I read a post on Facebook about children having more complex imaginations if they read fiction as a child, and it reminded me of the 20 volume box set of Moby books my mom got for me when I was little. These books were cheaply made, paperback, of course, and usually sold as a set, though you could buy them individually.
My mom bought me a set of them when I was about 10 years old. I had already been reading for about 7-ish years at that point, having picked up album covers and reading them out loud at the tender age of 2 1/2 and 3 years of age.
I remember reading the word “oscillating” at 4. I saw it on my aunt’s fan in her kitchen, and I said out loud “oscillating” (I pronounced it ‘oskillating’) and my aunt said “what did you say?” and I replied “oscillating” (this time pronounced as ossillating). I don’t quite recall why I made the adjustment to the word, but it “felt” right, and I like to think that perhaps I’d read the word years before and it clicked that this is what that word meant.
I’m not sure, but anyway, I love reading. I love it. I love it. I cannot tell you how much I love it. I read every day. I read every night. I read fiction, non-fiction, it does not matter, I enjoy reading. I do a lot of social media reading, too, which is the bulk of my reading.
Anyway, my mother bought me those books, and I read them cover to cover dozens of times: David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (still a personal favorite), The Time Machine, Oliver Twist, The War of the Worlds, well, at least part 1 anyway, turns out part 2 didn’t make it into the book, so it was another 4 or 5 years before I realized there was more to the story. 😀
So on and so on and so on, and I wore these books out. As I said, they were cheaply made books, and by two years time, all of them had suffered significant damage due to my loving them so much and also being a child who tried to take care of their things, but you know how it is, even at their best, children still aren’t quite as skilled at maintaining such things, or at least I wasn’t.
The thing is, though cheaply made, my mom paid quite a bit for them. I mean, this was a 20 count selection of books that came in a big box, and while I never got the exact figure, I did look them up years later and found out at the time they sold for decent money.
We never had decent money growing up, but she worked as a pre-school teacher, and she worked a lot of overtime, and so I have a feeling those books came straight from her own pay so that I could read until my heart’s content.
Hey mom, wherever you are on your journey, I still love you, and I love what you did for me. You supported my desire to read at such a young age, when others said I would be “slow” and have a severe learning disability because I was born preemie, you pushed their words away, and you fed my mind, and you gave me everything I needed to prove them wrong.
Not only did I not have a learning disability, I excelled in all of my studies. I devoured science, literature, mathematics, I wrote short stories at 5 years of age, I wrote novel length stories at 10 years of age. I wrote my first parody at 12, and I still write piles and piles of songs just to write them. Yeah, songs, because I went to gifted classes for music at age 9. I had perfect pitch, and could compose music via notation.
While life rarely takes us where we think we’re going to go, my childhood was filled with wonder, even though we had so little, because my mom did everything she could to show the world that her child was just as capable, just as intelligent.
In the process of all of this, I absorbed her kindness, compassion, empathy, and even her sense of humor. Even when I am down on myself for some perceived failure, I can’t stay angry long, because it’s unfair to me, and that is what I have been learning. I have been reworking myself to accept my shortcomings while encouraging myself to grow and branch out, to create new ways of seeing and doing things.
I’m no braggart, but I will be proud of my accomplishments. I will take up some space to speak up for myself and my capabilities just as readily as when I speak up for a friend, because my mom was my first friend, and I should be a friend to myself in her absence.
My childhood was filled with sadness, pain, and trauma. That is a life of poverty in the United States. It doesn’t build character, it just hurts you. You don’t learn from it, you just get hurt. You just gain trauma. I am so fortunate that I had an ally in my corner, someone who believed in me.
I want that for everyone, and I know that not everyone gets to have that kind of support.
It’s funny, because I tell people I had two major influences growing up: Mr Rogers, and George Carlin.
That’s still true, but I have to say that neither of them compares to the first role model I had in my life, a person who, when she was taken, shook me to the very core, but left me with a very strong foundation: my mom.
I miss you mom, and I am grateful for all you did for me.
One of the things I still do to this day is encourage children to read. I look around at the world and I see an abandonment of hope, of dreams, and while I fight to change the way our world conducts its business to the detriment of its own people, I try to instill hopes and dreams into children by providing them with books, by showing interest in their hobbies.
I want them to dream as I got to dream, and explore their own inner selves that I got to explore. Every child should be able to look inward, into their own universe, and find peace no matter their circumstance outside of themselves. You never know when, as an adult, you’ll suddenly need it.
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P.S. Donate to your local library, and tell your favorite teacher or Librarian you appreciate all of the work they do.
