The Partridge Family
    My mom Sybil Miner Beck loved books and loved to read them. If she wasn’t working, she most often had a book in her hand. She shared her love of reading with us kids and would read to us before bed. I got my desires to read and write from her. I also learned to play with words. That evolved from her. She played with words too often taking something we’d say and sing a song or chorus that matched.
     We would sit beside her on the wide couch after our evening baths and she would read. Most of the readings came from old reading books that she had collected from hand-me-downs or some bought on bargain tables. She preferred the short stories that could be finished quickly and not in a series of chapters. She would read several stories in an evening, and then tell us it was time for bed. We pleaded, “Just one more story.”
    Usually she would relent. I think she liked us to hear us plead for “just on more story.” We wanted to hear one more story just as much as we wanted to delay going to bed for a bit longer.
    After hearing several of our pleas, she would finally say, “Okay, just one more story, then off to bed with you.”
    “Yeah.”
    This night the extra story was about Mrs. Partridge and her family. It talked about this wild bird protecting her chicks and searching for food. It shared how she’d gather her chicks beneath her wings to keep them warm and safe. Mom was doing well with her reading, each paragraph spoke of Mrs. Partridge.
    After about five paragraphs, her dry mouth and tired eyes made an error. Instead of saying, “Mrs. Partridge.” She said “Mrs. Fartridge…”
    We three kids sitting on that old orange flowered couch began to giggle. Even though it was funny it was the wrong thing to do.
    “That’s it. Get to bed. I told you I was tired before I started.” And she slammed the book shut. There was no leeway for that argument. There was no reprieve.
    Years later, in high school, I would read two or three books at a time. They would be scattered throughout the house. One could be upstairs in my bedroom, one might be in the living room, and one was always open in the family room.
Mom would fuss, “I don’t know how you do it. You have one book in every room of the house and I know that you read one before you go to sleep. How you keep all those stories straight.”
    I tried to explain, “I learned it in school. We don’t go the whole way through the math book before we start history or geography. We’re expected to read them all at the same time. That’s nothing different than what I do at home.”
    She would shake her head and walk away.