The Five Little Peppers

Deanne is interviewing Ellis and me and asking each of us questions about our
                                             "growing up years."
One ? she threw at me is: What is your earliest memory of your mom?

When I go back back back  back to earliest memories  sometimes it's hard to know if this is
my memory? or is it my memory of stories told to me when I was little?

One thing that is my memory without a doubt is this:

Mom read to us. 
She probably ended up reading until she was blue in the face
and completely sick of the books.
We knew those stories by heart
(and still quote some of them.)

When we were old enough to read Mom let us read.
She let us read in our spare time.
When we had chores to do she let us think of innovative ways to keep on reading.

  -- like the days we mowed lawn
Four girls in the family
 two push mowers
Two girls outlined the patches of lawn to be mowed.
The other two could amuse themselves while waiting their turn to mow.
   read
  play on the swing set
  play with dolls
  fix a cold pitcher of Kool-Aid for everyone.

We decided how many rounds we would take per person.
If it was extremely warm we took two rounds pushing the mower.
Then we'd drop in the shade and read like crazy until it was time to start
around the square again. As the patch got smaller and smaller we
could go around more times before we stopped to rest.

When it was time to do dishes we had some sort of schedule taking turns.
When it was my turn to dry dishes I propped my book up and read at the same time
as I dried dishes.
(It didn't work to read and wash dishes at the same time I found out.)

Mom took us to the Book Mobile in the summer.
We shared our books with her from the school library during the school year.

This is a long circular motion to get around to my earliest memory of Mom
and a little church library and two or three little girls begging every chance we got for
another visit there after church so we could check out our favorite books
                 - especially one beautifully illustrated edition of -
                     The Five Little Peppers.