Leading By Example

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

 

LEADING BY EXAMPLE

This week we celebrate mothers. When you think of your own mother, what’s the first image that comes to mind? Each of us could tell a different story.

For me, I see my mom standing in front of a bookshelf, in a bookstore or maybe a library, several books already in the crook of her arm. Her head is tilted to the left as she reads titles on the vertical spines.

My mom has never been far away from a newspaper, a magazine, or a book.

Both Mom and Dad read to my brother, Leon, and me when we were young, but it was Mom who was the primary word-gatherer and word-peddler in our family.

She subscribed to newspapers from Hutchinson, Larned and Great Bend. Newsweek and other magazines came in the mail, and we made weekly trips to the Cummins Memorial Library in Larned.

We probably weren’t the typical family when we sat down at the dinner table. When Mom yelled “supper’s ready,” that was a signal for the rest of us to grab our reading materials and head for the kitchen.

Don’t worry, there was conversation as well. “Pass the potatoes, please.” And, “Could I have some butter?”

Our kitchen had a built-in table; three sides were open and the fourth side was attached to the wall. I sat on one end of the table reading a comic book or science-fiction. Leon, on the other end, likely had either a Mad magazine or a political science book. Dad leaned a folded newspaper against the wall to read. My mother had a magazine in her lap.

It’s not like we avoided conversations. When I came home from school, I chattered endlessly to Mom, telling her about my friends or a math test. And I spent a lot of time hanging out with my dad, too. On evenings and weekends, my brother and I played baseball, soccer, and football, and we also had the occasional fight in the front yard. So there was plenty of interaction. Suppertime was peaceful and quiet; it was reading time.

When Leon and I were in grade school, Mom bought a brand new set of encyclopedias. I’m not sure how these books were acquired – maybe they were purchased weekly from a grocery store, or maybe one lucky day the shadow of an encyclopedia salesman fell across our porch.

Anyway, Compton’s Encyclopedia was the centerpiece of our living room bookshelves, a world’s worth of knowledge in between 20 or so cream-colored covers. I’d pull down a volume and sit on the couch with my reading for the day. I learned about U.S. Presidents and studied the parts of a flower. In the section on the human body, plastic overlays showed the skeletal and circulatory systems and also the organs. I was fascinated.

Leon and I used these volumes for numerous school reports in social studies and science. Earwigs were kind of creepy, so I wrote a report about them.

Even though our family didn’t have a lot of money, Mom wanted to give us kids what we needed for a good education. Plus, she liked to read simply because she wanted to learn. She always felt deprived because she had wanted to go to college but felt that her parents didn’t have the money to send her.

She never gave up though. Mom found a way to get a degree, one class at a time. She began her college education in the mid ‘60s, when Barton County Community College opened, and she graduated from Wichita State University in 1982 with a degree in social work.

Leon and I were there for her graduation ceremony. At WSU that year they read the name of every single graduate, and her name was the very last one read. But that was good – because she received the longest applause – and a standing ovation.

While my brother and I could’ve gone in any direction, we both spend our days working with words. Leon was a journalist for more than 30 years, and a textbook copyeditor on the side. Now he edits and produces books in and about the Alaska native languages. And me, well, I just love putting words together; I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Mom never insisted that we read, but she made it seem so inviting. She led, and we read, by example.

Copyright 2012 ~ Cheryl Unruh