Every week, the AWM is excited to bring you stories written by our visitors in our Story of the Day exhibit. Check back weekly for new stories, and visit the Museum to try out our typewriters and possibly be featured here!
This week, we’re featuring stories about Moms. You can bring your Mom to the AWM for FREE this Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 13.
Advice for fellow mothers:
If you really want to hear about it I will tell you the most important part about being a mother. You have to love your children as they are AND as they will be. Love them for their faults and praise them for what they learn. And love them for what they will someday become. Even if it is someone, something you don’t see now. They will grow up. They will change. You will store every version of your children in your memory, more than they will be capable of remembering. But they will care most about who they are, and will want you to care about that too. So sometimes you forget on purpose, because you have to. You love all the people your children were, are, and will be.
We’re so happy our typewriters could bring back a lovely memory of this visitor’s mother:
June 11, 2017
I suddenly remember my mom’s Underwood and my own Smith-Corona and other typewriters and the old trick of using lower case “l” for the number 1.
Retired, closing in on my 80th birthday and now living happily just a few blocks from Powells Bookstore in Portland, I am already posting wildly enthusiastic endorsements of the American Writers Museum on Facebook.
WELL DONE!
A true story:
My mother used to earn extra money by typing envelopes on an old Singer typewriter…a half penny or, maybe, a penny per address. She typed in front of our console TV; her late night companion was Jack Parr
She typed late into the night. I remember hearing the sound of the keys and sneaking into the living room – as a child of 4 or 5 – and sitting under the table, on the foot rest, listening to the rhythm of the keys, the sound of the rollers taking in a new envelope, and the periodic ding of the carriage bell.
It was a comforting presence in the darkness of night.