I’ve struggled with guilt feelings that I read too much, because when I’m reading I’m not as accessible to my children. Turns out I’m not the only one. Another mother also tried to balance her passion for reading with her mothering, and her daughter ended up a writer to be reckoned with: Eudora Welty. Here’s one of Welty’s memories of her mother from One Writer’s Beginnings:
Now, I think of her as reading so much of the time while doing something else. In my mind’s eye The Origin of Species is lying on the shelf in the pantry under a light dusting of flour — my mother was a bread maker; she’d pick it up, sit by the kitchen window and find her place, with one eye on the oven. I remember her picking up The Man in Lower Ten while my hair got dry enough to unroll from a load of kid curlers trying to make me like my idol, Mary Pickford. A generation later, when my brother Walter was away in the Navy and his two little girls often spent the day in our house, I remember Mother reading the new issue of Time magazine while taking the part of the Wolf in a game of “Little Red Riding Hood” with the children. She’d just look up at the right time, long enough to answer — in character — “The better to eat you with, my dear,” and go back to her place in the war news.
Welty doesn’t detail her own feelings about this, but I know one thing: when I read this description, I feel an instinctive liking for her mother! Looks like I need to get better at multi-tasking…
