Reviewed by Emily Webber
Jocelyn Jane Cox’s memoir, Motion Dazzle: A Memoir of Motherhood, Loss, and Skating (Vine Leaves Press; Sept. 2025), is a tribute to her mother, a love letter to her son, and a testament to resilience as a caregiver.
The memoir begins as Cox makes preparations for her son’s zebra-themed first birthday party. The title, Motion Dazzle, is the term given to the effect created by a zebra’s stripes to confuse and distract in stressful or dangerous situations. Cox tries to keep her focus on getting everything perfect for the party. She puts on a brave face to keep from crying. Her mother is in the hospital, critically ill after a long series of health challenges including dementia.
Like Cox, I also had a long-awaited child later in life, my son turning six months old when I turned forty. I’ve spent many joyful moments watching my son reach milestones. A shadow over each of those moments is the worry about how much longer my aging parents will be around and healthy enough to see them, too. Cox captures these two aspects of life with unrestrained honesty — showing all the guilt, anger, and challenges of care-giving alongside the deep love and joy of motherhood, and the humor in both.
One of the strengths of this memoir is its unique structure. Each chapter of Motion Dazzle focuses on the day of her son’s birthday and then explores Cox’s childhood, involvement in figure skating, and her relationship with her mother. Motion Dazzle is also written in parts as a letter directly to her son, who never had the chance to get to know his grandmother. I’m sure it will always be hard for Cox not to think of the fact that her mother died on her son’s first birthday. However, what matters above all the painful memories is that Cox is the mother she is because of her own mother. Regardless of the complications or challenges Cox and her mother have always shown up for each other from a place of care and devotion. I imagine she’s telling her son, love can never be perfect but it is unconditional and an unwavering commitment especially from a mother to child.
“The story I‘m trying to tell is about being loved and getting hurt even despite that love. It’s about screwing up, strength and weakness, success and failure, and many errors and triumphs in between.
I existed because of someone, alongside someone, yet it was impossible to fully know her, given how she deflected attention. I present these details in accumulation in order to remember and also not deflect.
Connecting these stories so closely so they become intertwined on the page highlights the joys and struggles of raising a young child while caring for an aging parent.”
Often care-giving, especially for older people, means floundering around trying to do what is best. For a period, Cox moved her mother from Delaware to an attached apartment on her house in New York. The situation is stressful for both of them. Her mother is confused without the familiarity of her own belongings and feels trapped. Eventually Cox moves her back to Delaware but always wonders if this decision hastened her decline. Similarly, when Cox makes the decision to focus on her son’s birthday instead of calling her mother or being present with her in the hospital, she knows it is the right thing to do for her and her son but can’t help but feel regret.
Cox’s mother repeatedly asks her to never forget her, and Motion Dazzle is a promise kept. Not simply chronicling the illnesses that started to take hold of her and the dementia that erased who she was, but the essence of what made her special. At one point, Cox addresses her son directly referencing the ”triple squeeze” of each other’s hands to mean I love you, what she also did with her mother. This recording of memories and rituals maps the course of generational love in a family.
Emily Webber is a reader of all the things hiding out in South Florida with her husband and son. A writer of criticism, fiction, and nonfiction, her work has appeared in the Ploughshares blog, The Writer, Five Points, The Rumpus, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. She’s the author of a chapbook of flash fiction, Macerated.
