My mother encouraged me in everything I did. I remember when I was just starting to buy classical records, she suggested that if there were certain composers I enjoyed, I should consider exploring what else they wrote. I took Beethoven’s “Pathètique” Sonata and Wagner’s “Die Walküre” out of the library (the latter was way over my head), but mostly I went to the record store with my allowance and purchased what I could from the 99-cent bin. Now my record collection is so big, even I’m a little afraid of it. The same thing happened with books.

When I was small, she read me Grimms’ fairy tales and watched black-and-white monster movies with me. Later, she read short stories and novellas I wrote and encouraged me in whatever projects I got up to, including making Super 8 films with my friends.

We colored eggs on Easter; we carved pumpkins at Halloween. One year, she supervised my sister and me in the construction of papier-mâché costumes. I was a scarecrow, which required a pumpkin head, and my sister was Mr. Peanut. Once, we attempted gingerbread houses for Christmas. For a time, she popped popcorn on the stovetop so that we could prick our fingertips with needles as we attempted to thread it with cranberries for old-fashioned garlands for the Christmas tree.

Another time, we painted antique steamer trunks in the styles of our choice. I painted mine red, white and blue. It still sits in my old attic bedroom at my parents’ house. I sometimes think of stripping the paint off and restoring it to its former state, but I don’t think it was anything special to begin with. The paint is as vibrant today as the day it was applied, probably 50 years ago.

From time to time, she brought my sister and me along to her art lessons at the community art league. But I evinced no talent as a painter. I did, however, draw my own comic books. I’m a fun doodler and an okay cartoonist.

One summer, she drove us over to New Jersey, and we pulled off to the side of the road to watch a hot-air balloon race, dozens of them floating in the skies like so many tulips liberated from their stems. Another time, she sat with me in the car at night so that we could view a lunar eclipse.

She did make a few missteps along the way, as when she signed me up for all the stereotypical guy stuff. I played basketball, but was never comfortable with it. She arranged tennis lessons, but I had no finesse or restraint, and she had me try out for Little League. I was pretty good on the sandlot, playing with the neighborhood kids, but I was less successful with crazy, type-A 9-years-olds and abusive coaches. I spent my one season mostly as a bench-warmer.

I was also not big on summer camp. That kind of stuff was for kids who didn’t know what to do with themselves. I was never bored.

At last, she arranged for me to take piano lessons. You’d think, given my mania for music, that I would have been a natural, but I wondered what all those tedious scales had to do with making music. I was always a mediocre student, because I always wanted to hang out with my friends, and then I got interested in girls. But my teacher understood my sincere enthusiasm and lent me records of Brahms and Mahler.

It was clear I was never going to be a virtuoso, but Mom and I kept up doing musical things. We attended piano recitals and string quartet concerts at the local college and at the town theater. I scribbled furiously through many of these, as my head filled with plentiful images and ideas for stories. She was also my regular companion when I attended any Gilbert & Sullivan productions.

Mom drove me everywhere, usually without complaint, although once I remember she did voice her despair when I wanted her to drive me to my cousin’s house for the afternoon. It was an hour’s round-trip, and she had to drop me off AND pick me up.

At the dawn of the home video era, I assembled my friends for annual 24-hour film festivals, which, in those days, required renting from four or five different accounts at different video stores. The coffee was always on, and my mom got up to cook us all breakfast, even though our stomachs were all feeling a bit unstable from sleeplessness.

I’m saying nothing new when I remark that being a mom is not for the faint of heart. There were plenty of times when I had to be rushed to the emergency room, including once when a friend’s mom had to drive me home covered in blood because someone dropped something heavy on me during a rock fight. When I was 10-years-old, I sustained a long-term injury, and she had to nurse me for the better part of a year. But she always shepherded me through.

She’s been gone for quite a while now. I was trying to figure out if it’s been twenty years yet, but not quite. She lived long enough to listen to me on the radio and visit me in my bookstores, but never saw any of my newspaper articles. She knew “The Lost Chord,” but never “Picture Perfect” or “Sweetness and Light.”

She was the single greatest influence on my life. I don’t have that many photos of her (I still have to go through everything), but in this one, we’re clearly in sync.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, wherever you are. And thanks for everything.