{"id":4253,"date":"2011-04-17T07:26:08","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T11:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/?p=4253"},"modified":"2011-04-17T14:33:02","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T18:33:02","slug":"the-gift-of-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/?p=4253","title":{"rendered":"The gift of reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MomPGWodehouse\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today is the anniversary of the unexpected passing of my mother in 2006. I try to deflect the grey curtain that descends on my spirits each spring by recalling the many blessings she bestowed.<\/p>\n

One of them was a love of reading. I grew up accustomed to the sight of walls and walls of books in living room, family room, bedrooms;\u00a0books stacked on every table; books strewn about the car and gracing the bathroom.\u00a0They were of nearly every genre: reference books and classics, of course, but also art, poetry, history, geography, science, humor, cartoon collections, and up-to-the-moment modern fiction. My parents also subscribed to about twenty different publications, from Life<\/em> and Look<\/em> (I\u2019m dating myself here) to the New Yorker<\/em> and Punch<\/em>. Oh, the trees that were sacrificed at the altar of literacy. (When did my mother manage to cook and clean?) And, for good or ill, none of it was off-limits to us children, whether it dealt with the Gulag, the Holocaust, or bed-hopping suburban New Yorkers.<\/p>\n

Here is my mother reading P.G. Wodehouse. Especially as she grew older, she really preferred humor to anything else. And that\u2019s another of her blessings.<\/p>\n

\"Yahrzeit3\"<\/a>Mom<\/p>\n

\"CakeBerries2\"<\/a>Monique<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the anniversary of the unexpected passing of my mother in 2006. I try to deflect the grey curtain that descends on my spirits each spring by recalling the many blessings she bestowed. One of them was a love of reading. I grew up accustomed to the sight of walls and walls of booksRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[9,85,17],"class_list":["post-4253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sketchbook","tag-books","tag-mom","tag-penink"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4253"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4262,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253\/revisions\/4262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}