My mother was an avid magazine reader. I can remember from the time I was a child what seemed to be a steady flow from the mailbox to her lap, as she curled up in her favorite chair, cigarettes and ashtray at hand, and depending on the time of day, her cup of black coffee, iced tea (sweetened), Diet Rite, Coke, Tab, or Diet Coke on the table next to her. The magazines: Time, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Look, Life, Ladies’ Home Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, McCall’s, Redbook, TV Guide, Southern Living. No matter where we lived, those magazines with their articles and fiction, recipes and photos, were a constant. But since the times were a’changin’ as fast as our addresses, she also read Mad, Rolling Stone, Ms., and Mother Jones. I don’t think there was any magazine she wouldn’t read, and even after she lived on a fixed income, she kept up a few subscriptions.
She’s holding Joe Willie the cat here, but next to the end table, you can see her bucket o’ magazines. If your eyes are really sharp, you can also see her lit cigarette. She’s in her early forties in this photo.
By the time she died in 2008, those magazines were coming to her at my address.
Even though I wasn’t as absorbed by them as I apparently was in infancy, I would flip through them and then find homes for them: waiting rooms in clinics and doctors’ offices, Lynne’s break room at work, online friends who might enjoy them. Finally the subscriptions began to run out, and today I got this with the October issue of the lone remaining subscription:
The slogan for Ladies’ Home Journal is “Never underestimate the power of a woman.” I concur, but I would add, “Never underestimate the power of a woman who reads.” A lifetime of books and magazines kept a woman who had to drop out of school in eighth grade to take care of sick family members–whose only work outside the home was as a hospital, Red Cross, and museum volunteer–smart, savvy, aware, and connected to generations of men and women, many of whom thought she was pretty damn special. When I saw my nephew recently, he recounted a story of how her “boys” (a group of gay men who befriended her in her seventies) were going to throw a Wizard of Oz party, at which she would go in character as Dorothy (which was, after all, her name). They were able to find everything for her costume except the ruby slippers–so essential that without them, the party was canceled.
No matter; she pretty much thought all of life was her party, and everything she read was her guidebook for making it more interesting.
On the most recent episode of Lifetime’s 
Photograph and painting copyright Gilbert Ruiz, 2011. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
