Soup and Stories: Post Mother's Day Thoughts

My mother raised me on soup and stories. I was finicky about the former, preferring tomato with so much milk in it that we called it “pink soup”, but insatiable for the latter. In her melodious reading voice, Mama first whet my appetite with Golden Books, later following them with a delectable selection of chapter books: Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, and then Rosemary and the Princess by Josephine Lawrence. How thrilled I was to share a first name with a character in a novel.

Each noon, I entered the kitchen with a stack of favorite books, climbed onto the yellow plastic seat of the kitchen stool, and tucked into a bowl of pink soup, while Mama read story after story. I would make that meal last and linger over dessert, a scoop of vanilla ice cream covered with chocolate Bosco syrup. I’m still not sure when or whether Mama ever ate her lunch.

That diet of soup and stories nourished my dream of becoming a published writer. In secret, before learning to read and write, I turned the pages of books, making up the story and playing at being the author. More than once, I also scribbled in the margins of books, pretending to write.

Years later, while teaching remedial reading and writing classes at a community college, I tried to impart the passion for books that my mother gave me. Of course, my students were not at such an impressionable age as I had been during soup and story time. Still, students with a hunger for knowledge, who developed a taste for books—sampling, savoring, and devouring—and tried new recipes for combining reading and writing skills often delighted me. “Read to your children,” I said to every class, “now if you have children or in the future when you do.” All the cool and ever-changing devices for transmitting ideas may speed and augment communication and perhaps entertain us, but they cannot replace the warm and nourishing experience of reading aloud with loved ones.

In the month of May, reflecting on the loving reading lunchtimes shared with my mother, I recall our special favorite, The Little Mailman of Bayberry Lane, a Rand McNally Book-Elf Book by Ian Munn. This little book is a timeless celebration of the art of communication and of the importance of writing—of issuing invitations to share “apple tarts and little lemon cakes all covered with hickory nuts” and of sending thank-you notes, of communicating our concern and affection for others. The Little Mailman, a chipmunk who leads a cast of charming animal characters, is a messenger of hope. I've never forgotten his greeting to Mrs. Duck: "a yellow letter for you today. Yellow means good news, you know!" Just this spring, my mother sent me a birthday card in a yellow envelope—she has not forgotten either. Bon appetit!

LITERACY FOR LIFE

Being part of the reading and writing online community through forums and sites such as Goodreads.com, AuthorsDen, and Amazon Profiles, I find continuing inspiration. Getting to know others who share my passion for literacy, I often find others for whom reading is not only a pastime but also a salvation.

Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs, grew up in Kansas with two younger sisters and a pair of warring parents. She spent much of her childhood in fear, but in books, Kathy found her escape and her calling. She says: “I tell everybody that will listen, books saved me. . . I was scared most of my childhood but by reading books I could escape into the pages and become those characters who were brave, bold, something I was too scared to be as a child. Because of reading and books, I have become brave, bold and now it is my mission in life to bring reading to others. I also feel that if my book touches one person like the book that turned me on to reading, I have accomplished my goal. Reading has saved my life and given me a purpose, my mission to promote literacy.” Kathy’s book The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life will be released in January.

Like Kathy, I grew up afraid—in my case, of my alcoholic father’s rages—and I found comfort and courage in books. My happiest childhood memories are of my mother reading to me while I ate lunch. We called the time Soup and Stories—I’d bring her a stack of Golden Books, and I still don’t know when Mama ever got a chance to eat her lunch. These lines from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan could have been written for my mother: “You may have tangible wealth untold: Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be—I had a Mother who read to me.”

I hope to write more about this lifelong love of literacy and would be delighted to hear from others for whom books have been a salvation. If you’d like to share your thoughts, please do (contact: http://poole-carter.info). Rosemary Poole-Carter