Mother Memories: Reading & Writing

If your mother’s name was Ruby Lee Spencer chances are she loved music, especially Reggae. Her favorite snacks were sunflower seeds, Diet Pepsi and beef jerky, oh yeah and she made you do a lot of things for the sake of your personal growth and development as an individual that you thought were pointless and at the most useless back when you were a kid, but then you grew up and realized that these things she made you practice were responsible for shaping you into the person you were meant to be. For Ruby’s only son, which is me, this came in the form of reading and writing.

When you were a child, of course your parents made sure that learning was everything. Yeah, they let you watch your tv, play your video games, go outside and hang with your friends and in today’s generation spend a good bit of time on the internet, but no matter what, they always made sure that you devoted time to your studies. My mom Ruby always made sure I did my homework and studied what I did for class work as soon as I got off the school bus everyday. A good size whoopin’ from her arsenal of belts is what awaited you if you didn’t comply, so naturally I always complied, most of the time anyway.

Aside from the work that was given from school, my mother always had her own lesson plans mapped out for me and my sisters to do work outside of school. Every week my mother made me and my older sister Rudy read books we had brought home from either the school library or the city library and we had to read these books in front of the family every night after dinner. The way my mother had our reading time was from my point of view, seasonal. First she would have my older sister bring home a book that would be read every night for a couple of weeks, then she would have me bring home a book that would be read in front of the family for a few weeks as well.

The funny part in all this is while me and Rudy were reading to the family my mother was reading a book of her own and the whole time she would be multitasking by listening to us, while soaking up the content of her own book. She never made us read any particular genre of literature. We were free to read whatever we chose to bring home, as long as we were reading that was all she cared about. So that made reading duties tolerable to a big degree.

When it came to reading as children, Rudy actually enjoyed reading. Rudy wasn’t just the oldest, but also the smartest out of us all, so doing having to do schoolwork and reading every night never felt like the worse thing in the world to her. As long as she got to have a social life she was fine. Me on the other hand, I was the laziest pain in the neck that ever walked this earth. I absolutely hated reading as a kid, yet I had a lot of books that I loved so I was actually an oxymoron, heavy on the moron part. If I had to read anything one of my favorite books to read would be the ones that were based off movies and TV shows that I liked.

When it was my turn to read at night the main books that I would bring home would be the Goosebumps series from R.L. Stine. Of course this didn’t get past my mom. I specifically remember jokingly asking me “Joe why the hell do keep bringing these books home?” The Goosebumps books were very short and she was hip to what I was doing, but she always let it slide. She was just glad that I was reading and putting real effort into it at that. Because of how much I loved Goosebumps the TV show I lowkey found myself enjoying the reading of the books and so did my mom with her occasional reactions to me reading them.

In addition to reading a lot, my mother would also have us writing a lot for different reasons. Half of it was for when we got in trouble, other times were for things like sending letters to our family. My mom was old school, though she always talked on the phone to loved ones she loved writing letters to her family and friends all the time and she always saved them in a scrap book with pictures. As a kid I can actually say I did enjoy doing that, though not as much as my mom did, but there was a hidden sense of interest in it for me that I carried inside.

Fast forward to the present day and my mom passed away nearly 14 years ago. In the 14 years since she passed away, this lazy son of hers graduated highschool, went to college, earned a degree and is now an aspiring who makes stories that get published online and has many people who read those stories everyday. Though I hated reading and writing as a kid, today I love writing and reading. They are the most of what I do in my free time and I honestly don’t feel good if I’m not doing either. I am writer, a considerably decent one at that and it’s all because of my mother. The things she used to make me do that I hated as a kid are in retrospect some of my favorite pastimes. If my mother Ruby were still alive today I would tell her thank you a million times everyday for shaping me into the writer that I have become.

I would not have found my passion as a writer if it were not for her. I also would not enjoy eating sunflower seeds while reading like I do if it wasn’t for her as well. She is my biggest influence for becoming a writer and that is the greatest gift she ever gave me along with my life itself. Ruby Lee the bookworm, Ruby Lee the writer, one of the many ways that I will always remember her.

~~Dedicated to my mother Ruby Lee. Happy Heavenly Mother’s Day.