New York.
6. Adults remarked about how, even as a teen, Eric never thought he was too cool to stop and chat with—or lend a hand to—people his parents’ age and older—his childhood babysitter, our neighbors, and others.
7. Though, in true big-brother form, he often squabbled with his siblings, he loved them fiercely.
8. Eric had enrolled in the Navy and was slated to attend aircraft technician school in Pensacola, FL, after basic training.
9. Eric always had a passion for air and danger—jumping the wake on water skis, sending the soccer ball airborne, catching big air while snowboarding and, unfortunately, driving too fast. He craved the sense of freedom he insisted these things brought.
10. His high school yearbook said so much:
*Eric photobombed multiple sports team’s shots, appearing with the wrestlers and baseball players (he was neither).
*His senior superlative: Most Daring.
*Favorite song: Puff Daddy’s I’ll Be Missing You.
*And, most prescient of all, his favorite quotes:
“What is done cannot be undone,” and
“Live while you live.”
Camille U. Adams is a memoirist from Trinidad and Tobago. She earned her MFA from CUNY and is a current Ph.D. Candidate who holds a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship at her program. Camille is an alum of Tin House Summer Workshop and Kenyon Writer’s Workshop. Camille has received a fellowship from Roots Wounds Word and scholarships from Community of Writers, Kweli Literary Festival, Grubstreet, and VONA. Her writing has been long-listed in the Graywolf Creative Nonfiction Prize 2022, selected as a finalist for The 2021 Orison Anthology Award in Nonfiction, and is featured/forthcoming in Passages North, Citron Review, XRAY Literary Magazine, Variant Literature, The Forge Literary Magazine, Wasafiri, etc. She’s a memoir reader at Split Lip Magazine and is at work on an upcoming memoir. Camille also wants a cute, fat, little puppy.