Capture Mother’s Day sentiment in a book
By Dave
May 6th, 2009 | Leave a comment
By Diane Evans
Mothers teach — sometimes without even knowing it.
Ever take a packed lunch to school as a child? Ever look inside to find a small note from mom next to your pudding snack?
In that instance, mom taught that the written word sends a message — no matter how brief.
Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday. But if your sentiment simply won’t fit on a note or greeting card, try a book.
You can pick a book to send almost any message you’d like to your mother (or to the woman in your life who most fits your ideal of a mother). Motherhood is one of those subjects that literature has conferred blanket coverage — on par with love, heartbreak, war and peace.
As children, we learn about Old Mother Hubbard, who sets the stage for the extent to which mothers fuss. Old Mother Hubbard goes everywhere — to the baker’s, the tavern, the tailor’s and so on — and that’s just to pamper the dog.
As we grow, literature breaks the news to us (in case we missed the point in real life) that a mother’s role can get a lot more complicated.
In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, for example, Ma Joad shows how a mother’s courage and wisdom can keep a family going in the really tough times.
Or take the figure of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Karenina shows that even when a mother’s personal life goes really astray — to the point of desertion — her connection to her child can transcend even the worst behavior.
Most of us probably have mothers somewhere in the spectrum between Ma Joad and Anna Karenina. (Hopefully closer to Ma Joad.) Regardless of where a mother’s virtue lies, Mother’s Day is an occasion to put her under the spotlight.
If you are looking for a book to give your mom, to express warm feelings or to make her laugh, here are a few titles on display at the Chautauqua Book Store inside the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in western New York: (While summer programming doesn’t open until June 27, the bookstore stays open year round.)
—Dear Mom: Thank You For Everything or The Incredible Truth About Mothers, both by Bradley Trevor Greive. Both titles feature nature photography with captions reflecting thoughts you might expect from a mother. For example, next to a sleeping polar bear cub, a caption reads, “A child’s dreams are tomorrow’s reality.”
—Thoughts with Love for Mother, by Anne Geddes. This is a little book of sayings, such as this one by Cecilia Lasbury: “There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children. One of these is roots. The other, wings.”
—Zelda’s Moments with Mom, part of the Zelda Wisdom series by Carol Gardner and Shane Young. Again, photos with captions, such as “Being a mother also means enthusiastically sharing dreams, however unrealistic as in, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a cowboy.’”
—Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice, by James Lileks. It’s a humorous look at parents who figure things out for themselves and do just fine.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
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