My mother happily credited my writing career with her gifting me with a typewriter on my 16th birthday, which fell just a month after I won the short story writing contest at my high school. The Remington Travel Riter was innovative for its time because it came in a clunky (which was called compact) carrying case, making it portable enough to travel.
Maggie, as I would name her, traveled with me to college and later to Greenwich Village where I set up shop, writing, from a third floor walk-up apartment. Every poem, short story, essay or newspaper article that I wrote and submitted was carefully composed on Maggie's easy-to-the-touch-for-it’s-time keys.
And, even today it has a place of honor in my writing studio, juxtaposed against my big desktop computer.
“Wasn’t your mother right?” Maggie’s presence reminds me.
As much as I loved that typewriter, Mom’s real gift was her faith in me.
Maggie was my muse. She was concrete coveted confirmation from a parent that what I loved to do mattered. In a time when it would have been easy to say to her young daughter, “You’ll never make a living as a writer; do something practical.” Instead Mom gave me Maggie. In so doing, she dared me to dream.