Mother's Day Blogs 2010

Women call their mother’s for all kinds of advice --- teething, cooking, planning holidays. Nancy Thayer and Samantha Wilde’s conversations also can revolve around plot points. Imagine having your mom call to see if a character should die? Such are their lives!

Women call their mother’s for all kinds of advice --- teething, cooking, planning holidays. Nancy Thayer and Samantha Wilde’s conversations also can revolve around plot points. Imagine having your mom call to see if a character should die? Such are their lives!

Women call their mother’s for all kinds of advice --- teething, cooking, planning holidays. Nancy Thayer and Samantha Wilde’s conversations also can revolve around plot points. Imagine having your mom call to see if a character should die? Such are their lives!

Did you read to your daughter as a child? What did you read?    I read to Molly from the very beginning. We read the usual Dr. Seuss and classic fairy tales, of course. And she loved these boxed sets of Sesame Street and Golden Books. We collected the Serendipity books for her, which she now reads to her own kids. She liked the sitting on my lap and hearing about Captain Smudge and Bangalee.

Did you read to your daughter as a child? What did you read? I read to her all the time! When she was about a year old, she had a book called MY PUPPY that we must have read to her 20 times a day.  Other than that, she always really loved fairy tales, so we read a lot of those, too!

Did you read to your daughter as a child? What did you read? Yes, I read so many things to her and her brothers. When she was small I read what felt like were hundreds of Little Golden Books. We read Babar, Madeline, alphabet books, and when she was older, we read through the Golden Encyclopedias we had, looking at the pictures, and feeling as if we were traveling the world through those books. I also invented stories for her. She remembers a series I made up that included a flying Oreo cookie.

Soon after my first granddaughter, Isabelle Eva, was born, I realized that although I loved her as fiercely as if she were my own child, I had no say --- in anything. She was mine but not mine. Emphasis on the not mine. In baseball parlance, it felt a little like being demoted from the starting lineup to the bench. Though this may seem both natural and obvious, I must admit that to me it came as something of a shock.

While many of my contemporaries were scheming how to sneak candy into their summer camp duffel bags (snip the seams of a stuffed animal, pull out cotton filler, insert Fun Dip, re-sew), my mom and I were contemplating the smuggling of another contraband: a newspaper subscription.

Not long after singing “Delta Dawn” in my rural grade school talent contest --- a throng of Conway Twitty look-alikes laughing into their cowboy hats --- my mother told me she was proud of me. “You were true to yourself,” she said. “And that can only bring happiness.” She then bought me a little, leather journal.

When Bookreporter.com approached me about interviewing my mother and me for this issue, I was so flattered --- and a bit melancholy. My mother passed away in 1992. Still, I wanted to contribute to this project --- but what to do? Pull a Norman Bates and speak for my dearly departed Mom?