The Enablers I Love

by

Andi Miller

Every bookish person becomes a reader somehow. Rarely is it an isolated incident; more often readers are born of the bookish enablers in their lives. I come from a long line of readers, though for the most part they have very different tastes from my own. I have mentioned my family here to some extent, but as I was mulling over a column idea for this week (and getting nowhere fast) it just happened to wash over me. Why not discuss the people at fault? Or I should say, those who put books in my hands from an early age and now wish I would stop stacking the reading material in every available corner of the house.

First on my list is my mother. She is the greatest influence in my life in a number of ways, and reading is certainly no exception. She has been single for the majority of my life, and as a result she has generally worked her tail off. From the time I was roughly a year old until I was old enough not to burn the house down, I stayed with my grandparents while my mom worked an hour away from our small hometown. Her carpool rolled out for downtown Dallas at 6 a.m. and rolled back in at 6 p.m. As you might imagine, we did not get to spend a ton of quality time together during the week, but I never felt a lack of attention from her.

My mother has always been incredibly supportive of my reading habits. Some of my favorite memories from childhood include browsing in the bookstore on a weekend afternoon. While she was quick to put her foot down on a new Barbie or a video, I can’t recall her ever saying no to a book.

Christmas was a particularly enabling time on my mother’s part. I always found a mountain of exciting stuff waiting for me on Christmas Eve, but the real treat was the pre-Christmas book haul. Mom would take a list of books I was particularly interested in, buy them before Christmas, and give them to me to enjoy over my school break before the holiday ever rolled around. I generally had them all finished up by Christmas morning, but it was still so much fun to kick back with my goodies as soon as school was out; adolescent gems like L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries or the latest Stephen King. To this day, if she buys a book for me for Christmas, she gives it to me beforehand. With her help I always had a fresh supply of reading material, and a grand opportunity to stretch my imagination.

My grandparents were the second most pervasive bookish force in my life—my grandmother in particular. A reader herself, she made it a priority to read to me every day. Before I started school, I would spend my days at their house jumping on my trampoline, exploring the garden, or building Lego houses with my grandfather. Just after lunch was nap time, and my grandmother always read to me. I cannot remember a single day that went by without the story of my choice. At the tender ages of four and five Golden Books, Sesame Street stories, and—dare I say it?—She-Ra: Princess of Power books were my stories of choice. No matter how many times I requested the same story or how many times I asked her to read a page or a paragraph over again, she always did it.

When it was time for me to go to kindergarten and learn to read on my own, my grandmother was the one who soothed my frayed nerves when I struggled to read a page just right or fought to sound out a particularly horrible and daunting word. Knowing my tendencies toward perfectionism, she would sit down, assure me that I was doing fine, and help me along. Before I knew it, what had started as a frustrating task had become my favorite hobby. Reading officially took over my life.

As I worked my way through the pre-teen and teen years I held fast to fiction. All the while, the two most influential ladies in my life drowned themselves in nonfiction. I just could not figure out how they could read biographies and true crime all the time. Where was the whimsy? The horror? The escapism? Likewise, I doubt they really understood my love of fiction, as they were very literal, straightforward types. While I preferred flights of fancy that danced circles around my imagination, they were in favor of straight lines and logic. Needless to say, we stayed out of each other’s reading zones. There was no danger of losing a book only to find it stashed on my mother’s nightstand or in my grandmother’s closet. We respected each other’s bookish spaces while still managing to discuss what we were reading and enable each other’s habits.

I doubt either of them knew exactly what I would become—that reading would so thoroughly enthrall me to the point that I write about it, that I teach English, or that I will have two Masters degrees that thoroughly involve books by this time next year. They did not realize, I am sure, those weekend trips to the book store or the carefully chosen Christmas gifts would shape my entire life. That something as simple as reading would become so big a part of my life. They were just being helpful, giving me skills and encouraging behavior that would benefit me in school and that bring me great joy. I could never thank them enough for what they have done. My grandmother passed away in 2002, and my mom is still reading true crime. I wish I could have them back together in the same room to express how much their own enjoyment has affected mine and given me a thoroughly fulfilling purpose in life.


Andi is a recovering university academic employed by the North Carolina community college system as an English instructor. While she decided to forego a Ph.D. and career as a professor, she fills in all the free time her current position affords her with editing literary publications, reviewing, freelancing, and blogging at Tripping Toward Lucidity: Estella’s Revenge. Her work can be found in the journal, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), and Altar magazine as well as online in various venues such as PopMatters.com. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), and writes fiction. Her turn-ons include new books and gelato, while her turn-offs are reality television and washing dishes. Contact Andi.