Think about what authors, and others who work in the arts, give us. They give us worlds that they have created form pure imagination. Think of the world that you see in a painting or hear in a song. Think of the worlds you enter when you open a book. Can you create like that? I've tried and it isn't easy.
Writers allow themselves to share hopes and dreams that they hold dear with folks they have never met and will never know. They share their inner life. They write out the hurts that have made them cry in the middle of the night and others get to share that pain. A writer lays bare their own soul for the entertainment of others.
Think of the Dementors in the Harry Potter books. We all knew the feelings of desolation and soul sucking depression but JK Rowling gave those feelings a form and a name. Margaret Mitchel created the world of Rhett, Scarlet, and Tara and has set imaginations ablaze for seventy-seven years. I've been to medieval England, Hawaii as missionaries landed to convert the natives, on manhunts for homicidal killers and in the mind of a woman as she discovers love for the first time. How can I help but admire the wonderful authors who have made me privy to all that?
So if you're an author, when someone says they admire you just say thank you. You're being complimented by someone who has paid their hard earned money and invested the time to read your work. Let them be a fan. After all, isn't there someone that you admire who thinks that maybe what they do isn't really all that special?
And now, since it is Mother's Day a few words about my Mom. She is the reason I read. She gave me a love of books and when I was nine gave me the keys to the kingdom by allowing me to go to the nearest library on my own. The stories I discovered that summer of 1958 have stayed with me forever.
When I was in high school Mom let me read the books she had here in the house. There was "The Caine Mutiny", "From Here to Eternity", "Gone With The Wind" and others. I became a fan of authors like Irwin Shaw, James Michener, and Leon Uris. It wasn't until I was in my twenties and out working in a large office with a lot of other women that I found out about writers like Danielle Steele. For a while I was hooked on romances but then I discovered mysteries. Memberships in mail order book clubs always guaranteed that there was a hardback available to keep me busy.
Over the years I have bought more books than I care to count. Each and every purchase was because of my mother.
She was a woman who loved movies too and we spent many a hot summer afternoon in our darkened living room watching on television the movies she and her friends had seen when they first came out. Think of movies like "So Proudly We Hail", "The Fighting Sullivans" and "Orchestra Wives". Since Mary K. loved movie magazines I not only got the movies but the stories that went along with the actors and actresses that appeared in them. She gave me a trove of trivia that has stood me in good stead over the years.
We had out arguments and disagreements but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss her.
Happy Mother's Day Mom. Thanks for the books.
