You may have noticed my Stories of the Shoe updates have been missing lately. There is a good reason. My mother recently had a life threatening condition and more than a week ago underwent emergency surgery. She was in intensive care but is now making good progress and recovering in a rehabilitation facility.

With today being mother’s day, I want to share with you how important my mother has been to my life and this book. Growing up, we did not have video games or computers. Until I was 9 years old, we lived in the country with not a lot of other kids around. We did not have color TV until I was a senior in college. But we always had two newspapers in our house and we had a public library. Mother took us there often. I can still remember lazy summer days and being curled up in the shade of a big maple tree with a stack of books my mother had helped me pick out. To this day I like to read and no doubt it started then.

Mother never had the chance to go to college, but she instilled that desire in us at an early age. She and Dad sacrificed so all their kids could attend and graduate from Ohio State. It was there I learned to write. (Painfully I might add, as the first “D” I ever received was my very first freshman composition at Ohio State.)

More recently, when I considered undertaking this book, Mother was there to encourage me to tackle it, with her you can do it attitude, as she has done all my life. As I labor on this project, she is one of my biggest cheerleaders.

So today, on her day, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you and her how much she means to me and how important she has been in my becoming the person I am. We love you Mom!

You won’t find this one in the book, but now you know the story behind the Stories of the Shoe.