Janet E Rupert

My mother tells me that my grandmother would be very proud of me. Nana died when I was six, and I never met her. She lived in England, which was a world away in my childhood.

She was born in the Cockney part of London, and when she was a child, her father, a seafaring man who was away much of the time, placed her with a family as a scullery maid. She scrubbed floors and carried coal for the fire. She never had any formal education.

When she was fourteen, the children in the family for whom she worked taught her to read. She got a library card and became an avid lifelong reader. She cherished something so difficult to obtain, and our gifts from her were always books.