My Mother

My mother died yesterday. My sister and I were with her, sitting by her side, holding her hand.

My mother is the reason I became a writer. When I was six years old, she gave me one of those marble composition notebooks and told me that it was to be my poetry writing notebook. So I started writing poetry. What else could I do?

My mother hated to spend money, but our house was always filled with books: library books from the biweekly pilgrimage we made to the public library every other Saturday morning without fail; free sample books that we got every year when we went with her to the New Jersey teachers' convention in Atlantic City and cruised the aisles of the convention hall for examination copies of Catcher in the Rye and Anna Karenina.

My mother gave us summer writing projects. The most arduous was our massive Sturbridge Village report, which we were required to make after our family vacation to the colonial village in Massachusetts - complete with a story, assigned to us by our mother, written in the voice of an 18th century girl. I did not feel more relief upon defending my doctoral dissertation than I did after finishing my Sturbridge Village report.

My mother was a published writer herself: of articles for Instructor magazine, of children's stories for Humpty-Dumpty and Jack and Jill, and in her later years, of exquisite letters to the Boulder Daily Camera - vignettes of life in Boulder and warm commentary on articles in the paper. I found dozens of the letters - each one typed on her manual typewriter with carbon paper, so she'd keep a copy, with the published letter paper-clipped to it - when Cheryl and I went through her files this week.

My mother was so proud of my career as a writer. She loved to come to my book signings and buy multiple copies of my books, even though of course I would have given her as many as she wanted for free. When each of my books was published, she was always convinced that THIS one would win the Newbery. She was always wrong about that, of course, but I have to say that she wasn't wrong about much else. She was a keen and wry observer of human nature, quick to detect faults and flaws, but equally quick with her lavish appreciation.

And now I have to try to imagine what life will be without her.