This Is Where You’ll Find Me
January 16, 2024
I couldn’t remember the name of the book. As a 5th grader, I had read a book of fiction that made a deep impression. One powerful story in the book was clear in my memory. If I had had Google available then, I would have found it, I’m sure.
A friend needed someone to watch her young child while she took the other one to the doctor. I volunteered. As the child was taking his nap, I looked at my friend’s bookshelf. A book got my attention. Something about the cover looked familiar. Could it be? Yes, it was—the book I had longed to find, “A Girl of the Limberlost,” by Gene Stratton-Porter. This is the story of a girl, born into poverty whose mother neglected her and she found solace in the Limberlost swamp in Indiana. She loved its beauty. Her book is one of the most cherished of Indiana authors. I worked for a doctor who described his family’s vacation cottage in Indiana and the setting. “That sounds like a favorite book of mine!” I told him the name and author of the book. Indeed, he said his family’s cottage is near the very place the author described. Her house and grounds are now a state historic site.
The above courtyard is not named after me. A lover of libraries gave a generous gift to The Topeka and Shawnee County Library in memory of his wife, also named Claire, and this courtyard was built to honor her. But this is where you will find me—in a library. And I will tell you why. I owe my affinity for libraries to my mother. I mentioned to her that I had this warm feeling when I went to a bookmobile. We lived near Brookwood Shopping Center, and I would often go to the Topeka Library Bookmobile when it parked there. She explained. When I was too young to remember, she took me to the bookmobile in White Plains, a small South Georgia town. My love of the words and experiences found in a book began at a very young age. Mother would have been 101 yesterday. She died at age 87. My brothers and I agree that her encouragement to us to read was one of the most important qualities she passed on to us.
Would you share your favorite books? I would be honored to have your response.
On a summer visit to my parents in Georgia, Mother and I sat on the front porch and she read her book to me, titled “Sweet Memories: A Woman’s Journal.” Her friend, Martha, had gifted her with the special memory-recording book. Mother had answered all the questions the book asked and thus wrote the story of her life. She told me her mother would discourage her from reading because “you keep your head stuck in a book and there is work to be done.” But she managed to walk to the library each day and sit on the front porch swing and read. She and her brother would sit on the swing and read their favorite stories to each other—and poetry, which she loved.
Her father fought in World War I in the heaviest of battles in France and was injured. He returned with tuberculosis and spent time away at the VA Hospital. Their life was a hard life, and her mother shouldered a big responsibility. I was so touched by this response to the prompt “I liked to pretend that . . .”
“I was rich. We were so poor when I was growing up. After I learned how to read and count, I sat with the Sears-Roebuck catalog, pretend I had $100 and I made a list of things to order—but not just for myself. I always wanted everybody in the family to have pretty clothes and all of us children to have lots of toys.”
The love my mother had for books and learning, fostered by some memorable teachers whom she named, gave her a rich life despite their poverty.
We moved to Macon, Georgia, when I was in grade school, and Mother took my three brothers and me to the library each summer to enter the reading contest. We learned the library would put our names on a big bulletin board if we read 50 books. That was a big deal to us. By mid-summer, we had read 50 books. My favorites were the Landmark biographies. Memorable ones were Florence Nightingale, Babe Ruth, and George Washington Carver. These biographies are available online with Amazon as the best resource—with new and old Landmark books. I love to give them as gifts and to collect them for my own enjoyment.
When I took a poetry class at Washburn, I wrote a poem about my mother for an assignment. I called it “Treasures.” Here are the concluding lines from the poem:
Mother is now 83.
She reads a news magazine through and a novel or two
in just a matter of days.
She loves to quote Longfellow on leaving a legacy,
“footprints on the sands of time.”
No wonder my treasures,
though not computed on Wall Street,
are those that can be held
and read.
She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. (from Proverbs 31)
In memory of Venetta Kirkland
1-15-1923 to 7-16-2010