How my Mother Got me to Love Reading as Much as She Did

Originally published in TueNight

Mom and I in Oaxaca

My mother was a voracious reader. She filled our house with stacks and stacks of books, overflowing in various corners, and all ripe for the taking. The built-in bookshelves were filled from head to toe with hard covers, soft covers with wrinkling spines, and piles of psychological prose. This was her shrine to words, and she shared it with everyone. There wasn’t a book my mother wouldn’t give me — except Brooklyn Pops Up. That one book was off-limits.

Weird, right? I mean, we are talking about an uber-intellectual woman. Boarding school, Colombia Grad, the works. The woman who taught English at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan when she was just a few years older than the boys in her class. Why did a lady of literature hold on so tightly to a blue-covered pop-up book about the borough we lived in?

While my mother devoured books, it was somewhat challenging for me to read. I never really knew why, or had a diagnosis. I just knew that when I sat down to read like the rest of my family, my mind would wander. Chunks of time would pass, and I was still stuck on the same page. I could read, but early on I learned that I could listen better — and listening is how I advanced myself, in school and later, in my career. What I could not ascertain through the written word…