Cherishing my late mother's abiding love of books
For 40 years, my mom and my aunt had a ritual. Whenever they’d get new books, from whatever source, all the books would first go to my aunt. Then, after she read them, she passed them to my mom. They did this because they read so much and so often that they didn’t want to get confused, miss something, or re-read a book that they’d already read.
My mother’s bookcase, as a result, became a sort of museum for all the books they’d loved throughout the years. It stretches wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling in my parents’ living room, lovingly crammed, a dramatic statement.
The rows are often two deep, and books that won’t fit there are stuck on top of other books in crannies you didn’t think were possible to find. Every time I thought she couldn’t possibly fit another one in there, she did.
After my mom passed away recently, my aunt and I were standing in front of that bookshelf, hands on hips, looking at it in awe. In one of many understatements I’d make over the course of those weeks (“I’m going to miss her,” “She was amazing,” “I feel incredibly sad”), I commented, “Well, the woman sure loved her books.”
She didn’t just love her books. They were, in many ways, her life. My mom loved reading like a sweet tooth craves Gummi Bears. She was unable to resist cracking open a new spine.
My mom was a woman of simple pleasures. She loved being outside near water (the beach or a pool). She loved her dogs, she loved candy (hence, those Gummi Bears). She was a crafter — she made amazing jewelry, crocheted blankets and scarves, molded candles and soaps. She adult-colored long after the fad slipped away. A jigsaw puzzle was always sitting half-done on one table or another in her house.
But most of all, she loved to read — and she encouraged and instilled that crazy obsession in me.
So many of the memories that have been flitting in my head over the last few weeks have involved my mom and me and our mutual love of books. How I’d pass on the newly released Harry Potter books to her as soon as I finished them (which was usually that first weekend). How she’d stacked rows and rows and rows of tattered Harlequin romances at least three-deep on the top of her closet when I was a kid, hundreds of them that she’d picked up by the bagful from used bookstores. How excited she’d get each time my husband and I would bring her a box of review copies of new releases we’d gotten in the mail.
Her words of wisdom (and suspicion) passed down to me: “Never trust people who don’t have any books in their house.”
When my mother discovered Goodreads, it was like a 7-year-old walking into Disney World for the first time. She loved the giveaways, sometimes entering dozens in one day. She’d call me with excitement every time she’d win one, and then would faithfully read the books and review them for the authors. Sometimes she’d even contact the writer directly just to let him or her know how much she liked the book.
I don’t know too many readers who aren’t also writers. My mom was one of those few people in my life who read for sheer and utter pleasure, who devoured a serial-killer novel in one sitting and then turned around and picked up a romance the next day.
So many times when visiting her, I’d wake in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and find her on the couch, fallen asleep, a well-worn paperback pressed open against her chest. She was the first person to teach me the warm, cozy feeling of having a wall lined with books, and the thrill of walking out of the library with an armful of new titles.
To say I’m going to miss her is perhaps the biggest understatement I could ever make. She was my champion and my hero. Whenever I published something new, she was always among the first to read it, share it, and tell me how proud she was of me.
When I decided to move to Virginia to get my MFA in creative writing, neither my mother or my father even batted an eye. Go for it, they said, despite the fact that it wasn’t the most practical pursuit one’s daughter could undertake.
After she died, I got numerous messages from writer friends of mine remembering how warm and kind my mom was to them. She’d messaged them on Facebook about their books, had conversations with them, attended their book launches. Some of this correspondence I hadn’t even known about. She just liked writers, admired what they did.
Yes, for better or worse, my mother raised me a reader and a writer. She taught me about the power of words, and yet, oddly, it is exactly those words that right now are failing me. For there really is no way to adequately express the hole that’s been left in her absence, the staggering loss that cannot be fixed.
Coming back to those understatements again — life is too short. And entirely unfair. And yet, I’m comforted by the fact that my mother lived — even if not long enough — a happy life, surrounded by friends and family, doing the simple things she loved most. She loved stories of all kinds, from novels to neighborhood gossip, and she fueled that passion inside of me and in everyone she encountered.
And, really, I suppose that’s about all any of us can hope for — that our legacy will live on, somehow, in stories.
Tara Laskowski is the author of two short-story collections, Modern Manners For Your Inner Demons and Bystanders, which won the Balcones Fiction Prize. She has been the editor of SmokeLong Quarterly since 2010.
