A Very Caboose Mother's Day

Mother’s Day is here, and I would be remiss if I didn’t give my own mother her due as one who influenced my love of words. For you see, my mother came to Canada via Israel, via Brazil, and she came to this country not exactly ready to converse with the landlord about why I was found crawling around in the air ducts (okay, that never really happened, but I’m sure I could have found a way in if I would have tried, and then my mother would have had some explaining to do. Luckily, as a baby, I couldn’t be blamed, which served me well until my brother came and I wasn’t the baby anymore. That was very discourteous of him, so I bit his toes. You know, one day I should figure out how I go off on these non sequiturs and perhaps analyze why the tracks of my train of thought was built by a committee of cartoon ducks. And, as history has shown us, cartoon ducks are shoddy craftsmen, so the tracks don’t exactly go anywhere.)

(I was pretty sure I was talking about something…oh right, my mother) One of the ways my mother would practice English would be to read to me out loud the daily comics in the newspaper, many of which use simple language and visual gags to allow people to understand the joke, even if they don’t understand the words. My love of reading, and certainly my love of all things comics, can be traced back to my mother, who made sure not only to love me unconditionally, even when I did bite my brother’s toes, but also to allow me the opportunity to begin, at an early age, my love of reading.

I am forever indebted to my mother, and I am forever thankful that I was raised with compassion and with books. Happy Mother’s Day to one and all! (Now go give Hallmark some money or writers who work on funny limericks will be out of a job.)