She could make delicious birthday cakes shaped like treasure chests and frothy chocolate milk. She didn’t mind when I came in dirty from head to toe from playing outside or if I had a butterfly or a roly poly in my hand to show her.

Bette Jean loved my dad, my sisters, my brother, and me, and she loved books, that I knew for sure.

When I got the Scholastic book order form at school all I had to do was circle all the books I wanted with a purple crayon and she wrote a check.  The books would come and I would get a whole stack of them.  It was like Christmas morning, every time.

I remember the Beezus and Ramona books. Narnia. The Little Princess. Pippi Longstocking. The Secret Garden. Who could forget, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?

One time my sixth grade teacher took one of my Judy Blume books away and called my mother.  She told my mother I shouldn’t read it. My mother said I could read whatever I wanted and sent me right back up to school to get the book. She was my book champion.

Though I grew up in a fairly strict Catholic household, she did not believe in censoring what her kids read.

My parents were very conservative with money. They had four kids and my mother stayed home with us. Their own parents had lived through the Depression and had given them dire warnings.  They believed that it wasn’t if a financial disaster would strike, it was when, and one should be prepared so one didn’t starve or lose the house.

That’s why my mother only had three dresses when I was very young. The budget was too tight and they were saving for the imminent, looming disaster.

But books? Yes to books.

My mother literally sacrificed dresses so her kids could have more books.

When I was a teenager, my mother became an English teacher at my middle school. I was scared to death the first day she started teaching there. I was sure that she would run screaming from the room, as the kids would surely turn into wild Tazmanian devils and create tornados of disruption. I could hardly breathe.

Nothing of the sort happened.

Everyone loved her. Kids started talking to me who had never talked to me before – an uncool and gawky kid – because they loved my mother.

It was also the end of her limited wardrobe. She bought elegant dresses, tapered slacks, stylish sweaters and high heels that you put in your closet and gaze at in wonder. Gone were the days of only three dresses.  She knew teaching kids was a worthwhile career, and a privilege, and she dressed for it.

First she gave her own kids a love of books, then she passed it on to thousands of kids over her long career as an English teacher.

Through the years we always loved talking about books, and we swapped them back and forth. Mysteries. Historical Fiction. Nonfiction.

Bette Jean was a huge reader and, also, the healthiest person I have ever met. She ate organic foods, she walked all the time, and she was slim. She never smoked a day in her life. She died of lung cancer at sixty, fourteen years ago.

I still miss her. There’s still that raw ache, still that hole in my heart. Sometimes, when I’m reading a book I’ll think, “Mom, you would love this book because…” and I’ll list the reasons, as if she were right there, sitting with me.

In recent years, finally, those thoughts bring me peace instead of tears and grief, and I am glad for that. It is the same with her books. I have so many of her favorites on my shelves, some from her mother, and I treasure each one of them.

Yes, Bette Jean gave me a love of books, from childhood until the day she died.

It has stayed with me for a lifetime.

It’s a gift, it truly is. A loving gift, from mother to daughter.  I’ve passed it down to my daughters, Bette Jean’s granddaughters.

She would be delighted. I know that for sure, too.