Friday, July 1, 2016

Listening to Mamaw's Voice

Late last summer, I felt inspired to go through the books on my library shelf and place notes inside the front covers detailing when I got it, the occasion, and who gave it to me. This information is always fascinating to me when I come across it in a used book or a book in an antique shop, so I began what I thought would be a quick project. After nearly an hour and a dozen books, however, I decided to upgrade the endeavor from "quick project" to "time-consuming project."

Some of my favorite old or old-looking books. :)


Hand cramps aside, I began to realize just how many of my lovely books were from my Mamaw: a Mark Twain book after I had wrist surgery, a copy of Pride and Prejudice when I was on my Jane Austen kick in high school, and a set of reprinted old American cookbooks from the 1800s when I was taking history classes in college. So many lovely old books! (And a few new ones, like the fifth Harry Potter book Mamaw got for me and my cousin. I may have absconded with it completely...Sorry Kason!)

As I pulled books from the shelves, I realized how much Mamaw had invested in me. Not only a love of books, but a love of reading and good storytelling. I can remember sitting in the den with Mamaw reading The Little Mermaid to my sister and me (the non-Disney version.) Or we would be sitting on the creaky, very formal, couch in the living room. Mamaw would pull James Harriot's Treasury for Children out of the brass bucket which served as a magazine caddy, and we would request a specific story. Moses the Kitten was a particular favorite, as was Bonnie the draft horse, but regardless of the topic, I absolutely loved listening to Mamaw's voice. I still do. Precise and measured, genteel and Southern, I could listen to her read a phone book. It is a dialect brought about from a lifetime of drinking very strong, very sweet, iced tea with a squirt of lemon. ...That's my theory anyway.

At Mamaw and Papaw's house, there exists the earliest example of my written and illustrated work: "Holly the Horse." I was probably around four years old, so I required a scribe, but other than that, it was a completely original piece. (Except for the subject, Holly the Horse. She was one of the characters used to teach the ABCs to my kindergarten class. "A- Annie Alligator, B- Barry Bear, C- Carol Cat and D- Danny Dog...") Most people would have tossed out my first book. It was scrawled on printer paper for a dot matrix printer and was produced by a prolific "artist." I am not even joking--when I decided to finally clean out my closet as a teenager, I removed bushels of coloring book pages and drawings, as well as every worksheet I ever completed from Pre-K through the sixth grade. As well as heaps of National Geographic magazines. I may have had a paper hoarding problem. Don't judge.

All that to say, I am indebted to Mamaw for instilling in me a love of not only reading, but writing, and storytelling, and old books. This is only one facet of who Mamaw is and what she taught me. I could talk about the fried pies, or how she sings hymns from choir practice as she cooks breakfast, or the four o'clocks she planted around the front porch... But those are stories for another day.