If you've read my blog, you know my mom and I are close. Really close. She had me at the age of 18, so we like to say we raised each other. There are many, many things that I have learned from her, many things for which to be grateful, but there is one in particular that has shaped me into who I am today: my love for reading. According to my mom, I was reading by the age of 4. Not just memorizing ( I was doing that too) but actually reading books by myself. I cannot remember a time in my life when I didn't have a book I was carrying around. I HAVE to have a book to read. I devour books. As does my mom. Starting when I was in elementary school, my mom and I would go to the library every 2 weeks and each check out 4 or 5 books. We would read our own books and then swap and read each other's books. Yep, 8-10 books in 2 weeks. And not "kid" books, but books that were a couple hundred pages each. We read everything. Biographies, fantasy, history, romance, mystery. She instilled a true love of the written word into my very being. I read encyclopedias and law text books when I had read everything else we had in the house. Even she who had passed on this love to me would (still does) shake her head at me and laugh about how I always had my "head stuck in a book".

Books are my friends.

I have laughed, cried, loved and died reading books. I have explored worlds, fallen in love, felt palpable hatred. I have learned so much, taken so much. I have been so terrified I put a book away for a year before I could finish it (Stephen King's "It"). I have read a book so many times that I felt as though the characters were alive (Little Women, Jacob Have I Loved). I have yearned for places that don't exist and looked in cupboards and closets for magical worlds (C.S. Lewis and Tolkien). I have prayed that I would meet real fairies. I have wept at fictional deaths. I have felt my heart race at narrow escapes. I have dreamed of meeting the hero. I have tattoos inspired by works of literature. I am a book junkie.

I thank my mother for this love, this obsession. It has shaped me. I am blessed with the gift of reading and comprehending things very quickly. VERY quickly. I don't "skim" books, I soak in every word. Books are the only thing I collect. I am a purist; no e-reader for me. I want the weight and heft of a book in hand. I want to touch the pages, hug it to my chest. I want to OWN the books I love.  I credit my mother with my ability to do well in high school, college, grad school. She taught me the love, the joy of reading, and I am passing that on to my kids. There is nothing like it. For me, it is how I escape but also how I expand, how I cope, how I process. It is me.

Thanks mom; you are the best. I will write a book for you one day.