Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there! I am grateful for my mother, Eileen Ahern Murphy, for many reasons but especially for how she always encouraged my passion for writing. She read to all six of us kids, she always took us to the library, and she made reading seem magical. She is a voracious reader herself. I can recall her at the breakfast table reading the local newspaper, the Chicago newspapers, and the Christian Science Monitor. She loved to read Erma Bombeck's column, "At Wit's End," for the humorous slant she gave to family life. And she never missed reading Ellen Goodman's column covering the cultural and political topics of the day with insight and common sense. One of her all-time favorite writers is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of both Piltdown Man and Peking Man. Here is her favorite quote by him:
"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
What part did your mother play in you becoming someone who loves to read and write?
"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
What part did your mother play in you becoming someone who loves to read and write?
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