Mommy Brain

No, I’m not talking about that “memoir”, the one we’ve all been hearing about that isn’t really a memoir at all. I’m talking about this one:

I googled the title to make sure there weren’t any controversies brewing about it’s truthfulness and I didn’t find any. Not that I was surprised. In the acknowledgements, Ms. Ryan thanks all of her brothers and sisters – nine of them – for help in fact-checking and memory remembering. And this book wasn’t written with the intention of glorifying the author. This book is a love letter to the author’s mother.

Evelyn Ryan, the prizewinner mentioned in the title, lived in a very different world than we do today. It was small-town America, but not today’s small-town America. When I read books like this, I am always amazed at how much society has changed in just the last 50 or 60 years.

Mrs. Ryan lived in a time when spousal abuse and alcoholism was ignored. If the wife dared to speak out about what was happening, the blame was placed on her shoulders. Women were meant to be meek and submissive and keep quiet about their husband’s faults, even if those faults were harming the family.

This woman was a victim, and had every right to curl up in a corner and go to sleep and ignore the world. But she didn’t. She had ten children, and she used her ingenuity and love of words and writing to put food on the table and pay the bills. And win things like TVs, clock radios, cars, and cash. Her husband drank away his paychecks, and yet this family of 12 survived. And the love and gratitude that Terry Ryan feels toward her mother is evident on every page of this book.