Images keep popping up for me, some of them from a long time ago. How, when she had a cold, she'd carry a tissue in her sleeve. The way she'd sit at the kitchen table and dip her chamomile tea bag into her steaming mug as she told a story with all the *he saids* and *she saids*. The way she played with the ends of her curls with her long elegant fingers and stroked my hair when I lay next to her (which I now do to my boys ... how I loved the comforting feel of it; I never wanted her to stop). The way she held the embroidery hoop and pulled the needle up and down in an almost mesmerizing rhythm. (She'd cross-stitch sitting on her bed while she watched TV. Like, Hollywood Squares. Am I remembering that name right?) But most of all, I remember her reading. Anywhere and everywhere. For years, before she started to lose her vision, we'd sometimes read the same book so we could talk about it. She'd try to read everything I recommended. Sometimes I'd recommend a book I hadn't read but wanted to read and I'd ask her to try it out first and tell me if I'd like it. She was always game for that. I don't remember her buying books for herself but she'd buy them for me when I was a kid. Perhaps that's where my lust to own books began. Just tonight, I searched for and found one of the first books of poetry I ever owned, which she bought and signed for me ("To Amy, I love you, Mommy," dated January 1974). It's an anthology for children with simple poems simply called "Poetry," published in 1954 by Franklin Watts and edited by Isabel J. Peterson. It's filled with the likes of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, etc.. I found this poem by Eleanor Farjeon on page 76: The Night Will Never Stay The night will never stay, The night will still go by, Though with a million stars You pin it to the sky; Though you bind it with the blowing wind And buckle it with the moon The night will slip away Like sorrow or a tune.