I would have long phone conversations with my mom on Sundays because she lived in Indiana and myself, I lived in Florida. In these conversations she would tell me stories about my childhood. One day she was telling me a story about a trip about an experience we had in bookstore at the Mall.My mom would take me and my three siblings to the mall. She told me that we all had our own separate places we liked to go to. For example, one liked going to the arcade, another to the Foot Locker, one enjoyed the deliciousAsian chicken they serve in the food court. Me, I was always drawn to the bookstore. I have always loved and still do the smell of bookstores. My mom told me that on one occasion we were walking towards the exit and I stopped to look at a book on an endcap and asked her if she would buy it for me. To put this into perspective, I was about 4 or 5 and this was a “chapter book”, hardcover book, nonetheless. My mom said to me that she knew that I could read but that the book was way above my reading level. She told me that when she tried to reason with me of why it did not make any sense for me to have this book, my response was to her was, “But my heart needs it”. She laughed as she told me this story because she said, “I mean, how could I say no to your little heart”. She gave into my little heart’s desire and she purchased the book for me.
My mom told me this story in 2014 because she wanted to let me know that she still had the book for me and was going to send it, but she wanted me to know the story behind the book before she sent it down. She passed away a shortlyafter and never got a chance to send me the book, but when I went into her home after her death and she had the book sitting right there on her end table in her living room. The book was called, ‘The sensation of being somebody: building an adequate self-concept’. I still have yet to read the contents in the book, but I hope that one day I will. As I think to myself, that at such a young age, was my mom was unknowingly calling out my path in life?
