I have been reading blogs and other essays about mothers and books today. In most of the world (although not here in Ireland) it is mother’s day today and people are remembering or celebrating their mothers in all sorts of ways. Those with a love of books, reading and/or writing have been reminiscing about the ways in which their mothers introduced them to books and gifted them a with a love of reading.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot today and have come to the conclusion that I don’t have a specific memory, a clear first moment of which I am aware from which moment onwards reading was a fact in my life.
As far as I’m concerned books were always a part of my life. There are pictures of me taking books of the bottom shelf in a book case, taken before I could walk. Another picture, taken at the same time shows me in my mother’s lap while we’re reading a book I can’t remember but which must have been about dogs, judging by the cover.
I can remember reading and being read everything Annie M.G. Schmidt wrote for children as well as those books with the golden covers. I also have vivid memories of learning to read in school (aap, noot, mies, wim, zus, jet…) but have no idea what the first book was I ever read by myself.
I do remember that books were part of every celebration. Every birthday and every Christmas (or, since we're talking about Holland, Sinterklaas) would include at least one book as a present. And my mother would come up with excuses to give us books. My brother and I always got to pick a book for Children's book week, but that priviledge would be extended to the adult book week too. Every report card, be it good, bad or indifferent would warrant a trip to a bookshop as would the start of the summer holidays. And since both my parents were fervent readers we find ourselves in bookshops just because they were there a lot of the time as well. Rarely would we leave without at least one new book for each of us.
When I was about 13 I had read every single juvenile book my library had on offer that I was even remotely interested in, and my mother had to write a special letter to the library staff asking them to allow me to start picking books from the adult section. The library obviously thought I was too young for such a privilege and tried to discourage my mother. But she firmly believed that I wouldn’t have the patience to read anything I was still too young for and could therefore safely be let lose in that huge and very tempting section of the library that had so far been forbidden territory. She was right.
I have lots of fond memories of the library. I remember waiting impatiently for the new Thea Beckman book to come out and being the very first borrower to get my hands on a copy when it arrived. And I treasure the memories I have of the time when I was asked to be part of the junior judging panel of my local library. We read 10 books that year and picked Thea Beckman’s “Mijn vader woont in Brazilie” as our favourite. The author joined us for an afternoon in the local arts centre and I had the honour of making a speech about the book.
It is such a shame that this took place before we had video cameras and that all I have to remember this event by are my memories.
As I got older my reading tastes got ever closer to my mothers and by the time I moved out to go to university we were sharing authors and books, alerting each other to new discoveries that we felt the other just had to read.
A favourite of both of us was Maeve Binchy and we read her books as soon as they became available.
In January of 1990 my mother died. She was only 53 years old. In December of the same year I was in Eason’s bookshop in Dublin and picked up two copies of Binchy’s "A Circle of Friends". With Christmas coming up there was a long cue for the check out and I stood there for minutes with my two copies. It was only when I was next in line that I realised that this time I didn’t need to buy two copies. With tears in my eyes I abandoned my place in the cue and returned one of the copies to the table I had gotten in from, turned around and went back to the end of the cue to pay for my one copy. My mother would have loved the book though.
