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A scene I remember clearly is bathed in dusty golden afternoon light pouring in through  fifth-grade classroom windows, as we sat at our desks, spellbound by my mother's voice as she took us to distant India to recount the life-and-death battle between the brave mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the deadly cobra Nag. Most children recall reading with their mother in private spaces --- bedtime, or a rainy afternoon on the couch --- and these quiet scenes were frequent in our book-loving family.

But my mother also taught at the little Quaker elementary school I attended, and so it was inevitable that I pass through her class (she treated me with studious impartiality) and experience her public reading persona, which was epic. The sole Black teacher at the school --- in the Quaker fashion, she was addressed by her first name, "Teacher Edith" --- she sat before our circled desks with her 1960s helmet hair, her beautiful expressive face, reading glasses on a chain, pleated skirts and sensible shoes, and she swept us away with Buck, the sled dog in THE CALL OF THE WILD, or across the sea with Long John Silver. She did all the voices perfectly, and made the suspenseful moments so thrilling that when reading time was over the class begged her to go on. Like everybody else, I enjoyed these dramatic story hours, but it took me years to understand that the passion in my mother's performance hinted at a lost dream.

Growing up in a staid middle-class Philadelphia family during the Depression, she studied  piano and displayed a talent for acting, performing in plays at Girls' High School and also at Temple University. Briefly, she considered a future on the stage. But family pressure and limited career opportunities for a young Black woman in the period meant that she chose to follow a safe route, becoming a teacher, and the wife of a Baptist minister. My father was a Philadelphia pastor and civil rights activist, a jovial extrovert known for his rousing inspirational sermons. He was the star in the family, with a huge, adoring congregation.

My mother --- besides being Teacher Edith --- was the perfect helpmeet, organizer of charity drives, baker of legendary marble cakes, and devoted mother of three. Known as vaguely "artistic," she kept the family amused with her music, riddles, jokes, razor-sharp intelligence and tart tongue. She always found time to prod her students and her children to work hard and develop their talents; her encouragement helped me become a writer. Her busy life, which lasted more than 80 years, seemed to be one of general contentment. It never occurred to me that she might have wanted something more for herself. 

It was after her death in the early 2000s that I came across Jane Cooper's poem, "My Young Mother," describing a vision of her mother as a girl, "her face narrow and dark/with unresolved wishes." And I began to think about those fifth-grade story hours. All at once, it struck me that they were in fact windows onto a different dimension, revealing an identity outside of her roles as teacher, mother and wife.

To get a sudden view of our parents as people with independent desires is an almost miraculous thing; it is the final piece in the puzzle of attaining adulthood. It sharpens our perception of life. Reimagining my mother as a figure both intimate and mysterious, who sublimated her yearning to act into reading to schoolchildren, was like uncovering a long-lost heirloom. Somehow, it deepened my love for her, and also changed how I saw my own work.

Strangely enough, I, a writer, once hated giving readings. I was painfully shy, and my modus operandi for years was to skulk onstage and hastily mumble text from my books. But with my new knowledge, I started to relax, to offer my listeners a more generous performance. Certainly I am never going to wow an audience as Teacher Edith wowed us fifth graders, but nowadays I try harder to feel the words and project the emotions. In doing so, I honor my mother and the dream she laid aside.