‘I Feel Her Presence in the Most Unexpected Moments’: Susan Wiggs on the Mother Who Shaped Her Life
The ‘Wayward Girls’ author reflects on reading and writing—and how her mother’s love paved the way
Growing up, I never saw my mom as much of a cook. Between a husband who couldn’t boil water and three stair-step kids underfoot, she had better things to do with her time.
It wasn’t until I grew older that I realized just how exceptional she truly was.
Picture it: a modest 60s kitchen tucked away in a small-town corner of western New York. Avocado green appliances stood against wallpaper patterned with windmills. The fridge hummed with a steady rhythm. The linoleum floor—a speckled pattern worn to a soft patina by the ins and outs of a busy family. The culinary trends of the time leaned into Jell-O molds, ham loaf glazed in cherry jelly, and recipes pulled from the red-and-white Better Homes and Gardens binder that sat like a bible on her countertop.
Mom’s cooking reflected the era—practical, unfussy, and weirdly whimsical. She mastered the art of the casserole, those one-dish wonders that could transform Monday’s roast chicken into Tuesday’s tetrazzini. Her tuna noodle casserole—a slurry of canned mushroom soup and tinned tuna–was always served in a Corningware dish with the blue flower logo. It haunts my dreams to this day.
But there were moments of magic, too. Her recipe for Potato Chip Cookies, handwritten on an index card in her perfect Palmer Method cursive, still exists, its edges softened by the years. The card itself is a work of art—the precise loops of her “P” and the graceful tails of her “y”s speak to a time when penmanship was taught with the seriousness of mathematics. Those cookies—sweet, salty, with a surprising texture that delighted the palate—were a revelation. The chips—oh, the chips—came in large metal cans, delivered right to our doorstep, each bearing the logo “Charles Chips.” We kids would hover nearby, eyes fixed on that metal canister, anticipating the sigh of air as she popped the lid.
Another recipe in her handwriting–the “Secret Fudge” from the children’s novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, written by Ian Fleming–yes, that Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame. The book was a charmer, but the fudge, a disaster. My teeth still ache just thinking about it.
I was obsessed with Mom’s index cards. And with cursive writing. Decades later, they are still the tools of my trade. Every single one of my novels are written in longhand. I use a fountain pen with peacock blue ink, the same shade my mother favored, and I write my first draft in grid-rule notebooks from Clairefontaine or Leuchtturm1917. Like my mom, I’m a leftie, and fountain pen ink dries instantly, thus saving our sleeves from being soiled as our hand drags across the page.
My keyboard skills, such as they are, were formed in my mother’s kitchen. When I was six, my sister and I both came down with pneumonia one snowy winter. The world outside our windows was a blur of white from the lake effect snowstorms that plague western New York. Housebound and bored to tears, I begged Mom to teach me to type on her dad’s ancient typewriter, a Royal Portable with the rare “Vogue” font. The keys required determined fingers—each stroke a clack of commitment. I became fascinated with the notion that I could turn a blank page into a story. The tangible power of creation was intoxicating, even to my six-year-old mind.
Mom sat beside me, patient as saint, guiding my small fingers to the correct keys. “Home row,” she’d whisper, “always return to home row.” It was my first lesson in finding my center, in creating a foundation from which all else flows. Those hours spent pecking away at metal keys while snow drifted against our windows were my initiation into the world of words—a gift I didn’t know I was receiving.
Beyond the food and the recipes, there was something deeper going on. My mother’s kitchen was less about cooking and more about life itself.
The Formica table that dominated the room was the heart of our home—scarred with knife marks, ringed with coffee stains, and infused with stories. It was a place for homework, for heated discussions about politics, for card games that stretched late into summer evenings with the windows open to catch the flower-scented breeze.
There were summers of sweet corn, green beans, and ripe tomatoes harvested from my Ukrainian grandparents’ farm. The back door would bang open, and Grandpa would appear, his arms laden with produce still warm from the sun, dirt clinging to the roots. Mom would hand me a paper grocery sack from Wegmans, and while I shucked the corn, sending silky threads floating to the floor, she’d chat with me about books and life.
Those conversations shaped my understanding of the world. As my fingers worked to free the corn from its husks, Mom talked about books, asking me what I thought about Harriet’s spying or Charlotte’s sacrifice. She never lectured, never imposed her interpretations, but gently steered me toward deeper consideration. “Why do you think she did that?” she’d ask, her hands busy snapping beans. “What would you have done?” Literature became more than stories. Books, and the conversations they inspired, became frameworks for understanding human behavior, ethical dilemmas, and the complex web of relationships that define our lives.
On Library Day, we celebrated the new books we’d checked out by having a “Reading Dinner.” The rule? No one spoke. Instead, we all sat quietly, each of us absorbed in our own world of stories. The only sounds were the clink of forks against plates, the rustle of turning pages, and the occasional chuckle or gasp. For Mom, it was likely the deliciously shocking Valley of the Dolls. A Nazi war thriller for Dad. My brother read miles above his grade level– Siddhartha or The Dharma Bums. My sister and I loved Harriet the Spy and Charlotte’s Web so much that we would sleep with the novels under our pillows.
Those silent dinners taught me that reading was not just permitted at the table—it was celebrated. It instilled in me the idea that books were not an escape from life but a means of engaging with it more deeply. The stories we consumed nourished us as surely as the pot roast and mashed potatoes on our plates.
At that same kitchen table, my mother and her friends would gather for what they called a “tete-a-tete,” which was actually a cover for their political activism. They nibbled iced raisin bars, sipped coffee brewed in a glass percolator, and smoked Parliament cigarettes while passionately discussing the issues of the day. The air would grow thick with smoke and conviction as these women—homemakers by day, revolutionaries by choice—plotted their quiet rebellion against the status quo.
These were the women who had seen the world change with the war in Vietnam, struggles over voting rights and women’s rights, and political upheaval swirling beyond our walls. They came together to write dozens of postcards to their Congressmen, demanding change, justice, a seat at the table. I was too young to understand their commitment to social change, but I do now.
I’d hover at the edges of these gatherings, ostensibly doing homework but really absorbing the rhythms of adult conversation—the passionate disagreements, the moments of solidarity, the jokes that sent coffee spluttering through noses. I learned that women could be fierce intellectuals even while wearing aprons, that opinions could be delivered with both force and grace, that change began at kitchen tables just like ours.
Mom kept me insulated from the darkness just outside our door. Until recently, I never knew about institutions like the Good Shepherd in Buffalo, a Gothic complex that echoed the Magdalene laundries of Ireland where “wayward” girls were hidden away, their labor supervised by strict nuns. The building loomed just blocks away from where we went on our annual school-shopping trip to Buffalo, yet its shadow never fell across my childhood consciousness. Many years later, this would eventually find its way into the pages of Wayward Girls—the story of those silenced voices finally making themselves heard through my characters.
Mom served on a library committee offering acquisitions advice, reviewing and summarizing advance copies of books. If there were children’s books, she gave them to us to read, and expected a summary of the content. This wasn’t merely an educational exercise—it was her way of respecting our intellects, of treating us as capable readers whose opinions held weight. When my seven-year-old self solemnly pronounced a picture book “derivative” (a word I’d picked up from her conversations), she didn’t laugh but nodded thoughtfully and jotted down my assessment. I felt ten feet tall.
One book introduced me to the concept of homosexuality. I was nine or ten, and when I stumbled upon a scene in which two boys kissed, I ran to Mom, confused. She glanced at the page, looked up at me, and, without missing a beat, said, “Oh, that’s a typo.” Years later, she confessed that she had no idea how to explain it. I simply shrugged it off and kept reading. The book? I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip (1969) by John Donovan, a cornerstone of coming-of-age literature that would take on new meaning over time.
Now, with an adult perspective, I understand the impossible position Mom found herself in—wanting to protect me while respecting the integrity of the literature, navigating conversations in an era when such discussions were largely forbidden. That she allowed me to continue reading, to form my own understandings without imposed judgment, was perhaps the greater gift.
Another literary deception she practiced–when she read Old Yeller aloud to us–a chapter a night after we brushed our teeth–she changed the ending. I can still picture those evenings: the three of us children piled into one bed, freshly scrubbed and jammied-up, Mom perched on the edge with the book held just so, the bedside lamp casting a golden circle around us all. Her voice would change for each character—gruff for Papa, squeaky for Little Arliss—and we’d hold our breath during the suspenseful parts, small hands clutching at covers. And then came the climax: she swiftly revised the ending so that Yeller miraculously survived, the gun was put away and the dog lived to enjoy his puppies. It wasn’t until years later, when I read the book aloud to my own 5th-grade class, that I discovered the real ending. As I stood before 30 students, tears in my eyes, I realized that my mother’s version of the world, at least in that moment, was a kinder place.
I sometimes wonder about that choice—to alter a classic work, to shield us from literary tragedy. Was it weakness or wisdom? Perhaps it was simply love—the desire to protect us from unnecessary pain, to let us believe, for a little longer, in a world where beloved dogs don’t die. Maybe she knew that real heartbreak would find us soon enough, and there was no need to rush its arrival through fiction. Or maybe—just maybe—she wanted to enjoy her nightly martini and cigarette, uninterrupted by sobbing children.
Music filled our kitchen too—not just the radio playing softly in the background, but actual singing. Mom would hum as she stirred, bursting into full voice when a particularly beloved tune came on. She knew every word to every show tune ever written, it seemed. On rainy afternoons, she’d pull out her collection of Broadway cast recordings—worn album covers handled with reverence—and set them spinning on the turntable. The kitchen would transform as the strains of “Mame” or “The Sound of Music” filled the air. She’d pull me in to dance, twirling me around the kitchen island, teaching me to waltz between the refrigerator and stove. Those ordinary moments were really about the transportive power of art, about creating your own happiness within the confines of a small-town kitchen.
My mother shaped me in ways I can only now understand. Her influence was in the food she served, in the music she played, in the way she built us up with books and stories. She shaped our love for music, our messy kitchens, and the belief that falling down was part of the journey. Whether it was rescuing a failed soufflé and turning it into an omelette or learning the hard way that some mistakes are also lessons, we learned to adapt, to move forward, to keep cooking up new chances.
As I walk through my own kitchen now—a space so different from that 60s artifact of my childhood—I feel her presence in the most unexpected moments. When I catch myself humming while tidying up. When I instinctively smooth a tablecloth before setting plates down. When I reach for an index card to jot down a sudden thought. She is there in my reflexive hospitality, in the way I gather people around my table, in my belief that food is love made tangible.
I still have her recipe box—a battered metal box with a hinged lid that creaks like a door to the past. The cards inside, yellowed and splattered, are artifacts from a vanished world. Some recipes are practical (“Meatloaf for Company”), others aspirational (“Baked Alaska”), and a few simply mysterious (“Margaret’s Special Sauce”). But beyond their culinary instructions, they are fragments of my mother’s mind, her handwriting a direct line to who she was—meticulous, graceful, occasionally whimsical with an unexpected flourish.
When I hold these cards, I run my fingers over the indentations her pen made in the paper. This physical connection—knowing my hands touch where hers once pressed—bridges the years. And when I follow her recipes, despite having techniques she never knew and ingredients she couldn’t access, I’m participating in a kind of communion, a conversation across time.
So no, I still don’t think my mother was much of a cook. But that kitchen of hers—well, it was magic. It was a place of laughter, of endless chatter with the wall phone’s curly cord stretched across the room, of art projects scattered across the table, and the rhythmic click-clack of the typewriter. It was a space for stories—both shared and silent—where reading was its own kind of celebration. It was where we learned about justice and compassion through passionate discussions over cooling pies. It was a place where life unfolded, in all its messiness and beauty, and we always had a seat at the table.
By that measure, my mother was the finest chef I’ve ever known.
Preorder Susan Wiggs’ forthcoming historical fiction novel The Wayward Girls, out 7/20, here.
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