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For my entire life, almost every room of my house has been adorned with wall-to-wall bookshelves. As I’ve gotten older, the shelves have overflowed with books, pooling onto tables, floors or wherever else has space. Some of the older shelves dip in the middle, showing the weight they’ve continued to gain over the years. To some, this plethora of books may seem excessive, but to my mother, and now myself, any slight opening is just room for another good book.
My mother has always been a literature fanatic, working hard to curate an extensive collection of novels and publications from all genres. When I was younger and began to similarly digest books at an increasingly rapid pace, she was there as I finished each one to give me new suggestions and recommendations. She took the time to guide me around the house to find my next read in accordance with what seemed like her own personal, indecipherable library system, and every time, I ended the tour with a different book in my hand.
It’s no surprise that I adopted a similar fondness for books after watching my mother read. There was, and still is, not a single day I don’t see her constantly reading. Rain or shine, she sits on the front porch, engrossed in whatever has her momentary attention. Now, at the rate my mother devours books, rather than swapping out hard copies every time she completes one, she totes an e-reader around with her wherever she goes. She actually owns two, but since she always has one turned on and in hand, whenever one of them runs out of battery, she plugs it in and swaps to the other, so she doesn’t have to wait and stop reading while it charges.
I, however, have not moved on from my love of physical copies, and luckily for me, we have plenty. My mother taught me the incomparable feeling of cracking open a new book’s fresh spine and smelling the aged paper and glue holding the pages together. Whenever I would start a book, I’d sit in my room for hours consuming every word. Each book pushed me to read more and more, even if there were parts or words I didn’t understand.
Whenever that happened, I would approach my mom, holding whatever book I was reading to an open page, pointing to the unfamiliar word or phrase. I would ask her what it meant, and rather than just telling me what she already knew, she’d either silently point to a familiar shelf or tell me, “You know where the dictionary is.”
So, each time I encountered an unknown word, I would pull the enormous dictionary from its home and slowly flip through the pages to find what I was looking for. Eventually, as I grew and began reading more advanced literature, I started keeping a notebook full of these new words, writing each one alongside their definition just in case I saw them again later. I created my own dictionary of words I liked, found interesting or simply didn’t know before. While now she can’t force me to pick up the dictionary and flip through it, I still take the time to search up every word I don’t recognize and write it down just in case.
In what seems like a natural progression, my instilled adoration for reading has turned into an immense love for writing. Seeing my mother enjoy the written word so much inspired me to begin attempting to create my own stories to entertain her as much as the books she purchased did. At first, I was frustrated that rather than just enjoying what I wrote for her, my mother sat with me and corrected my writing instead of praising my work. She would walk me through the process of fixing each faulty sentence, misspelled word or incorrect grammatical structure, telling me what I did wrong and how to make it better. Even now I come to her with almost everything I write, specifically requesting her keen eye to find and point out each area I could adjust to make better.
To this day, I have never seen someone who loves books and reading as much as my mother does. Without her, I would never have discovered my love for reading and writing, much less end up basing my future around it. So, all I can say is: I’m glad my mom taught me how to read.
