A Literacy Narrative
Morford, Janet

[Country music plays]

>>JANET: My name is Janet Hollis Morford. I was born in 1961 and lived for most of my childhood in Indianapolis. My parents, Norm and Pam, still to live in the same house and it looks very much how it did when I was growing up. The bunk beds that my sister Jill and I slept in are still in the bedroom that we shared. Shelves of books lined the walls throughout the house. My father's filing cabinets still have the labels that my brother Bob made when he was learning to write. As he was a fan of Popeye at the time there are drawers marked "Spinach", "Hamburgers", "Olives", and "Baby Food". Throughout the house there are clues that the people who lived here liked to read and write. They do it to stay informed, they do it for fun, and they do it to express who they are and to remember where they came from. 

As I was growing up in the 1960s and 70's, reading and writing were big parts of our everyday life. As a young child I was read to and encouraged to enjoy books on my own. My siblings and I had many books including some from our parents' childhood. One of my favorite books had been designed and made by my mother. It featured stories from my paternal grandmother's childhood. I loved to run my fingers over the hand-made illustrations and to imagine my grandmother being a child like me. Although I have the same dimples as my grandmother, Harriet, I am named after my maternal grandmother, Mary Ashton Hollis Paterson, who died long before I was born. Growing up I knew that she had been active in girl scouting and that she was a talented artist and puppeteer. One of the books she wrote and illustrated was called "The Strawberry Children". I still marvel at her ability to create a world with her imagination and a paintbrush. 

As children, my siblings and I always had stacks of books borrowed from the public library. On long summer days I spent hours reading Beverly Cleary or Judy Blume. Long after my siblings and I could read for ourselves, my mother read aloud to us, often at bedtime. I remember a summer camping trip lying in our sleeping bags while my mother read Laura Ingalls Wilder to us by lantern light from the picnic table. We were old enough to read to ourselves but nothing was better than being able to lie there and listen. Whenever she stopped we would beg, "Just one more chapter, please?" 

What marked my entry into literacy was reading as much as writing. I do not remember learning to write but I know I was encouraged to send letters to far away family members as soon as I could. I know because my parents and grandparents kept the evidence. My paternal grandparents lived in Arizona. Although we spent time with them at least once a year, much of our communication took place through letters. After my grandmother Harriet died in 1986, I was given a packet of letters from me that she had saved. They spanned the years from when I drew my first shaky letters in crayon on the back of artwork to the rows of neat script I crammed onto aerograms when I was a graduate student in France. These letters reflect not only the shifting objects of my desires over the years such as the matching maxi coats my sister and I bought with gift money in 1970. These letters and the fact that they were saved and given to me as an adult also revealed how personal correspondence was valued in my family. When we weren't together, letters helped to keep us close. When saved and shared, letters were reminders of the connections to each other and of the things we loved and valued. After I had become comfortable writing in French, this became the language of choice for letters between my maternal grandfather and myself. Beba, as we called him, was a professor of romance languages and an avid photographer. I have saved his letters and photographs as a reminder of the passions we shared. 

Other kinds of writing also marked my emerging literacy. My parents began keeping scrapbooks as soon as they were married. In 51 years of marriage they have generated more than fifty volumes. As kids, my siblings and I would often sit down with one of the scrapbooks. Even as adults we enjoy revisiting the traces of our younger selves that are collected there. Not only photos but homemade greeting cards, samples of my morning work from second grade, and here and there the score sheet from a game of pit played as my father would note on the occasion of some particular friend or relative coming to dinner. Like the collections of letters, the scrapbooks help us remember who we are and the web of experiences that mark our common past. As an adolescent I carried these practices over to recording my own activities and relationships with friends. I spent hours composing, creating, and rereading albums about my experiences at girl scout camp. These included not only daily journal entries and photos but also letters sent to and from camp. When I left for college, these albums were buried in a closet and then forgotten as I went on to grad school, got married, and had children of my own. When my son Gabe started school and later when my daughter Isabel went to camp, my mother dug out my morning work and my memory books and gave them to us, once again reviving our connections with the past. 

Many of these practices are of course rooted in the creative genius of my mother, Pamela Ruth Patterson Morford. In recent years she has continued to find new ways of making our family's history come alive. When she became a grandmother she began making a series of books, each focusing on the life of a family member whose story might otherwise remain unfamiliar to the youngest generation. These books were designed for the children, inviting them to guess and wonder and marvel at how these relatives were in many ways just like them. My mother has also made personalized book plates for my grandchildren, notecards, and needlepoint based on their artwork and she never fails to send a personal thank you note for gifts or visits. In all of these ways she validates her grandchildren's identity as readers and writers and helps them know that they are part of a larger family. A family whose connections over the years have been sustained by books and letters, photos and music, stories and games, and an abiding love for literacy. 

[Music Plays: "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills & Nash]