Kyran Pittman’s debut collection of personal essays PLANTING DANDELIONS: Field Notes From a Semi-Domesticated Life captures the charm, and conflicts, of her “ordinary life” in suburban Arkansas. But before settling into this life, Kryan lived on a Canadian island with her artistic parents. Today, Kyran’s mother, Marilee, speaks of those early years, and the books they loved to read together.

Photo: Mom toasts the completed manuscript!

Did you read to your daughter as a child? What did you read?   

I read to Kyran every day…at naptime, at bedtime and any time she wanted to be read to (which was often). Reading books in our household was a given. Her Dad was a writer, I was a teacher. I loved books as a child and can’t remember a time when I didn’t read. I can recall reading ARE YOU MY MOTHER? by P.D. Eastman with Kyran before she was one. She insisted on turning back the pages to one particular page. It had a couple of black dots as part of the illustration; for some reason she was fascinated with the dots. I would read a page, she would turn the page back to the one with the dots.

From the time she was born we recited nursery rhymes, like Mother Goose and ones passed down from my mother and her father’s mother. Music and sing-song was part of the language in our home.

Some of the books we read were: WINNIE THE POOH by A.A. Milne; WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS by Shel Silverstein; All the Dr. Seuss books. We loved to read THE OWL AND THE PUSSY CAT by Edward Leer and ALLIGATOR PIE by Dennis Lee. Of course we read her own father’s books too. And Beatrix Potter’s PETER RABBIT, WIND IN THE WILLOW by Kenneth Grahame. FREE TO BE…YOU AND ME was a staple in our repertoire, as was THE HOCKEY SWEATER by Roch Carrier. That was the one she and her Dad loved.

How old was Kyran when she started reading?

Kyran was probably four when she started reading. It’s hard to remember the exact moment because reading was like speaking; it was just part of what she did. She would say the words and sometimes point to them as I read to her or she would sit by herself and make out that she was reading as she turned the pages. She was such an imaginative child. Kyran was never lost for something to amuse herself with. After I would say good night and close her door, I would hear her chatting happily to herself. When she woke she immediately started babbling. It wasn’t words, as she was only a baby, but her intonations were so expressive they sounded like a foreign tongue.

Did she have a favorite series/author growing up? 

When Kyran was ten we moved to Tobago. We didn’t bring a lot of books as we were trying to economize on space. We would get into Scarborough once a week to go to the market, and we frequented a book store near the market. The children would purchase books with their allowance. There wasn’t a huge selectio

Therese Fowler’s novels have been published in nine languages; her third novel --– EXPOSURE, which tackles some issues of motherhood --- is out on May 3rd. Below, she paints a realistic portrait of her own mother, and the very real “parenting fail” that caused her to realize that a mother deserves credit simply for meaning well, rather than choosing well.  

Every Mother’s Day throughout my childhood, I gave my mother hand-made cards. They were always some combination of construction paper, paper lace doilies, and tissue paper. Using a colored marker, I would compose or copy out a poem or sonnet in my most careful handwriting. My mom, I declared in these childish masterpieces, was The Best Mother Ever!

The unvarnished truth is that she wasn’t The Best Mother Ever, or, say, a Really Fantastic Mother, and probably didn’t merit even Pretty Darn Good Mother, not when she was actually raising her kids. I couldn’t see that at the time, though. I loved my mother, and was blind to her parenting flaws until I got older and saw how things really ought to be.

So I tried hard to be the mother my mother wasn’t. When my oldest son graduated from high school and then passed his eighteenth birthday with nothing worse than a speeding ticket behind him, I thought we’d both done pretty well. Not only was he a happy, well-adjusted young man, he had also become a volunteer firefighter. My parenting strategies seemed to have worked.

Or so I thought, until he came home one afternoon and announced that a warrant was being issued for his arrest.

The charge was a misdemeanor, but it was for an offense that’s come to be regarded as a “sexting” crime. At a young lady’s request, he had sent her a photo of himself undressed. He was over eighteen and she wasn’t; therefore, he had committed a crime for which he could, if convicted, have to register as a sex-offender. As insane as that seemed, it was very serious business. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure of the job I’d done with him. Yes, he was responsible for his behavior. But I’d given him the means to make this mistake, and what’s worse, I hadn’t given him the information or instruction to help him avoid it.

Parenting fail.

Being a mother is one of the most natural acts in life, but it is also one of the most difficult. Each mother faces her own particular sets of challenges, and if she addresses them the best way she can given her particular circumstances, she deserves credit for that. My mother didn’t always choose well, but she always meant well. That’s not nothing, as the saying goes.

None of the mothers in my novels is my mother. None of them is me, not even in my latest, EXPOSURE, which was inspired by my son’s arrest and the events that followed. All of the women, however, no matter their shortcomings or shortsightedness, get the same sympathy I extended to my mother and try to allow myself.

My mother, whose name was Sally, died in 2004. She was only 61 years old. When I was sorting through her dresser after her death, I came upon a pile of papers that included a Mother&rsqu

Siri Hustvedt is the internationally bestselling author of WHAT I LOVED and THE SUMMER WITHOUT MEN. Below, she reflects on the influence of her mother, Esther Vegan Hustvedt --- and how the bond between mother and child affects all of us.

How would I begin to talk about my mother’s influence on me? We were all inside our mothers, after all, once upon a forgotten time. I am a mother myself, and I know that for years during her childhood, my daughter was averse to hearing anything about her own birth --- that intimate, messy, animal business. What did it have to do with her? And breast-feeding --- actually getting food from another person’s body --- why would a 10 or 11-year-old want to be reminded of that? Despite the fact that birth and breast-feeding are socially codified to the point of fetishism in our culture, people rarely think of themselves as hopelessly dependent, suckling infants, drooling milk and excreting into diapers. It undermines our sense of autonomy, of singularity. It belies that quintessentially American figment: the self-made man, in charge of his destiny, clawing his way to the proverbial top. And yet, we were all babies, and we all were in thrall to one immense, all-powerful source of love: Mother.

I suspect that the sentimentality surrounding mothers and Mother’s Day, a sentimentality we inherited chiefly from the 19th century, is a form of disguise, a way to mask maternal power with rosebuds and ribbons, to make it appear both unthreatening and disembodied. The word influence has a Latin root, fluere, to flow, but its beginnings are astrological. According to WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY, it referred to “an ethereal fluid held to flow from the stars and to affect the actions of humans.” Mothers may not be heavenly bodies, but their influence is enormous, and we become ourselves through them. Through early interactions, our first dialogues, or what infant researchers call attunement between mother and child, our brains develop. Our emotional responses become ingrained patterns. Our relations with our mothers affect the autonomic, neurochemical and hormonal functions of our growing brains. But we don’t remember any of it. That influence is lost to conscious memory. It is not lost to bodily or implicit memory, however. It lasts. But what does this have to do with literature, with writing books, with language?

In my experience, fiction is not produced consciously. It is true that I am keenly aware of my sentences. I pick at verbs, revise clauses, worry about punctuation, but this is not the essence of a writer’s work at all. The essence is emotional --- a need to offer a story to someone else --- an imaginary other person. Where do the stories come from? How does a writer know when a story is right? She knows because it feels right, and that feeling is not some intellectual evaluation of the sentences in front of her, but a profound sense that this character or this particular turn in a novel has to be as it is. It could be no other way. And it must resonate inside the writer as an emotional, not a literal, truth. I’ve found it now. This is right. That feeling of rightness is hugely complex, but I am certain its origins are old. They begin in the relations between the two members of that unequal couple --- mother and child --- and then are developed and refined and altered over a life history

The author of several bestsellers, Sandra Dallas knows not to give up when the writing doesn’t flow. She learned this, first and foremost, from her mother --- “giving up wasn’t part of Mom’s makeup.” Though her mother is no longer here to place copies of THE BRIDE’S HOUSE face out on bookstore shelves, Sandra knows that she’s still her biggest fan.

My mother always claimed that what writing talent I had came from her. After all, as a girl, she’d written a poem that she recited often:

In our yard there is a tree
Where birdies come and sing with glee,
Safe from cats and naughty boys
Where they can sing and have their joys.

Not to be outdone, my father also displayed a poetic bent. In fact, I like his childhood poem even better:

In our barn there is a’sittin’
An old gray cat and a little kitten.

So you can see, a fine literary sense runs in my genes. Little surprise that I embraced writing as a career. It began in fifth grade when I won a pair of ice skates on a radio show with a poem I wrote:

Swimming is the sport for me.
It’s more fun than I thought any sport could be.

And on and on in that tortured vein.

Okay, so I started at a deficit. But my parents were enthusiastic about my writing. What else could they have done? I was equally untalented at math, science and the arts. And when I tried out for the school play, my lifelong dream of becoming a movie star was trashed. (I was a success, however, as Happy the Dwarf in my junior high school production of  “Snow White,” a talent that has been inherited by my grandson, Forrest, eight, who played Doc in his school production last March.)

After that traumatic school tryout, I went to Plan B, the next closest way to fame and fortune --- writing. Dad lived long enough to see me publish several nonfiction books. But Mom, who died almost 10 years ago, saw my move into fiction and, in fact, inspired one of my early novels, THE PERSIAN PICKLE CLUB. It was based on an incident that occurred when my folks were first married.  

In 1933, Dad lost his job, and they moved to his parents’ farm in Kansas. One day, a neighboring farmer offered a day’s work in his fields, and said he’d pay $1. Dad and his brother flipped a coin to see which one got the job. Dad won, and he worked so hard, he finished at noon and was paid just 50 cents. It was the only money he made all summer. Mom didn’t like farm life and announced she was going into Topeka and wasn’t coming back until she got a job, and she did just that. She worked harder than any woman I ever knew. And that example, as much as her encouragement, made me a writer. 

She taught me to work hard and not to quit. Quitting is so tempting. You rea

As the author of SEARCHING FOR TINA TURNER, Jacqueline Luckett has established herself as a writer to watch. In the touching post below, she reflects on the strong influence of her mother, who, while not an avid fiction read herself, cherished Jacqueline’s first novel.

Photo: Jacqueline with her mother, Bernice.

I don’t think I ever recall seeing my now 88-year-old mother read a book. Oh, she’s a reader --- newspapers, newsletters, and magazines. But a book? Never. Until I wrote one.

Between her jobs with the Federal government and caring for our family, I’m not sure she had time for much else. In 2010, I gave her a copy of my first novel. She fingered the glossy cover and my name printed on the spine. Behind her glow of maternal pride, I sensed that my mother must love books as much as I do.

In the following days, she faithfully reported her progress. “I’m on Chapter 5,” she would tell me, the chapter number changing as she moved through the story. “Where did you get all those ideas?” she often asked, laughing. She is clear-headed and high-spirited and when she laughs, I don’t think about her age or her arthritic knees or the frown that crosses her face when she struggles to get out of her favorite chair. I think of my playful, beautiful mother who migrated with her three sisters to California from Mississippi after World War II, who once won a beauty contest, and who loved my father for more than the 56 years they were married.

Not long after I gave her my book, she called to tell me she was sad. Thinking she was missing my Dad, who passed in 2002, I tried to comfort her. “Oh no,” she said, “I finished your book, and now I have nothing to do!” She hadn’t wanted the story to end. I wondered if, years ago, I’d been so self-absorbed that I neglected to notice when she picked up a book. Had she taken books to the bathroom and hid there, her only place of quiet without distractions? “Your book is beautiful,” she added. There was so much pride in her voice, and her unspoken message, I knew you could do it, was praise for my book and joy for the direction my life has taken since my divorce.

There’s not a time in my life when a book hasn’t been close by: on my nightstand, in my purse or pocket, or shelved in a room of wherever I’ve lived. How, I’ve often wondered, did the child of a mother who never read much become a storyteller, avid reader and lover of books? My father was a reader, determined to work his way through our set of The Great Books of the Western World. But I’m not like my father. I’m like my mother --- my eyes, my voice, my mannerisms are hers, and now, I’m beginning to believe so, too, is my love of books.

She is the one who encouraged me, and my sister (a writer, also), to send our stories to the local newspaper. Hers is the hand I held on visits to the Children’s Room at the Berkeley Public Library. I remember the mounting excitement as we climbed the marble stairs, the musty smell of books, the thrill of holding them in

Sally Gunning has written three historical novels set in New England; her most recent --- THE REBELLION OF JANE CLARK --- was released last year. Below, her mother shares Sally's first poem, and the authors who shaped her early life.

Photo: Nancy and Sally size up the day's catch!

Did you read to your daughter as a child? What did you read?

I read to them from the time they could look at a book.  We read A.A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louisa May Alcott, Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain, E.B. White and others.

Did Sally have a favorite author/series growing up?

It was A.A. Milne for a long time and, later on, many others as her reading habits evolved with age.

Did you have any reading rituals?

We always had bedtime stories, but there were many other times we'd curl up with a book together.  We went to the library often and occasionally a bookstore.

When did you know Sally was going to become a writer?

When Sally was a young child she came to me one day and read a poem she'd written: "One morning to my Mom I said/ Mom, I don't want to make my bed/ What would the
world be like, she said/ If nobody wanted to make their bed? After that I used my head/ I used my head and made my bed." And after that she continued writing all through high school...and beyond!

Do you read advance copies of her work?

Yes, Sally allows me to read advance copies of her work as her manuscripts progress, and it is a privilege for me to follow the plots along.  (I am always eager for more!)

Do you have a favorite?

I loved them all (no surprise there), but I think THE WIDOW’S WAR is my favorite.

What kinds of books do you enjoy reading?

I think my taste is rather eclectic...I like historical fiction, biographies, contemporary fiction (relationship books), history, mysteries.

What authors, beside your daughter, do you read?

Oh, there are so many!  Anne Tyler, Joanna Trollope, Ian McEwan, Stewart O'Nan, Richard Russo, David McCullough, John McPhee, Kate Grenville, Penelope Lively, Helen Simonson, the Patrick O'Brian series, and many many more.

NOTE: My two other children read constantly, as do my grandchildren and great grandchildren down to age 6, so you see our blood is made partially of newsprint!

When Darien Gee’s daughter brought home a bag of Amish Friendship Bread starter, inspiration hit. Soon, Darien wrote and published FRIENDSHIP BREAD, in which the act of passing on this recipe opens doors across a community. Below, Darien not only reveals how she’s managed to juggle motherhood with a writing career, but how her three children --- once assumed to “get in the way” of writing --- have become an integral part of the process.

Photo: Darien and her daughter, Maya.

I’ll never forget the advice several well-meaning author friends had given me when I first started writing.

“Wait,” they had advised. “It’s easier to write before or after you have kids. Not during. It’s too hard.”

I had a four-year-old child at the time with another on the way. My husband and I were stretched financially and sleep-deprived. But I wanted to be a published author. I obviously couldn’t turn back the clock nor did I want to wait for my kids to graduate from high school. So I did what many of us do when we have young children --- we did the best we could, and we somehow made it through.

But three children and three books later, I was feeling the toll that comes with feeling like you’re not doing anything well. I’d watch other authors who were able to plan whole days (whole days!) around writing or editing their manuscript, pondering possible plot turns, exploring their characters in depth. I, on the other hand, still had trouble fitting in a shower. I often held a baby in my arms while I typed with one hand. I’d listen with envy as friends talked about writing retreats or living abroad to work on their book. My husband and I couldn’t even find a babysitter so we could go to dinner on our anniversary.

And then one spring afternoon, my daughter Maya brought home a bag of Amish Friendship Bread starter and some slices of the sugar-cinnamon bread. It came with a page of instructions telling us to divide and share the starter with others, oh, and we were expected to bake on top of that! And this whole thing would take ten days! I told Maya sorry, but there was no way we were going to do it.

But she begged me to at least try the bread, which I did. Inspiration hit right around the time the sugar entered my bloodstream. I saw my protagonist and started writing that night. A year later, that book sold at auction to Ballantine Books, along with foreign, audio, and book club rights. I launched the Friendship Bread Kitchen, a website with over 100 Amish Friendship Bread recipes, tips, and community. Our Facebook page has over 25,000 fans.

In the past two years it’s become clear to me that my children have not gotten in the way of my writing career, but have actually been an integral part in helping me move forward with each book. I had actually written my first novel in 1998, when I was 30 and single, and I had taken a whole year off to write it. That book was never published. But now, with three children ages 2, 5 and 10, I have four books under my belt. I don’t know a writing life without having my kids around (and often underfoot). Whenever a

Kat Martin started writing in 1985; she is now the bestselling author of more than 50 Historical and contemporary Romance novels, including her Raines of Wind Canyon series. Today, she thanks her mother, Helen, who shared her dream of writing --- an unfulfilled ambition that led Kat to discover fiction, and explore her own talents.

My mother dreamed of being a writer. When I was a girl, she talked about it often. During her high school days at Tulare Union in the San Joaquin Valley, she was the editor of the school newspaper. She loved writing and more than anything, she wanted to go to college and become a journalist.

The country was at war back then, and my grandparents were poor. My mother never achieved her dream, but I could hear the yearning in her voice when she talked about it, and maybe that was the seed that set me on the path to becoming a writer. Or maybe it was the love for reading she instilled in me.

As a young woman, I saw reading as something I had to do to get through high school and then college. I enjoyed learning new things, and especially enjoyed reading history books. But reading just for fun? I couldn’t really imagine it.   

Then I discovered the Bestseller List. 

My mother loved every sort of book and particularly true crime murder books. But my tastes were not the same and other than the textbooks I read in college, I had no idea what to choose. I began picking up books off the top 15 bestseller list in the grocery store and discovered the wonderful world of fiction. 

Books by Wilbur Smith and Danielle Steel, Sidney Sheldon, Colleen McCullough, Herman Wouk, Arthur Hailey, Robert Ludlum, Jack Higgins, Anya Seton, Kathleen Winsor, and Frank Yerby, who wrote heartwrenching Romance novels. 

I was hooked.

Over the years, my mother and I often traded books and then discussed them, which lots of moms do with their children today.

I loved reading, but a career as an author never crossed my mind until I was in my thirties and met my husband, Larry, who had written a western novel. It was a wonderful book and I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been able to get it published. I thought maybe I could help him by doing a little editing and, during the process, realized how much I was enjoying the work. 

I decided maybe I should try writing myself and jumped in with both feet. MAGNIFICENT PASSAGE was the result, my first novel, which I am happy to say is being re-published this July with a magnificent new cover.

More than 50 books later, my mother is gone, but I’m still reading and still writing, and I thank her every day for introducing me to the career I love so much. 

Kat Martin's A SONG FOR MY MOTHER is in stores now! Learn more at www.KatBooks.com.

Sarah Addison Allen is the critically acclaimed author of four spellbinding novels, the latest of which, THE PEACH KEEPER, is now available in bookstores. Below, she pays a moving tribute to her mother --- nose ring and all.

She always did what she was supposed to do, this child of the war, with hair that was made to curl and lips as beautiful as a doll’s. She was the pretty child in family photos, effortless, almost embarrassed. White gloves, patent leather shoes.

Then as a teenager, oh what a teenager, bouffants and black and white polka-dot evening gowns with tiaras and elbow-length gloves. Never without a date on Friday nights, mainly Wake Forest boys, whom she met while working behind the soda fountain counter at her father’s pharmacy, making root beer floats and vanilla Cokes the boys would order just to watch her.

Then there was the boy who really mattered, different from the rest. She was 19, and her parents told her she was supposed to get married. So she did.

And she was a fine wife. Her meals were wonderful, based solely on his preferences. He didn’t even have to ask. She mended his shirts and pressed his suits. And how lovely she looked while doing it, her hair always set and sometimes covered with a chic scarf, the liquid line on her eyes always a perfect complement.

The kids came along and she joined the PTA, made cupcakes for class parties and chaperoned field trips. Nothing out of the ordinary. Ordinary was good. She worked for ordinary. Strived for it. When her kids were small and didn’t want to go to school in the mornings, she would patiently dress them while they sprawled out on the couch, lazy and ungrateful as they watched cartoons.

But there came a time when she looked in the mirror and saw only what other people saw in her. And she didn’t like it, this person who was defined by everyone else. When was the last time someone asked her what she wanted? When was the last kiss, the last hug, the last thank you?

Then there was the divorce. No one understood at the time. She always did what she was supposed to, and she always did it perfectly. And she made it seem like she enjoyed it, which was like cutting herself where only she could see. But finally, at 50 years old, her life was her own and it made her heady. She would smile for no reason. She bought things she and only she liked. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought. She looked at her hair one day and realized how long she had dreamed of dying it red. No one else liked the idea, but what did that matter?

So she dyed her hair.

Bright, coppery red.

And those cool women downtown she used to see in their Birkenstocks and tie-dyes with small gold studs in their noses. How free they always seemed. She wanted to be like that. She wanted a nose ring.

So she got one.

She endured the teasing from her grown children. It didn’t matter. She liked her red hair and nose ring. “Looo-ise,” great-aunt Charlotte would say, trying to convince her to take out the nose ring on Sunday for church, as if God wouldn’t like it. “Why

Daphne Kalotay is the recipient of multiple writing fellowships and the critically acclaimed author of RUSSIAN WINTER, now available in paperback. Below, she shares a heartfelt story about her mother, Jill Kalotay --- who always knows exactly what to do.

Photo: Daphne, right, and mother Jill reading --- What else?

I was four years old when my mother first signed me up for ballet class. This was no amateur operation, but rather the New Jersey School of Ballet. A year or so earlier, we had moved to the town of Madison, where my mother taught dance at a local university; perhaps she had aspirations of greatness for me, the first of two daughters. 

Each Friday afternoon I slid into the back seat of our enormous silver-gray Oldsmobile, so my mother could drive me to class in the rain. Could it really always have been raining? Though my memory may be more emotionally than factually accurate, I truly don’t recall those Fridays any other way.

At the ballet school, we would head upstairs to a small communal dressing room, where my mother helped me into twisty pink tights and a leotard and flat leather slippers, and already I would be uncomfortable, aware of the other little girls around me being fitted into their own tangled tights by their own harried mothers, all of us too shy to acknowledge one another, though surely our mothers must have chatted. Then it was back downstairs to one of the studios, where we learned to plié and relevé and chassée, and moved our feet through first, second, third, fourth and fifth position, and applauded the teacher at the conclusion of each session. But I don’t recall particularly enjoying it. My focus was on the reward afterwards: a visit to a nearby sandwich shop with my mother, who drank hot black tea while I was allowed one of those little packets of orange-colored crackers that had peanut butter spread in-between.

I must have missed a Friday or two, because one fateful day I was allowed into a “make-up” class, this one taught by a different teacher. It happened to be Parents Observation Day, and the teacher had prepared a special performance. I, of course, didn’t know the choreography (which, involving as it did a group of four and five-year-olds, consisted of only the most rudimentary sequence of steps), but the real problem was that, instead of standard ballet terminology, the teacher used her own, non-French vocabulary. When she called out the cue “Jack-in-the-Box,” all the other little girls knew exactly what to do, but I had to look around and mimic them, popping up one beat behind, which ruined the overall effect. The teacher said, “No, Daphne, not like that!” 

I was an extremely shy child, so to have any attention drawn to me was already painful. Over and over, each time I made a mistake, I heard my name called out and saw the displeasure on the teacher’s face, as the piano played a melody that began to sound more and more tragic. And then came the moment that I looked in t

Writing for more than 30 years, Joanna Trollope’s latest book DAUGHTERS-IN-LAW is a straightforward take on our ideas of family. In this ode to her 92-year-old mother, Joanna discusses her mother’s abundant creativity, and how she fostered Joanna’s early love of literature.

My mother is 92. She is a painter –-- and still painting. I’m sure she was drawing before she could even read, or write, and probably did all three when she was very small, growing up as she did –-- and I in turn --– before the universal dominance of television.

So, when it came to her own children –-- there are three of us, two girls and a boy --– it was both natural and inevitable that she expected us to be as interested in creativity as she was herself. For her, making something out of pigments or words or fabric or food is and was as natural as breathing.

To my eternal disappointment, I can’t draw. Where that attractive gene went, I don’t know, but it certainly didn’t come my way. . .But the assumption that creativity is basic to a satisfactory human life was powerfully present in my childhood. Our house was full of books ( a small, blurry, black and white television only made a modest appearance when I was 19) and we were all urged to read the novels my mother had loved in her own childhood –-- the Brontes and Jane Austen, E. Nesbitt and Frances Hodgson Burnett, Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery. Also, we read the poetry anthology my mother had kept all her adolescence, in a black loose leaf binder, with its emphasis on the tremendous poetry of the First World War, which had only ended the year before she was born.

It was impressed upon us all that Only A Boring Person Is Ever Bored, and I don’t think it would ever have crossed her mind to reprimand us for reading all day long instead of doing something healthy and hearty outdoors. So, even if I couldn’t draw, I could read --– and I did, endlessly, anything and everything. And I’m still at it, when I’m not writing. I simply can’t imagine not reading and writing. Any more, I would guess than Mum can imagine not drawing. I just hope I’m still doing it when I’m 92. . .

Author of many short stories and three novels --- including THE FOUR MS. BRADWELLS released in March --- Meg Waite Clayton is riding a wave of true success. Below, she shares a touching letter of appreciation for the many things her mother has taught her --- from bottom-wiping and packing boxes to self-respect and never losing hope.

Photo: Meg and family in their earlier years.

Dear Mom,

Motherhood. It’s a pretty incredible thing, isn’t it? Who’d ever have guessed how many of us would gladly wipe messy bottoms and be thankful for the task. I’m in my own twenty-second year of motherhood, and yes, it’s taken me just about this long to appreciate what you did for me, Mom. So thank you. For everything.

For the wiping-my-bottom thing, and for wiping the tears, too. Tears of pain when I busted my lip on a sled on a not-quite-snowy-enough day  (a scar you can still see if you look closely enough); if memory serves, you suggested before I left that I might wait for just a bit more snow, but you never said I told you so. Tears of fear when I handed Chris over to the doctors, to let them crack his head open, and when Nick was born without his little lungs quite working. Tears of sorrow and frustration when I didn’t get into Dartmouth, or make Law Review, or partner. When my first romance ended. And my second. When I got engaged to the third guy, how did you know that taking me shopping for dishes --– the reality of table settings and silver --– would help me face the fact that he wasn’t the one?

Tears of joy on my wedding day, and when Nick was finally released from neonative intensive care, when THE LANGUAGE OF LIGHT was published, and then THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS. When THE FOUR MS. BRADWELLS sold even before I wrote the dang thing, and the next book, too. Mostly, it’s true, tears of joy. For all the challenges I’ve faced, I can count more moments of joy in my life than anything else.

Perhaps because you taught me how to face those challenges. I know how to pack boxes and to leave old friends and make new ones because you taught me by doing it again and again and again yourself, without complaint that I ever heard. You always did find new friends in all those new places, and wonderful ones at that, which taught me that maybe I could too.

From watching you, I know how to question, and hope for the best, and insist everything in the world be done to bring it about.  (Although Mac thinks maybe you taught me this insisting stuff just a little too well.) I know how to face life’s challenges with grace from watching you face the challenges life has given you with truly amazing grace.

You taught me to take myself seriously, but not too seriously, to reach for what I wanted, and to expect to get it even if girls didn’t usually do so. To go back

Lorna Jane Cook is the author of three novels, the latest of, OUTSIDE OF WONDERLAND, is now available in bookstores. Today, she reflects on the first stories she ever told --- and the woman who encouraged her to dream even bigger.

Photo: Proof! Lorna Jane Cook in a rare photo with her mother, Leona May Nyenhuis.

For years, the joke in my family was that I wasn’t theirs; a foundling, perhaps, as there seemed to be no photographs of me. I should note, in my mother’s defense, that when I arrived, she was but 25 years old; she already had two daughters, aged four and five, and understandably had other things on her mind. My father was working full-time, getting his PhD, and juggling the first two little girls on his back (of course, there are photographs of that). Nonetheless, I lamented that I’d gotten lost in the mix, and no Kodak paper was spent on me. Also, my elder sisters, who were only a year apart and were sharing a room, often left me out of the loop --- the spurned baby sister (until the next daughter arrived to take my place, spurned, in turn, by me). Coincidentally, my only line in my school’s first grade play was, “What about me?”

Of course, I may be exaggerating; memory often discolors the truth (and some photos later surfaced). But there was an upside to the benign neglect: I discovered books. I will admit that I don’t remember bedtime readings, but there were always books around, and I prized my first library card. As I devoured story after story, I developed a habit that my mother, bless her, generously encouraged: I’d follow her around the house on her rounds --- kitchen, to bedrooms, to laundry room, and back --- regaling her with every plot twist, character trait and a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the latest book. While she loaded piles of clothing into the washing machine, I’d lean casually on the dryer like a barfly and gab. It never occurred to me to help her sort or fold, and she rarely asked, just let me prattle on like white noise (which, in retrospect, I likely was). Sometimes she’d nod or smile or interject, “Oh, wow,” and then proceed to the next task, with me traipsing along behind, never tiring of the tale. And I couldn’t just say, “It’s about this girl who discovers a secret garden.” No, I’d have to start from the beginning and tell my mother about the cholera in India, and then move onto the moors, the jumping rope, the boy with the birds, the sickly kid hidden away in the manor, the groundskeeper, the starched dresses, and oh, a key to a secret garden, and what that looked like, and why it was locked…

One could attribute it to a small streak of O.C.D. which runs through my family, though it’s not the kind that makes one count steps or touch light switches; lucky us, we just like order, and have a hard time condensing. Thus, the long story was the only one I knew how to tell, and I

An anesthesiologist, mother and now author, Michelle Au knows a thing or two about changes and balancing acts. In this special post, Michelle discusses the inspirations behind her forthcoming debut THIS WON’T HURT A BIT (AND OTHER WHITE LIES): My Education in Medicine and Motherhood, which will be released May 11th.

I remember my first night on call as a young medical resident.  As the daily bustle of the hospital yielded gently to evening, one by one my colleagues checked out their patients to me for safekeeping before themselves heading home.  By midnight, I found myself the only doctor on the floor (having graduated from medical school all of five weeks before, I guess I was technically a doctor) in charge of thirty very sick patients.  And I remember thinking to myself: How is it that I am allowed to do this? How can this be my responsibility? How will I know what to do if something goes wrong?

Fast-forward two years to the birth of my first child. Holding him in the delivery room for the first time, seeing how small he was, how completely dependent he was (and would continue to be for a long time); the same litany of thoughts ran through my mind. Me? Take care of this baby? They’re really going to let me do this? How do they know I can handle it? Being a new doctor and becoming a new parent are, it seems, similar in many respects.

Why do I write about my experiences in medicine, and in motherhood? The easy answer is that writing is an amusing hobby, a creative outlet, a distraction from the everyday. The simple truth is that it’s fun to tell stories, and it’s really fun when other people enjoy them. 

But the more complicated answer is that I write about my experiences because of change. Everything changes. And sometimes they change very quickly.

I’ve changed from my years as a junior medical resident. Nearly three years out of training, I’m comfortable as a doctor now, and I don’t question my role or responsibility nearly as much as I used to…though I’d be lying if I said I never do. 

My son has also changed. In the past five and a half years, he’s grown from a newborn who didn’t know what his hands were for and who could barely support the weight of his own head to a little boy who quizzes me almost daily on the three periods of the Mesozoic Era, and the species of dinosaurs that inhabited each. His changes are, to me, the most miraculous of all, and sometimes it’s hard to remember the baby he once was in the shadow of the person he’s now becoming.

All the patients I have cared for over the years have changed as well, though obviously I haven’t been there to see most of it. Interactions in medicine are all too often simply a snapshot in time, without enough time or depth to lend a true sense of understanding. Some patients are healthier now. But some have diseases that have progressed. And most of them have grown older, though, unfortunately…some of them have not.

The protagonist of Victoria Brown’s debut novel, MINDING BEN, is based on her own personal journey from Trinidad to New York to work as a full-time nanny at age 16. Below, Victoria remembers her grade-school calypso singing days in her native village during revolutionary times --- and the busy, supportive mother who “worked” as her dedicated lyricist.

Here’s something that’s not widely known about me: I had a fledgling career as a calypso singer. And my mother was my lyricist. This whole collaborationist career blossomed, peaked and ended before I was twelve. One February just before my ninth birthday, my teacher Mr. Whiteman asked if I didn’t want to participate in the upcoming carnival show. He let drop that Natasha, my friend and closest rival, was competing in the calypso category. Why didn’t I ask my mother to compose a calypso, and then I could enter as well?

Ask my mother to write me a calypso? Ours was a god-fearing household. The Bible was the only book my mother ever read. Carnival and calypsos were the work of the devil. But, I had a strong desire to upstage Natasha. I heard them practicing during recess, Natasha’s lively voice accompanied by Mr. Whiteman on guitar. I wanted to enter the competition too.

To my surprise, my mother agreed to write a calypso. Because Natasha’s song had been about our country, I asked her for lyrics about our village, Morne Diable. Mr. Whiteman was amazed the next day when I turned up ready to practice. I can only remember the chorus:

Oh my community, oh my community
As you can see, it is very pretty.
Look Morne Diab R.C., and a beautiful sea,
Co-co-nut trees in my community.

Seriously, I cannot remember who won, which means that I didn’t for sure, but that Natasha might have.

The next year, my mother began composing early. She actually didn’t have the time for this. I was the fifth of her six surviving children, and my four older siblings had all been born eighteen months apart. My mother had exactly one hour of free time during the day, and in the lead up to the competition, I remember coming home from school around 2:30 to find her lying on her bed, chewing on a stub of pencil writing lyrics. Finally, my calypso was ready. That year we left the community behind and challenged the government. Here’s the chorus from "The Budget":

‘Cause the budget high, high, high
It could touch the sky, sky, sky,
I not telling no lie, lie, lie,
It could make you cry, cry, cry,

I killed. The audience went crazy. I had them singing along by the second chorus, a mass of fingers pointing upward punctuating every sky. The whole country had been in an uproar over the last national budget and here I was, a village girl sending a message to the big man in town. My mother followed my performance from the sidelines, her eyes tracking my movement across the stage. Her arms were folded and she nodded her head (all the dancing she could ever do in public). I tied with Derek Caesar for first place. I was so mad, especially as the $25 prize money was split, and second place Deborah got $15 for a calypso with zero social commentary.  

In my final year of primary school a real revolution occurred on the next-door island of Grenada. The government was overthrown, the prime minister decapitated, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew put in place. Fearing communism, American troops invaded the island. I have no memory of my mother composing in bed that February. I rea

Bestselling author Julia Spencer-Fleming’s latest novel, ONE WAS A SODLIER, explores the problems veterans face as they reenter society. Born on an Air Force Base and growing up an “Army brat,” Julia recalls how her mother always made sure to stock the bookshelves of the family’s new abodes and, even in poorer times, kept book-loving Julia well supplied.

When I was pre-literate, maybe five or six, my favorite book was A FLY WENT BY by Dr. Seuss. I know this not because I remember myself (my early childhood memory is astonishingly thin) or because a battered copy holds a place of honor in the old family bookshelf (in the military we moved frequently, and out-of-favor toys and books were ruthlessly weeded and given away.) I know this because forty-plus years later, my mother can still recite the entire book. Verbatim. She read it to me so many times, it imprinted itself permanently on her brain.

I firmly believe that all children are born with a love of story. It’s what happens after that makes them readers or not. Whenever we moved to a new post, one of the first things my mother did was to find the local or base library and get us borrowers cards. Whether we lived in a house, an apartment, or married officers’ quarters, she stocked the bookshelves for herself and for her children. She read to me and to my sister, and when my brother was diagnosed with dyslexia in kindergarten, she read with him each night for years to strengthen his decoding abilities: one page Mom, the next page Patrick. (Since he later went on to graduate from St. John Fisher College and take an MBA from George Washington University, I think that reading program counts as a success.)

Perhaps more importantly, my mother showed us what a book-lover looks like. If you visit her today, you'll find a stack of paperbacks by her favorite reading chair, a library book on the bedside table, and heaps of magazines in each bathroom --- just like when we were children. (I think I was well into my teens before I realized some people don't keep reading material in their bathrooms. Whatever do they do with their time?)

Over the years, my book-loving habits must have been a trial. When we lived in Maryland, it was my habit to walk home from school, my nose in a book. One afternoon I was so very late my poor mother retraced my route, worried I might have been hurt or interfered with. She found me on a stoop, still reading. The story had gotten so engrossing I wasn't able to walk and read at the same time. For years I stealth-read at night, squinting at the words from the light entering my bedroom from the hall. Despite medical evidence to the contrary, I still have a guilty feeling that this is the cause of my poor eyesight, just as my mother warned. I shudder to estimate the money she must have spent in overdue fines and to replace the library books I lost, left out in the yard, or dropped in the tub.

We went through a period, after we had gotten out of the army, when we were poor. I had no idea at the time. Like Marmee in LITTLE WOMEN, my mother had a genius for turning deprivation into creative opportunity. There were caroling parties with hot cocoa and stringing popcorn, and trips to Saratoga's historical sites, and Saturday mornings spent “garage sailing” where I always walked away with a book or two. One Christmas, my mother gave me an entire grocery sack ful

A New York Times bestseller whose work has been internationally acclaimed, Luanne Rice is the author of 28 novels --- the latest of which, THE SILVER BOAT, is now available in bookstores. Below she remembers the woman who helped launch her writing career by giving her what she never had herself --- a sense of freedom.

On summer mornings when I was young, my mother held writing workshops for my sisters and me at our summer cottage. We sat the oak table, windows open wide, and she said, “Write about what you hear.” Sounds drifted in: oak leaves rustling, waves hitting the shore, the joyous shrieks of our friends playing on the beach.

My mother, Lucille Arrigan Rice, had returned to school to get her Masters in Education, and we were her guinea pigs. Although I begged to be set free, I found myself writing about the sounds, letting them guide me into stories. 

Those days taught me to sit still, to write every day, to observe nature and life. Our family was full of secrets and complicated, tragic love. Through writing fiction, my characters have helped me understand.

My mother finished grad school and became an English teacher. In college, she had written plays, had one produced and performed in Boston.

She married my father right after he returned from World War II. She was beautiful, he was handsome; they came from similar working-class backgrounds, had met at the beach, and had a romantic love story. It took nine years for them to have their first child, me. Passion, and the belief things would get better, must have kept her with him, because life was not easy.

My father kept us in suspended animation, always guessing. Would he come home that night? I developed detective skills; by the time I was seven, I knew he drank and had affairs, and that she was in a state of perpetual heartbreak.

My grandmother lived with us, a sort of second mother. My mother would read us Dickens, Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, American plays of the 1930s; she encouraged us to memorize poems, and write our own; each Saturday she took us downtown to the library and art museum.

When it came to art and literature, she was wonderful. Emotionally, she was numb, and left my sisters and me to mother each other. Our grandmother, Mim, took care of the basics, like cooking our meals, mending our clothes, and rocking us on her lap when we had chicken pox.

My sisters and I shared a bedroom. After we were in bed, my mother wrote at the dining table. The sound of her typewriter was my lullaby. Yet she never published again, and when she died, her desk contained many unfinished short stories.

I often feel my mother’s influence. Many of my characters are artists, and that comes from her --- our museum visits and the fact that she painted, on a tall easel set up in the kitchen. She taught me to care deeply about the planet and all who inhabit it, to listen to wind in the trees, to watch clouds in the sky.

The year she retired, ready to write a novel, she developed a brain tumor. Her next nine years were a long, terrible decline, but she never complained. She used her experience as material, and wrote in notebooks. I watched her lo

Mary Higgins Clark is known worldwide as "The Queen of Suspense;” her daughter, Carol, has been following in Mom’s legendary footsteps since the days of re-typing her mother's manuscripts. Penning 42 and 14 books respectively, the prolific mother-daughter team has written five Christmas books together, beginning with DECK THE HALLS in 2000. Here, they discuss their collaborative process, and the joys of working together.

Has collaborating on projects brought the two of you closer together?

Both: We have always been close but naturally this is a new dimension, storytelling together, which has been a lot of fun and which also reinforces what we both know independently -- that trying to tell the best possible tale is just as hard for two as it is for one. The difference is that we’re sharing the load!

As writers, what are your respective strengths and weaknesses?

Both: We decided we have no weaknesses!  Seriously, we both try to tell the best possible story. 

Do you ever get stuck when you’re writing together, and if so, what do you do to help each other out?

Both: When we’re writing together, and feel as if we’re stuck, we toss ideas around. If we both start laughing, we know we’re on the right track. If we’re really stuck, we remind each other that we’ve been through this before, and came out on the other side!

Do you think it’s more or less challenging to work on a collaborative project with a family member than it would be to work on a novel with a complete stranger?

Both: We’ve never been challenged to write with a complete stranger but we would imagine that it would take time to establish the basic playing field that is so familiar to us. We know that it works for us to write together. As anyone who starts a new job knows, so much depends on the chemistry you have with the people you’re working with. We feel so comfortable with each other that neither of us is afraid to tell the other they can’t stand the other’s idea! With a stranger, it might come to blows!

Do you have to be in the same place to write your books together?

Both: We are always in the same place when we’re writing, except for a couple of times we’ve had to spend a few hours on the phone. But basically it works for us to sit in the same room, and then perhaps after lunch, mutually decide that we’ve used up all the energy there and switch to another part of the house.

Your Christmas series consists entirely of mystery no