Legacies that linger
February 2012
Published: December 30, 2011
 My mother and me, circa 1962.
In this month’s Off the Cuff column, novelist Barbara Haines Howett strikes a similar note in “A writer’s legacy” (page 15). Her mother also instilled in her a love of reading, which eventually led her to a life of writing. She tells of books and writings that her mother left, a treasured inheritance that offers “a few answers and some assumptions” about the person she wishes she had known better, yet leaving much to her imagination. Howett writes:
“This has created a burning desire that my children know me as the person beyond the one they saw as a parent. The only way I’ve known to do that has been by ‘writing who I am.’ ... It’s my way of staying alive for them when I am no longer physically here, and offering them an opportunity to discover more about me and perhaps some wisdom about life. Of course, that is also why I write for all of my readers.” |