Danielle Steel, My Mom, and My Love of Reading

I Miss My Mom

Everywhere I look right now, I am inundated with images reminding me that Mother’s Day is just around the corner. 

I know that I am not the only one that struggles on Mother’s Day.  There is always a moment when I forget and my brain wants to call my mom.  This actually happens fairly regularly, but the moment when I remember that I can’t call my mom on Mother’s Day hits harder than any other day of the year. 

This will be my nineteenth Mother’s Day as a mother, my sixth Mother’s Day without my mom, and the first one that two of my kids will be at work instead of hanging out with me for the day.  It makes me wonder how my mom felt her first Mother’s Day without me at home?

I get the urge to call her when one of the kids has done something spectacular or something spectacularly stupid.  I forget and start to call her to ask her questions about our family when I’m working on Ancestry.com.  When my oldest got accepted at my alma mater, she was the first person I wanted to call.  When I really get the urge to call her, though, is when I’m reading or when I’ve just finished an awesome book.

A Mother’s Influence

My mom loved reading.  We always had tons of books all over our house.  My dad loved reading, too, but my mom loved to read the kind of books that translated into raising girls that love to read.  Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins, Sydney Sheldon, and the inimitable Danielle Steel.  I don’t remember how old I was when my mom caught me reading her Danielle Steel books, but I ditched The Babysitter’s Club and graduated to Season of Passion well before I should have.  She tried to forbid me from reading them but it was a lost cause.  I was already hooked.

During my high school years, I devoured my mother’s library.  It was long ago and I don’t remember most of what I read but that doesn’t matter.  These kinds of books are not great literature, but they serve a great purpose.  They entertain.  They make you lose yourself.  They make you dream.

There are three Danielle Steel books that I love that have stuck with me since high school.  These always make me think of my mom, just like Danielle Steel does, just like any book I love does. 

Three recommended Summer Reads (summaries from Goodreads):

Zoya

Against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and World War I Europe, Zoya, young cousin to the Tsar, flees St. Petersburg to Paris to find safety. Her entire world forever changed, she faces hard times and joins the Ballet Russe in Paris. And then, when life is kind to her, Zoya moves on to a new and glittering life in New York. The days of ease are all too brief as the Depression strikes, and she loses everything yet again. It is her career, and the man she meets in the course of it, which ultimately save her, as she rebuilds her life through the war years and beyond. And it is her family that comes to mean everything to her. From the roaring twenties to the 1980’s, Zoya remains a rare and spirited woman whose legacy will live on.

Family Album

Through forty years—from Hollywood’s golden days in World War II to the present—Faye Price would create first a career as a legendary actress, then a family, and finally she would realize her dream of becoming one of Hollywood’s first woman directors. But nothing was more precious to Faye than her five children. In a changing world, a milieu where family values are constantly challenged from without and within, the Thayers would face the greatest challenges and harshest test a family can endure, to emerge stronger, bound forever by loyalty and love. It is only when Faye is gone that they can each assess how far they have come, and how important their family album is.

Thurston House

Jeremiah Thurston built Thurston House, San Francisco’s grandest mansion. When he found himself alone with his infant daughter, Sabrina, he was determined to bring her up to run the biggest mining business in California. Nothing would stop her from taking over his dynasty — not the San Francisco earthquake, the deadly schemes of a cunning rival, the Great depression, or her own needs and determination as she carries on the traditions established by her father.

If I could I have three wishes for you I would wish:

1. That if your mom is still with you, you would call her today and make a habit of calling her often. The day will come soon enough that you will pick up the phone to call her and you will remember she’s not there anymore.
2. That if you have kids that you would make a habit of reading in front of them and with them. This is a greater influence than any amount of coaxing or bribing.
3. That over the course of your life you will find many books that stay with you and that bring back memories of people, places, and events the minute you see their covers or hear their names. Books are amazing that way.

Do you have a book you love just because someone you love loved it?