Mom used to read aloud to me

Mom used to read aloud to me, as a good mom should.

When I was little, of course I loved it--the sound of her voice, the warmth of her body, the sweet time together. As a teenager, trying to individuate, trying to find out who I was separate from my mother, I began to hate her reading voice. But we still read a lot to each other, a lot more than other parents and adult children. We read stories from the newspaper to each other, stories from the Reader’s Digest. Occasionally I read my lines to her or from my own writing. She would always be astonished and say, “You wrote that? You thought that up right out of your own head? I don’t know how you do it.”

Sitting at the dining room table, Norman Rockwell pictures hung crookedly on nicotine stained mauve wallpaper. The door to the garage, which never shut quite right because it didn’t hang square, would slam shut, jarring the wall and making the mini pitchers fall off their tiny country shelf under the Norman Rockwell pictures. A dirty lace table runner on a heavy wood table that would look better in another kind of house. Dusty plastic flowers in a clear glass vase anchored by glass pebbles. A full crystal ashtray. My feet up on the plank of wood that ran under the length of the table. “You still like to have your feet up? You used to always put your feet up when you were a kid, one foot on my leg, the other on your father’s.”

I don’t know why I didn’t like her voice when she read. She sounded too sweet, too June Cleaver. I’m not sure.

What I wouldn’t give to hear her voice right now.