Unlike my sisters, I never developed a love for clothing shopping. I simply don’t have the stamina. Leave me in a bookstore, though, and I could browse for hours upon hours. Therefore, instead of bonding over mall-excursions, my mom and I bond over weekly bookstore visits. Over time, I’ve found that these visits greatly enriched our relationship. So in honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to share this experience.

My mom pursued an English degree in Myanmar (a country in Southeast Asia) and there she developed a love for Shakespeare. Her first language was not English, thus making her appreciation for Shakespeare even more admirable. Nowadays, my mom is a huge fan of crime novels—James Patterson, Sandra Brown, Patricia Cornwell—you name it.

On our weekly excursions, however, I noticed that she purchases books almost indiscriminately. She buys cookbooks, historical biographies, and dictionaries along with several murder mysteries. Really, it seems like she is willing to purchase anything with a pretty cover. So for a while, I wondered why she had felt this desire to collect books that she wasn’t going to read. Then one day I asked her if she still owned any of the novels she had read while growing up in her hometown; her response explained everything.

Apparently, my mom had owned dozens of books as a student. Though English novels were hard to come by in Myanmar, she received many secondhand pieces from traveling English-professors. She smiled as she recalled how she kept her collection of paperback, leather bound, and hardcover novels in a large trunk beside her bed for safe-keeping. She hoped that someday she could give that trunk to her children, to provide them with the novels that had shaped her life. Years later, she immigrated to the United States without her treasure chest of books. Sadly, when she returned to Myanmar to visit her family, she learned that her siblings had sold her entire collection.

So now when we go book shopping, she happily reminds me to keep my books in great condition so that I can pass them on to my children—something that she was not able to do. Though unfortunately, I never had the chance to browse through my mom’s treasured collection, I get to accompany her as she rebuilds her library in our home in America.

One portion of my mom’s current collection

To all moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day 🙂

—Nicole