Arts & Entertainment

San Diego author provides insight, humor
• Thanks, Terry, for the wonderful article about me and my poetry.
• Rosalie

Terry Ambrose
, San Diego Fiction Examiner
 

Rosalie Kramer is a San Diego writer who took up the craft when her sons were born with Muscular Dystrophy. With that single bit of news, she began writing poetry to, as she says, “soothe my troubled soul.”
“I am from an ‘ordinary American family,’ where I faced lies, deceit, murder and, after the deaths of my sons, depression,” says Kramer. Fortunately, that background hasn’t made Kramer weaker, but stronger. She writes a mixture of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She wrote her memoir, Dancing in the Dark: Things my Mother Never Told Me and received good reviews. According to Kramer, “it was far from a national bestseller,” but the process of uncovering those family secrets and writing that book helped her to “learn to smile again.”
Kramer knows that many San Diego families are facing financially difficult decisions and was happy to provide a little advice, and humor, from her popular poem,

“Never Spend the Principal”.
I hear it more now every day.
From heaven above I heard him say,
"Remember you promised dear old Ray,
You'd never spend the principal."
I want to give my children a gift,
And now my face sure needs a lift.
But I sit here knowing he'd be miffed,
If he guessed I'd spend the principal.
My stock has tripled over the years.,
Yet I am constantly immersed in tears,
When dealing with my silly fears,
That I might spend the principal.
I think I hear in the shower.
Every minute of every hour,
Even atop the Eiffel Tower,
"Don't ever spend the principal!"
After I'm gone I see it clear:
A corvette for my daughter dear,
A Rolls Royce for my son, I fear.
'Cause I didn't spend the principal.
I hope my children will want to save,
Enough for flowers to cover my grave,
After they've spent every cent we made,
Both the interest and the principal!

Kramer, who is in her 80s, has seen many of her friends die, move to assisted living or leave San Diego to be with their children. Despite those changes, she remains upbeat and intends to continue her focus on writing.