“Go outside and play,” my father would tell us, or, “Go to your room and play,” if the weather was uncooperative.

My older brothers had no problem with going out or into one of their rooms to hang out while my mother wrote.

Sometimes, I’d go off with my younger brother and play. Other times, I’d promise to be quiet, and I would sit on the sofa, behind her.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap…

My mother was completely immersed in whatever world she was writing about.

My imagination went to work: She’s writing about cowboys and Indians. Or a detective who finds the big diamond someone stole from the snooty lady. A mummy from Egypt that puts a curse on somebody. A dog that can talk. A little girl who beats up the bully.

We were never allowed to see what my mother wrote, so I’d never know… But it was fun, imagining.

It was quiet… except for the tapping and the occasional swear word muttered under her breath. Sometimes, I’d doze off. I’d dream of Egypt or the Old West or I’d dream of being on The Orient Express, or maybe on a street in Sherlock Holmes’s London… quick dreams. Usually, I’d only be asleep for a few minutes.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap… Sometimes, my mother’s fingers would fly over the keys for a small eternity. I’d study her back, what I could see of her around her little chair. Her posture was perfect, but some slight movement of her head would be enough to send my imagination reeling again: She’s writing about a mad scientist… or wolves in a snowstorm… a king at war… a magical mirror…

Many times, I curled up on the couch with my little red journal. I didn’t write much in it, though. I watched her. I wanted to go wherever my mother was.

She’s here, but she’s there, too.

When she was done typing for the day, my mother looked happy. Even her eyes smiled. All of her pages were placed neatly into her folder, and the folder was placed in the desk drawer that locked. The cover was snapped back onto the Smith-Corona (my mom loved Smith-Corona typewriters), and my mother was back in our world… but happier than she’d been before she left.

“How come you use that to write?” I asked one day, holding my little red journal in one hand and pointing to the typewriter with the other.

“It’s neater… and faster,” she replied.

“Oh.” Faster?

She took the hard plastic shell off of the Smith-Corona again. “Wanna try it?”

I smiled. “Really? Can I?”

My mother nodded.

I bit at my bottom lip. I was clumsy. I always broke things. I didn’t want to break my mother’s typewriter. “I don’t know how, though,” I said.

She patted the seat of her chair. “It’s easy! I can show you, if you really want to learn…”

Mom showed me how to use the typewriter. After a lot of practicing, I could write almost as fast as I thought. I used up a lot of ribbon, but I never broke it.

I understood how my mother could dive into that mysterious other world… and come out smiling. She could write as fast as she thought. She wasn’t “losing” bits of things, like I was when I wrote longhand. It looked neater, too… more like a storybook.

That Christmas, I got a Smith-Corona typewriter of my own. It was my “big” present, the one my parents kept hidden until all of my other gifts were opened. I immediately set it up on the coffee table in the living room, directly behind my mother’s desk. When she typed, I typed.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap…

I felt like, now I’m a real writer.  I felt something more: We had separate imaginations, but my mother and I were together in that mysterious other world.

Thank you, Mom. From the bottom of my heart: Thank you.