How Reading with My Dying Mother Revealed Her Life

"Every night, in the living room, she positioned old magazines beneath the legs of a red convertible sofa, so as not to crease the rug it rested on. Then, with audible effort, she lifted the bed out of the couch, arranged layers of sheets, blankets, and quilts, and at last put her head down. "How am I going to make it through the month?" she would ask herself, though I'd come to believe that she was really asking me. The red couch had once been the warm center of family evenings. Now it was where she told me about her unhappiness."

"When I was three and my sister was one, my mother took us away from my father. He suffered from severe mental illness that made him violent, and it was no longer safe to be around him. We left Washington, D.C., and went to New Haven, where she had secured a job as a high-school teacher. Every evening, my sister and I, in our pajamas, would sit on the couch, leaning against my mother, while she read to us."

"The books were often historical fiction: " Johnny Tremain," " Across Five Aprils," " The Witch of Blackbird Pond," " Farmer Boy." She read with bright, dramatic energy, making each character's voice sound distinct. I felt I was living in the fields and towns in those pages. At dinner the following day, we would speculate about what might happen next in the story, then hurry through the meal so that we could return to the couch and find out. In the intense pleasure with which my mother read, I felt her affection for books-and for me. What she revered, I revered."

"Then I learned to read for myself, something fell away, and we were never again as close."

A child hears a mother preparing for sleep and worries about getting through the month. The mother arranges bedding on a red convertible sofa that once held family evenings, and she uses the couch to share unhappiness. After leaving a violent, mentally ill father, the family moves to New Haven, where the mother works as a high-school teacher and reads historical fiction to her children each evening. The child feels transported into the stories and experiences shared anticipation at dinner. When the child learns to read independently, the closeness fades and the relationship changes. Later, the child gains a chance to talk about literature with other people’s children, echoing the earlier bond.

Read at The New Yorker