One of my family's best (or maybe worst) childrearing practices was its preoccupation and fascination with the written word, especially with verse. You might say that both my mother and father were obsessed with poetry. My parents, grandparents, and most people experiencing the culture of the 1950s and '60s had a profound veneration for and thorough understanding of literature. That was a time when young Russian-speaking poets, on the rise in their popularity, were sending shockwaves through stadiums full of people. Poems were often out of print, their authors constantly attacked by authorities, and secretly copied in handwritten notebooks and journals by young and not-so-young lovers of poetry alike.

My parents recited romantic verses to each other, their only child, and anyone willing to listen. But, of course, they also made me memorize pages and pages of it. My earliest memories are of facing a group of guests and being put on a stool to read a poem. The poem I would recite, as a mere child of five or six, was often memorized from listening to my adult peers. It would be about love or nature with such profound connotations and philosophizing that it made grown-ups laugh or look away in confusion.

My preoccupation with rhyming and love of letters greatly impacted me as a young child. I thought all I needed to know was how to read and write, but more than that, I had to rhyme, which is why I wrote my first poem about a woodpecker at the age of six. Somewhere in the poem, I used the word “tilted” to make it rhyme. I had no idea at the time that a woodpecker's "hat" is never tilted, but my mom didn't disabuse my sensibilities. She was gentle and romantic by nature. Looking back now, I realize how she kept me writing, encouraging my budding writing career and never inflicting any early damage. I think about her often. My connection with my late mother is the most romantic of all, but I am also grateful for the memories and my love of poetry and the written word.