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| Momma with my siblings and me |
Momma, I love you and honor your gift of the love of reading. And always will.
My Momma Had Words with
Me
I don’t know
if it’s true anywhere else, but in the South, to “have words with” someone means
to fuss, argue, or reprimand. My momma had another purpose for having words with me, for me, and around me. We
didn’t discuss why people read or why it was important. My siblings and I just
read. The power, magic, and glory of words surrounded us. No lectures were
needed. No punishment was forthcoming to make us read. It was second nature to
read. After all, our parents read in front of us every day. Momma focused on
fiction while Daddy read the newspaper, biographies, and his professional
journals.
So, it was all Momma’s fault that my
father-in-law was shocked when my daddy built bookshelves that covered half the
walls in our study from the floor to ten-foot ceiling. With wide eyes, he said,
“No one has that many books!”
My husband
shrugged. “She does. Everyone in her family does.” He knew there would be no
wasted space in our study.
It was Momma’s
fault that we take delight in words. She gave us no choice in the matter. From
the time we were toddlers, we all had library cards and joined the summer
reading program at the regional library branch in our home town. Every week, we
checked out five books. All the librarians knew us by name.
How do you feed a growing reading
habit? Momma knew. She made sure there were books to read that challenged us.
She made reading more books fun and expected. When our abilities to read
outstripped our ages and we needed bigger, more complex books, Momma checked
out adult books for us on her own library card. As the school librarian at my
elementary school, she found harder and harder books for me to read when I had
read everything at the lower levels. I clearly remember reading Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson in the
fifth grade. It was my first adult novel and I’ll never forget holding the
large book and being carried away into the Southwest by the words.
In time, my siblings and I found our
own preferred genres. When given a list of three hundred books for
college-bound students in the 1960’s, we attacked it from different angles. The
fact that the complete works of Shakespeare and the great Greek historians were
available in our home, made it easy to get started. My sister loves literature.
My brother has a taste for biography, science, history, and true life adventure
books. I read history, fiction of all types, and poetry.
As voracious
readers, we are the people who keep bookstores—large, small and online—in
business. We are the people who always have up-to-date library cards. Our
to-be-read lists of new books and old favorites are extensive. None of us is
bored as long as there is something to read. And that isn’t likely to happen if
we live a thousand years.
It’s Momma’s
fault that there is a longstanding family joke about the end of civilization.
If an asteroid or other near extinction event occurred, our combined libraries
would form the basis for restarting science, math, history, and literature. We
could quickly raise man’s knowledge back to its former heights.
The majesty
and beauty of the words I grew up with created the desire to shape and form my
own stories, to create new adventures, new people to meet, and new places to
go. Momma encouraged me. She kept the poetry I wrote as an eight-year-old. Her
simple acceptance made no obstacle insurmountable. Her faith that I could do
anything I wanted allowed me to experiment and try different styles. She not
only taught me to love words, but the persistence it takes to shape, order, and
arrange them in coherent ways. When she gave me the love of words, she gave me
the tools to accomplish what I desired to do. She gave me the ability to tell
stories that soothe hurts, inspire challenges, and entertain. My mother gave me
life—physically, mentally, and emotionally. She gave me dreams and encouraged
me to strive to reach for them. My mother gave me words to share and the persistence
to achieve the dream of being a writer. She still encourages me to write and
inspires me with her own voracious reading.
Thank you,
Momma, for having words with me. I love you.
