Mothers and Fathers and Mockingbirds

(July 11) -- Everyone who has read "To Kill a Mockingbird" has a "To Kill a Mockingbird" story. Just as each of us can say exactly where we were at the moment we learned that 9/11 was not an accident, just as each of us remembers with indelible lucidity our first kiss, all of us who have read that novel have a story that makes the book uniquely our own.

Here's my son Martin's: His sophomore English teacher was reading aloud the passage in which the reverend admonishes Scout Finch, "Stand up, Miss Jean Louise. Your father's passin'." Martin's teacher then began to cry and Martin began to laugh. In the ineffable style of every teacher, she said, "Is there something funny about this, Mr. Brent?." Helplessly, Martin answered, "Yes. Well, no. Well, yes. It's that my mother has read that to us 50 times and she can't get through it without crying."

My youngest child is called Atticus. Sometimes, people actually ask me if his name refers to the prison. I answer, "Why, yes. And we have a little girl called Sing Sing, too." Actually, I named my son Atticus after my father -- the father I wished I'd had. Some say (deconstruction being the vogue) that perhaps the author did the same thing. In any case, for me, the novel isn't so much about race and justice as it is about parenthood.

So this is my story.

A dozen years ago, just after my second novel was published, I got a call from the Danish woman who'd bought the house that I had wistfully outgrown after my fourth child was born. In her charming accent, she said, "I've so wanted to call you! But getting the children settled ... oh time! There is a package for you. I think torn a bit in transit." Weeks passed before I picked it up, so by the time I opened it, it had been perhaps a year since it was delivered.

Of course, you know it was a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird". I searched (in vain) for an accompanying card. Finally, I opened the book. On the title page was written, "For Jacquelyn, with admiration, Nelle Harper."

I felt so very strange. It was as if someone, despite her seclusive ways, had either chosen to or agreed to this kindly, simple gesture -- the equivalent of patting me on the arm in passing.

That was when my writing career was new. I never aspired to stand on the steps of the same federal building as Harper Lee. I did think it possible, then, that my work might outlive me. These days, I wonder if I will instead be more like Mrs. Gaskell than Charlotte Bronte.

But no one will say I have not been a good mother.

Two of my nine children are black and two are Hispanic and two have disabilities. That these kids find it hysterical when I mutter about slights directed at them owes less to social progress than to my terrible swift tongue as a pre-emptive neutralizer. I'm a bumbling Atticus Finch, who can't let an injustice pass, even though the confrontation that seems imperative in the moment often leads to personal loneliness and embarrassment later.

I'm not this way because of a book. But my parents tried to raise me a racist. Reading "To Kill a Mockingbird", in fourth grade, was proof that they lied.

When I saw Nelle Harper's signature, I started to cry. And right now, just as my son said, I still can't make it through the telling.

Jacquelyn Mitchard has written numerous books for adults, young adults, and children, and contributed to several popular anthologies about love and parenting. Her novel "The Deep End of the Ocean" was named the second most influential book of the past 25 years by USA Today. Read her blog on Red Room.


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