I Sometimes Wish I’d Never Been Born at All

My mother wanted to be a writer. She even had a pen named picked out. She never acted on that desire, but she loved reading and going to readings. As she put it, she loved hearing articulate people speak. She religiously read her New Yorker. She didn’t have a literary vocabulary per se, but she knew what she liked. She made us look up every word we didn’t know on a dictionary with a broken spine that took up residence on the pass-through between the kitchen and den. I was much older before I connected my love of poetry and writing with my mother.

What did you get from your mother?