I had always been a reader, although not the kind of reader my mom would have liked. I begged her to bring me home the next in the Sweet Valley kids series and being crazy with joy when it appeared on our dining room table on Friday nights. My mom lamented that I wasn't reading Black Beauty. I'm just proud that I was so excited over books that I would rather read them in one sitting than watch television.
After being utterly delighted with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I started to listen more to what my mom suggested. She was OLD as far as I was concerned, but she got that one right. I still read Sweet Valley kids and The Babysitter's Club, but when she brought out her old copy of They Loved to Laugh it was unlike anything I ever read.
I read the book utterly enthralled. Is this what reading is? Not just a mild interest in what will happen to my favorite twins Elizabeth and Jessica (I was now reading about their middle school life in the seires Sweet Valley TWINS), but being utterly taken away with someone that I could not quite understand but still feel a connection to?
After that, the next suggestion, Marjorie Morningstar, was an easy decision. I'm glad she waited until I was older for that. I finished that book devestated, but with a better understanding with what was happening to me. My mom had it right.
My mom had it right for a lot of reasons. But mainly, her greatest asset in all of this is that she used to teach high school English. I used to think of her as someone who could correct my grammar in homework, but her skills went far beyond. Could she actually size me up and decide what book would be best for me when?
She didn't say a word when I picked up Of Mice and Men at the tender age of 12 and an avid animal lover. She frowned when she found out I picked up Along Came a Spider arbitrarily off our bookshelf without permission. She never told me no when it came to books. She just suggested. And she suggested well.
A few years later, she remarked that perhaps I would like the book Rebecca. Again, she was right on target. From that I discovered Jane Eyre. I don't think she ever pressured me toward a book or discouraged me either. She knew me, she knew herself, she knew her training, and she placed books before me.
Today, I reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, They Loved to Laugh, Marjorie Morningstar, Rebecca, and Jane Eyre every few years. I wish I could say that it's because they remind me of mom. I loved those books before she was sick, before she died. I love those books because she knew me, because she trusted me. I hope I make the same decisions for my child like she did for me. Placing them before me with the other crappy books, biting her lip, and hoping I found beauty in them.
I am grateful to my core that I remember sitting around my dad, my mom, my brothers reading, and me being frustrated that I couldn't do it. I'm grateful that I got so upset that I couldn't read that I threw open a book in anger and stared at it with all concentration hoping that all it took was sheer will to understand what my everyone else found so fascinating. I'm grateful for Goosebumps, for Sweet Valley Kids, for Harry Potter.
I'm grateful most of all that my mom was right about those books. I'm grateful that I get to share them with her. And although I can't claim that I love these books because she is gone, there is a very sentimental part of me that's gets a little weepy when I read and realize that these are the lines she loved, her eyes read these words too, and we both loved them.
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