BookLovers: Books I think of when I think of my mother

Since we were little kids, my mom has told me and my sister “I carry your heart in my heart,” from the e.e. cummings poem, “[I carry your heart with me(i carry it in]”

I’ve always loved that poem because it sounds like something Leonard Cohen would sing. My favorite stanza:

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

She’s retired now, but for years, my mom was a 5th-grade language arts teacher. She’s always loved poetry, stories, and words.

Readers, of course, are born on a mother’s lap. If we’re lucky, we’re born to book-loving mothers. Shaping our young minds with stories and words from pictures books, and fairy tales; the Cat in the Hat the glass slippers.

My mother always read to us. It wasn’t just Eric Carle books when we were tiny, but as older elementary schoolers, hungry for our first chapter books.

There are the books I think of when I think of my mother.

Books she loves so much, I can’t untangle them from her.

They’re the books I heard as bedtime stories, eyes closed, mindfully awake, seeing the stories in my head.

Books like “The Fledging,” by Jane Langton.

I saw Georgie, “hardly more than a wisp of thistledown,” and the Goose Prince flying through cold sky high above Walden Pond.

Maybe, I thought, like Georgie, I might also learn to fly— first bounding down 12 steps at a time, then leaping from the porch, then flying up to the rooftop.

It still seemed possible then that a Goose Prince might peck at my window that night; that I might fly with him over fields of wild mint near our house, out toward gray ocean waves.

When I think of my mom I think of Sharon Creech’s “Walk Two Moons,” which is actually a profound Mothers’ Day book when read as an adult.

The story of Salamanca Tree Hiddle, whose mother was so depressed, she left home, and Phoebe Winterbottom, whose unhappy mother suddenly left, too. ("Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins.”)

When I think of my mom, I think of Robert Lawson’s “Rabbit Hill,” following Georgie the rabbit and the new folks on the hill. To this day, she calls rabbits “Georgie.”

Another that my mom often quotes: is “Love You Forever,” by Robert Munsch, illustrated by Sheila McGraw. It’s a picture book that speaks volumes. If you need a last-minute Mothers’ Day gift, buy this.

It’s a heartfelt reminder that no matter how old you are, your mom still sings: “As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."

And that no matter how old your child is, she still needs you.

And that this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart:

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart.)

Lauren Daley is a freelance writer. She tweets @laurendaley1. Read more at https://www.facebook.com/daley.writer.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: BookLovers: Books I think of when I think of my mother