1. 4. Norma Fox Mazer’s “In the Blink of an Eye”
1. Reeve Lindbergh’s “Flying”
[My father] was persuading and coaxing and willing the plane to do what he wanted; he was leaning that airplane, like a bobsled, right down to where it could safely land.  He could feel its every movement, just as if it were part of his own body.  My father wasn’t flying the airplane, he was being the airplane.  That’s how he did it.  That’s how he had always done it.  Now I knew.
2. Karen Hesse’s “Waiting for Midnight”
The rest of that night I slept sweetly, peacefully, for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long.  I slept deeper than the voice of Howard Bruce’s father, a sleep that might have come all the way from Heaven.
3. Kyoko Mori’s “Learning to Swim”
Swimming now in the clear-water lakes of Wisconsin, where I live, I sometimes imagine my mother riding the waves of the sea, cresting over the top and falling gently without ever hitting bottom, laughing her easy musical laugh.  She could be right next to me:  we are separated only by glimmering water.
 4. Norma Fox Mazer’s “In the Blink of an Eye”
It is from that moment that I stop crying.  Although I don’t know it then, sitting in that chair in our living room, I have passed over a line—the invisible line between childhood and whatever it is that comes next.  Not adulthood, not that quickly, but the beginning of the long, long, walk into another world.

2. Adam Bagdasarian’s “Going Steady”
I would like to say that I ran after her, but I didn’t. I would like to say that I held her in my arms and comforted her until she stopped crying, but I didn’t do that either. I would like to say that we parted that night with a warm and enduring understanding of each other, and that we remain good friends to this day, but we didn’t and we aren’t.
What I did do was watch her run into the house. Then I smiled. I smiled because I had stood my ground—because I had had the strength and character to look a girl in the eye and break up with her. So proud was I of my achievement, so sure was I of my irresistible attraction to women, that ten minutes later I went back to the party, found Eileen Weitzman, and asked her to go steady.
Emulating a Mentor
Directions: Choose one of the mentor texts above and emulate the way in which the author concludes his/her memoir. Pay attention to the way in which the author is using written craft, to the language of the piece, and to the way in which the author delivers the message to the reader. Complete your ‘emulating a mentor’ writing in the box below.