My fourth grader has a science project due May 4th and a Mission Project due May 18th.
My high school sophomore’s paper on comparing and contrasting the Holocaust to The Rwandan genocide is due after Easter Break.
And then my college senior is graduating May 22 ,2009. The Baccalaureate service takes place the night before, and graduation is 9 am on Friday the next day.
Never mind Mother’s Day is in May.
The life of a writer–who’s also a mom and a wife. I hate it each time I write mom before wife in my life description. Were it not for my husband I’d not have these children. That would be a shame and a great loss. And without him I certainly wouldn’t be living out my passion.
Neither would my daughters have a warm, sturdy shoulder upon which to lean when times are rough between me and them–say like when we’re just not understanding each other. Not understanding each other usually means the part of them that is akin to me is rearing its head and roaring louder than I care to hear.
I’m not such a bad person–or mother.
And they are wonderful children.
That’s why I plan out time to work with them and assist on their projects.
The road to independence is paved with much dependence upon parents.
My mother was not of that thought. Despite all she was present for me in more ways than one–some good, and some not so good.
I try to repeat what she did that worked for me and leave the rest as her having done the best she could. It’s scary when I meet her spirit in fellow mothers who are my age and younger. It let’s me know that our misunderstandings and disagreements had less to do with the huge age difference between me and my mother. She was 4o years my senior.
During my childhood that was a lot compared to the differences in ages between my peers and their mothers. Today I’m younger than most mothers with daughters who are the age of my eldest and middle daughters. And for those mothers who have daughters the age of my youngest that is 10, most cannot believe I have one about graduate college.
Why am I saying all this?
The life of a writer is crazy–at best.
My mother was not a writer. And yet she wrote a lot–speeches she gave at various civic and church organizations, etc. She liked to orate. My mother was a teacher (K-12). Towards the end of her 36-year career she became a reading specialist.
As I have said in many posts prior and comments I’ve left on the blogs of other writers, I have stacks of books beside my bed–and let me add, under my pillows. I love to read in bed.
I suppose my life of writing and reading–and helping my children along in school is my ode to my mother’s life.
How does your life of writing and reading reflect or speak to the influence or lack thereof concerning your parents?
While I tend to feel that my parents had little influence on my personal passion for writing, I know better; I just haven’t figured it out yet. Neither was a writer, and beyond periodicals, neither was much of a reader. My influences were teachers. No doubt about it.
As a father of four, I can tell you, without a doubt, my kids won’t have to wonder if I’ve had an influence on their love of reading or writing–I can only hope their recollection is a positive one.
All four of my kids are voracious readers, but timid writers, and I’m afraid their timidity stems from my own demanding standards for quality; standards I apply to myself and to the many writers who float in and out of my life, both through my writing communities and, like you, on my nightstand.
While I encourage their writing and provide feedback when asked, they each protect their writer’s heart in a way that we all do, I guess, when rendering ourselves so vulnerable.
My son will graduate university this spring with degrees in business and sports journalism. He writes.
My eldest daughter is a singer/songwriter. She’ll spend this summer backpacking Europe and I suspect she’ll journal and write songs all along the way.
My 16 year old daughter is several chapters into a YA novel that has everything it takes to do well among girls her age. Lot’s of personal discover, pain, confusion and redemption.
And my 14 year old daughter has journaled since she was old enough to write. She guards her pages with tenacity, and I hope someday she finds the courage to write something we can all share.
I can totally relate to this story. My eldest who is graduating college in a month is a writer at heart. A European history with a love of politics and economics, she’ll be entering a graduate school of international studies. She also has aspirations for crafting stories that she will bring to film and direct. She reads widely, from The Economist Magazine to Dangerous Liasons. My middle, despite her dyslexia, loves to read along with listening to the audiobook versions to stories she loves. She also plans novels in her head, and as they are forming, discusses with me the best way to organize them on paper. My youngest, who writes great stories with excellent plots sums it up for all of us when she says, “I don’t like to race through books when reading them. I like to savor them.”
I was certainly influenced to write by my mother.
My grandmother was a great influence on my reading. Her bookcase, though small, was full of books. I whiled away many hours sitting on the carpet in front of that bookcase taking each book, opening it and leafing through, reading each page and absorbing the pictures on the page. It was in one of my grandmother’s books that I first learned of Joe Louis, the boxer, and Max Schmelling. My grandmother also subscribed to a number of magazines, one of which provided me with images of paper dolls that I pasted to cardboard and then when dry, cut out and with stands that I made stood them up. The entire collection of over fifty paper dolls became the choir of singers I stood on a tier of books on my piano, their voices ringing in my head as I played the piano.
My imagination, and love of reading, and writing certainly grew under the influences of my mother and maternal grandmother. And it would seem that in following my path, I have given way for my children to expand the wings of their creativity in the same way.
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