My Mom's Gift
Levine, John

>>JOHN: I learned to read from my mother.

>>SPEAKER: Can you tell us your name?

>>JOHN: Oh sorry, of course those are the instructions. My name is John Levine and I teach in the college writing programs at University of California Berkley. I learned to read from my mother not so much her sitting down with me and instructing me in the letters, I got that in school, but she was always reading. Every spare moment she had she would read. She worked retail most of my life and so she was always busy working but when she was home she was reading and I just learned to read from her modeling of reading all the time. Soon I picked it up and it was a family activity that we all did with my mom, my three brothers, and my sister, we all read. Over the years for presents for birthdays and holidays we would all get each other books. She would get us a book and we would give her a book so really books had an important meaning in our family. So when my daughter was born eight years ago, my mother extended the tradition and started sending her books even before she was able to read she'd send books so that we could read books to her. When she began to read it was a nice tradition and she knew she was going to get a book from grandma. She'd get clothes and she'd get toys but she was always guaranteed a book. My mom died two months ago and she was also a big planner so she always had gifts ready. So my daughter's birthday is December eleventh and my mom died on December forth, a week before. So on the day of my daughter's birthday a package arrived with the usual gifts and in there was a book. It was a book that I read when I was a little bit older than her, "The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler". In the book was an inscription to my daughter, "To Ruby, I think this will be your cup of tea, love grandma." So we read that book and both of us, Ruby and I, we were kind of sad towards the end of the book, we've always been sad when we come to the end of a book that we enjoy but knowing this was the last book from my mom made it especially poignant. So the happy ending is that Ruby has this tradition and she will continue to read and I think the importance of books will continue for another generation.

>>SPEAKER: That's terrific. Thanks for sharing your story.