Five puppies, my mom, and a sunny morning when I was 4

My mom is such an engrossed reader that my brother and I once caught the house on fire and she didn’t notice because she was reading a great book.

We’re a writer family, a reader family, a family of gestures and imagery. Our moments are metaphors. This is one memory of my mom showing me how beautiful life can be.

When I was 4, our dog, Inger, had puppies. Inger was a wire-haired fox terrier — think Asta from the ‘Thin Man” movies — a dog so hyper she would jump off the second-story deck and bounce off the brick patio on her ribs if we were playing with the hose pipe in the back yard. I strongly suspected no one loved her but me. I loved her enough to make up for that.

Inger had the puppies in my parents’ closet, and I was forbidden to go see them. It would be impossible to disclose my obsession with the puppies. They were a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, Christmas morning, and Spider Man all nestled in one forbidden cloister.

My mom told me: “Inger won’t like it if you try to touch them.” This was so disheartening.

After a week, it was time to get Inger and her litter out of the closet. Now what?

“Go and sit on the floor of the sun porch,” my mom instructed. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I sat on the floor and looked at the bright day outside the windows. My dad was at work. It was quiet in the house. A still morning.

Suddenly my mom was walking into the sun porch with a cardboard box. She walked right up to me, set the box on the floor, and pointed the opening toward me.

Five little bundles of joy tottered into my lap, whimpering and chewing, splaying across my world view, exploding like fireworks what I thought was possible in this life.

It was the happiest I had ever been. They were a dream, and I could not believe how lucky I was. I laughed and played with them, petted them and gazed into their little faces.

Can a 4-year-old fall in love? I did, five times at once.

My mom has written , edited, and published books. She’s painted pictures, raised two sons and married two men. (She and my stepdad just celebrated 25 years of marriage.) She’s stayed in touch with the same friends for nearly 50 years, and lived her entire life in the South.

More than anything else, she has experienced and loved life. She believes in moments, in immersing herself in them, and sharing them.

She is the type of person who will put a box of puppies in a 4-year-old’s lap, then stand back beaming in the morning sun.