First off, I have to say that I’m so glad that my mother replaced my broken crockpot for Christmas. I had forgotten how liberating it can be to have dinner burbling away in one pot. It can do almost anything, and you don’t have to be a genius to use it, either.
Over at litpark.com, Susan is asking what we all read as kids, and what we loved about it all. I have so many treasured books, I was threatening to run off the comment space, so I left it short, and decided to take it up here.
When we were kids, my mother would tell us each day that we had to have some “quiet time”. There were four of us, and I shared a room with my sister after our little brother came along. So she and I would troup off to our room, with its pink rose wallpaper (another story, but my sister hates pink to this day – I’m slowly adding tiny bits of it back to my life), where we’d grab a big stack of books, and plop on our beds. The rule about quiet time was only that we had to be in our rooms, preferably on our beds, being quiet. My mother hoped that this would lead to a nap, if needed. Now that I’m a mom, I understand her other motive: she needed the quiet, and took that time to read and have a cup of tea or something.
It was during these times that I would be poring through the books that became my lifelong favorites. Blueberries for Sal, We Were Tired of Living In A House, Kingcup Cottage, Mr. Pine’s Mixed Up Signs, and other frivolous books from pop culture. Berenstain Bears, Babar, Curious George, Madeleine, Winnie the Pooh, and Paddington were ones that the three of us younger siblings shared back and forth. My father’s old favorite, Bartholomew and the Oobleck was sometimes pirated upstairs, where we’d giggle over it. My mother’s collection went back even further in time with A Journey to Health Land and a (we’d later find out) first edition copy of Rabbit Hill. We also had Thornton Burgess’ animal series and Beatrix Potter’s as well.
As far back as I can recall, what always captivated me was a good story intermingled with really intriguing artwork. Think about it. You may recall bits and pieces of the exact words from your old favorites, but if you close your eyes, you can probably picture the artwork, like you can recall your childhood home.
As I got older, I got into Ramona Quimby, Little House on the Prairie, the Anastasia Krumpnik series, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Women. I never really read Lloyd Alexander’s Black Cauldron series, but shifted over to his Vesper Holly series, once I found that she was a junior female Indiana Jones. My little brother used to have me read him Vesper Holly’s adventures, replete with funny voices for all the characters.
We were a reading family.
For road trips, my mother used to transfer readings on vinyl to audiocassette for us when we’d our biannual trip out to Montana. Later, she would read us the Hobbit every day of our trip.
At school, I used to get busted, all the time, for having books secreted away in my desk or tucked into my textbooks.
At home, my parents had books crammed into every space that seemed meant for the purpose.
I wasn’t so formal. My “pending” stack was always teetering near my bed, flashlight tucked under the mattress, where it wouldn’t be confiscated
My father’s parents are avid readers as well. I got my Anne of Green Gable collection from my father’s mother. His sister, my godmother, passed along her (and my grandmother’s) vintage Nancy Drew collection to me as well. My sister got the Thornton Burgess set.
When we would be visiting my mother’s parents in Montana, they too had oodles of books I’d never seen. My grandmother was an old-fashioned school marm, and while my grandfather hadn’t graduated high school, he too read endlessly. It was there that I discovered old gems, Don Sturdy, Bobs (a girl detective), and Jane Withers. I also found The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, and had the same reaction to it that my mother had as girl. I was terrified and thrilled by it.
I did say that this was about my grandmother, though. My mother’s mother. She’s going to be ninety this March. She lost her eyesight to diabetes about fifteen years ago; it was huge blow to her not to be able to wander from room to room anymore, when she’d have a book in every one. Beyond the reading, though, she was a visual artist as well. My mother said she used to paint, but knowing my grandmother as I do, she probably tossed out her work the way she did with other revealing glimpses into her life. By the time we grandchildren came into her life, she had migrated into tailoring for dolls. She made a down-to-the-last-detail replica of my aunt’s wedding dress and hat for a doll; the doll resides in a glass case, where anyone can compare it to the photo on the wall.
She was also the school teacher, who deplored bad grammar, and parents who used baby talk to their children. When my grandfather was talking to my mother in such a fashion, she quipped to him, “Don, she can speak English, why can’t you?”
As I’ve said, I came late to my writing, but I’d been drawing and loving art from toddlerhood. By the time she woke up and realized that I was writing stories, and not just entertaining letters to her, she’d decided that my destiny was to become a children’s writer. It was unfailing that every letter in reply, every phone call, was littered with her urgings to just write a book like that, and illustrate it myself. I never knew how to tell her that I didn’t believe in my artistic talent enough to do it. I’m a competent copyist, but am overwhelmed by frustration because I never took the time to take drawing classes. I don’t know any fundamentals.
I decided to focus just on the writing, and not for kids, despite how much I love that type of book. Now that my grandmother is at the age she’s at, widowed, in assisted living, and, unfortunately, succumbing to mild dementia, I find myself wanting to take those art classes I never had time for. I’m not yet sure what it would look like, but I would like to finally produce what she has long desired me to. And I know just what the dedication will say.
