Larissa Phillips@larissaphillip
Once around 2000 or so I was interviewing a woman about a book she’d written, to write it up for a parenting mag. The woman and I noted we were both from Connecticut, and then I mentioned my mom had actually worked as a school psychologist in the Stamford school system, where she had gone to school.
She knew my last name, so she goes, “This is probably dumb but your mom is not by any chance—“ and she says my mom’s full name.
I go, “Yeah, that’s my mom!”
And she starts crying.
She explained that my mom has diagnosed her with dyslexia when she was 14, and then had taken her outside and they’d sat under a tree, and my mom had explained to her what it meant to have dyslexia and how she was finally going to get the instruction that she needed, and she’d learn how to read and go on to do whatever she wanted to in life.
“She was the first person who told me I wasn’t stupid.”
And here I was interviewing her for a book she’d written.
Very typical of my mom to go all out like that. 😍
