Swoosie Kurtz says she was "never interested in those celebrity tell-all things," and knew that if she ever wrote a book, "I wanted it to be for a larger purpose." As things have turned out, her new memoir, "Part Swan, Part Goose: An Uncommon Memoir of Womanhood, Work, and Family" fulfills her hopes abundantly. "Part Swan, Part Goose" combines tales of the Emmy and two-time Tony-winning "Mike & Molly" actress' prolific career, her parents' lives — and Swoosie's poignant and funny journey as caregiver for her mom, now a 98-year-old dementia patient who lives with her.

"I hope that people can read it and laugh and cry and that people who find themselves going through the same journey won't feel so alone. It can be a lonely journey," she notes.

"My parents gave me the world. They gave me such an amazing childhood and life. They sent me out into the world with this incredible foundation of self-esteem and confidence and humor. We were ridiculously close," says Swoosie — whose name itself connotes her late father, Frank's history as a highly-decorated airman of World War II, pilot of the B-17D that was known as the Swoose; part Swan, part Goose. Frank was also an Olympic athlete. Swoosie's mother, Margo, chronicled their larger-than-life life story in her own memoir, the 1945 "My Rival, the Sky."

"I wanted to honor them, especially these last years with my mom. It's been the greatest full- circle gift of my life, parenting a parent," she says. "You don't see it coming. There's no handbook for it, and you just don't know what to do. These caregivers that I have — and we're so fortunate to have them — we've developed an alchemy to her care, balancing the meds and the moods and the pills and the poop and the pain. It's kind of like NASCAR, at a pit stop. Someone's on the wheels while someone else is on the hood."

Yet still, every so often, the real Margo "emerges from the fog and surprises me," as Swoosie puts it. Those times, she told some amazing stories — funny things that happened on war bond drives, for instance. And even in their challenging everyday lives, it's "not all dire. She makes us laugh all the time. The other day she said, 'Darling, how is your husband?' I said, 'You know, I'm not married.' 'Oh,' she said, 'I thought you might want someone in your area.'"

Kurtz calls such memorable sound-bites from her mom "Margoisms," and she writes them down. She tells us, "My mother just has this poetic dementia, you know? She comes out with these things. I would get up and put my arms around her and hug her, put my head on her breast and she'd say, 'Oh, the soft land.'" Another time, her mother let her know, "'I wanted to tell you something, but it slipped under a chair.'

"I was leaving the house to go somewhere yesterday," adds Kurtz, "and she said, 'Are you going to New York?' And I said, 'No, sweetheart. I'll be back soon.' And she said, 'Oh, well, I'll just stay here and enjoy a last spray of life."

With "Mike & Molly" on hiatus until July, the actress will be promoting her tome into the summer.

Balancing her care-giving with the demands of her busy career has had its own share of challenges. There have been times, she says, when she needed to go to work and be funny even though Margo was in the hospital with one of several ailments.

"You just get through it. You just keep chopping wood, as my dad always said." And she's learned, "You've got to take care of yourself. It's like the oxygen mask on the plane. You have to put it on yourself first or you can't be there for anyone else. You have to take care of your own body, your own exercise, your own social life. You feel a little guilty about it at times, but you have to go to it to be at your best for them."