Shout out to Kendall Defoe

My mother read to me after lunch almost daily when I was four and five years old. She probably did so when I was younger than that, but I don't recall it. We'd sit on the couch in the dining room--a room large enough to hold a table that seated the eight of us in my family, plus two easy chairs and a sofa. We weren't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but we lived in an 1820-built farmhouse in Maine, and two of the rooms still had tin ceilings that fascinated me.

Mum, as I always spelled to match phonetically (being particular about that sort of thing), read A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh frequently, along with myriad Dr. Seuss. My favorite Seuss was And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. I was reminded of that last week when fellow Vocal writer Kendall Defoe posted this: <https://vocal.media/bookclub/and-to-think-that-i-saw-it-on-mulberry-street>. Mum's tender, lilting voice pulsated with growing excitement as each parade element appeared in this lively tale. No one else in the family read it as well as she did.

This book sparked my imagination, and I began to observe the world around me with a curiosity I hadn't known before. Similarly, my interest in books grew to include Blueberries for Sal, Make Way for Ducklings, and other Robert McCloskey stories, and Virginia Lee Burton's Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Katy and the Big Snow, and The Little House. While Dr. Seuss helped me learn phonetics and spelling and prompted my observation skills, it was McCloskey and Burton whose writings clung to me the longest. Indeed, Burton's The Little House is a book I still read when I need to recall the experience of American progress post-World War II.

Virginia Lee Burton had a special skill of relating the human experience in Depression Era America to late twentieth-century modernity. If I were teaching a history course on American social progress through the eyes of authors of children's literature, she would be one of my top three writers for all ages to read. Robert McCloskey is in my top five. But I have digressed from my original point a bit.

Mum read to me, as I've said, and in the process, I learned to read prior to starting kindergarten. Because of my late-in-the-year birthday, my parents held me out an extra year so I'd be older in my grade but more mature. I chuckle a little about that now since I'm unsure how mature I was. Still, it gave me one more year at home with Mum, and I've been grateful for that more times than I can remember.

At some point during our reading sessions, she'd doze off with my head in her lap. I'd nudge her awake. She'd apologize and keep reading a little longer. Soon, we'd both be sleeping. I'd wake up an hour or two later to the sound of her doing dishes in the kitchen. Not long after that, the school bus would arrive with my siblings, and Mum's and my quiet time together was over for another day.

When you're five years old, time means very little to you. I knew that having my mother at home with me every day was a treasure, but I had no idea how wonderful that treasure was until twelve years later. I'm at a stage in life where I've spent 18 years raising my older boy, and I can't believe it's been 18 years. That's longer than I had with Mum. She died of cancer when I was 17. In reality, I had just begun to get to know her as a person.

It has been almost 50 years since Mum first read And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street to me for the first time. In the decades since then, my imagination has blossomed to far-flung corners of the world and the cosmos. I graduated high school a year after she died, and then I went to college, where I earned a bachelor of arts degree in history and secondary education, intent on finding a career as a teacher in a high school somewhere.

I landed my first high school job in northern Japan, teaching English conversation to 400 kids who were as excited to speak English as I was to eat squid and octopus (not very excited). Seven years later, I moved home to Maine with my wife in tow. We'd met in Japan, but she was from Massachusetts. My new job as headmaster and teacher at the same tiny private school where Mum had taught and headmastered after I started school. Yes, I know that "headmastered" isn't a word.

Ten years of that was enough to know that headmastering wasn't for me. I returned to the classroom, but first as a substitute teacher and this time for the Department of Corrections. If you can sub in the DOC, you can sub anywhere. When full-time opened up, I grabbed it, and I've spent the last decade teaching adult ed full-time for my state's DOC. Mum would be pleased and proud. Dad was. He died in 2021.

Mum was imaginative, too. In the early 1980s, she took a class to renew her teacher certification. A requirement was to write a story for children. She created a storybook called Black Hen Goes Visiting. She was an author and illustrator, publisher, bookbinder--everything. She wrote it, typed it, made illustrations out of construction paper, yarn, and glue, and sewed the pages into a book cover that she made with cardboard that was covered in contact paper. When she passed away, one of my sisters and her husband scanned the book's pages into PDF and emailed copies to each of us siblings. I didn't have a color printer, so I printed it and used colored pencils to add the shades necessary to complete the original look. It is one of my treasures today.

My love of reading came from Mum. Observing people and caring about their circumstances came from both Mum and Dad. They were teachers, and their students knew that they could be trusted. They had their students' best interests at heart. I witnessed that in person and observed it from a distance. Naturally, I learned to be the same way. I draw on their loving example to help me be a better teacher.

In 2021, I wrote a book. The content would be a bit much for them and their personal sensibilities, but they would also be proud of me for publishing a story. I've been rewriting the book to tone down its graphic content and soften its sharp edges. It's a good story, and I'd like more people to enjoy it. However, when I sit and think about it, I realize that I'd never be able to write at all if Mum hadn't spent so much time reading to me. Thanks, Mum. I love you.

And a shout-out to Kendall Defoe for your story in Book Club! What great recollections you've stirred in my heart and mind. Thank you.