From the time I can remember, books were part of my life. Every birthday and holiday simply added to our book collections. Every week a library visit to find even more new worlds and friends and stories. I can't remember a time in my life that I was surrounded by books. There have been times where reading has taken a backseat to other things but the books have always been there. From my earliest memories, books have been there. And from about the age of 4 I've been reading them myself. Of course, had there been internet and blogs and book reviews when I was a kid, perhaps I wouldn't have procrastinated and despised book reports so much. (Though my Mom occasionally refers to my reviews as book reports!) And all of this...I blame my Mother.
How my sister and I grew up in the same house, so close in age, with the same influences and have such opposite relationships with books I will never understand. Growing up with a Mom who read, read to us, and encouraged reading gave my entire life such dimension. The places I've visited, the people I've met, all in pages of books. As life tends to do, things get busy and time gets short and Mom's interests moved away from reading and into other hobbies. Counted cross stitch (something we all share), genealogy (seriously driving halfway cross the country to visit a courthouse is really a thing), the computer and general life. But then, she discovered the Kindle app. OK, well truth is I downloaded it for her, hooked her up with my Kindle library, and the fire was rekindled. Before long, she was totally over my library (she didn't get too far into mine before realizing what she was missing) and wanted her own. Mom's first Amazon account was created. Which was a short hop to convincing her to join Goodreads, to a peer pressure hop to actually rating books there. She even posted a review! One, and she did it grudgingly but proof that peer pressure works! It wasn't long before I needed a book from the library as I had received the sequel to it but wanted to read the first one. Mom had read the book before I picked it up from her. All my review books are mailed to her house (you know so they don't get stolen while I'm at work) and I think she gets more excited about a package coming than I do now. It always seems to come back to books.
Mom is the reason I love books. I like to think that I'm the reason she's rekindled her love of books. As I thought about Mother's Day coming up and what I wanted to say about my Mom it always came back to books. Mom is the reason this blog exists, if you really thing about it. Who knew all those years ago that there would be this thing called the internet and world wide web. Who knew that we'd have computers that sat on our laps and we could take them with us. Who knew that book reports could actually be a good thing! I have attempted to try to take a picture of Ma over the last couple of weeks with her books (computer or real) but wasn't able to pull it off while still keeping my life. So instead I'm pulling one of my favorites from the collection I was able to get, only because there was witnesses to prevent murder!
I love you Ma! 💕
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