Literary Autobiography

‘Read me a story.’

I can remember the dim light of my bedside-table lamp glowing against the Beauty and the Beast comforter smoothed across my lap as I heard these words. I can still see my mother, striding across the carpet towards my bed to tuck me in. She would casually snatch a book from my shelf as she moved by, bringing a small gust of wind with her as she climbed into bed with me. Even when I was very young and slept in what we called a ‘troll bed’, she always found a way to curl herself around me—taking up only half of the space. I remember how her hair felt against my cheek, a little sticky from her hairspray and frizzed on the outside from the stress of the day in the office.

She would put the book on my lap and open it for me, encouraging me by insisting that she loved how I read the story—‘your voice sounds so nice.’ No child can resist the compliments of her mother and so I obliged, taking a deep breath and starting with the first sentence.

In my first years of reading, she would pick out The Berenstein Bears Have Too Much Fun, or the Dr. Seuss classic Take Me to the Zoo and I remember the way she would wait for each sentence—encouraging me while she held me in her cocoon. As I gained confidence in the words, she held me tighter until the last page when her head would be against mine and it was like we were one person reading.

As I got a few years older, my mother would still come to tuck me in—her pajamas buttons slightly off and a copy of Roald Dahl’s The BFG under the crook of her arm. She would set herself up in the same fashion as always, her arm encircling my shoulders and her cold feet warming against my leg. As I began to read, I could see my mother’s eyes passing over each word. I could see her solemn expression reassuring what I was reading. But as the rhythm of my voice continued over each of the pages, her eyelids would droop.

‘Are you listening, Mommy?’

‘Mhmmmm’

‘Mom?’

‘What.’

‘Open your eyes.’

‘I’m just resting them. Keep going, you’re doing a good job. You just said that the little girl saw the giant…’

She was right, and I was convinced she was still with me. So I would read until her head dropped all the way down onto my shoulder and her breath became even and throaty. Then, when it was time to sleep, I would carefully reach around my mother to put the book back on the bedside table and turn off the light. I would fall asleep with her still wrapped around me until my father came into my room and woke her up. Some nights he would just coax her back into her own bed. But some nights I could tell he was mad, and he would yell at me—‘Don’t let your mother fall asleep here, it’s not good for her.’ I was never sure why it was a bad thing. It felt good to have her next to me as I was sleeping after she would leave us for London or China any given week. Someone had to earn a living in the house. But someone had to tuck their children in too.

That’s how I came to love and read literature. Those nights that my mother was home and I could sit with her and show her how wonderfully my voice carried through the story we would read together. I would read her Shel Silverstein poems to make her laugh, but the rhythm of the poems would just make her fall asleep faster. I would read her my fantasy books to show her how I could change my voice between the different mythical characters. Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons was a favorite on the rotation of books. As long as I had something to read to her, she would stay in my bed and fall asleep with me. Reading still gives me that comfort. I’ll curl up with a David Sedaris, or Everything is Illuminated and still feel my mother with me. I feel like she is still watching over my shoulder to make sure that all the words are right, the smell of perfume, toothpaste and a little bit of sweat coming off of her. These authors, Milan Kundera and Alice Munro, keep me close to them like she would and keep me safe. They are my literary guardian angels.