a death, and an anniversary.

Margaret Mahy's words weave, in the part of my brain that is still seven, with my mother's voice. She is reading me, yet again, A Lion in the Meadow, wherein the magic of dragons and lions sits alongside mothers who peel potatoes. In this memory, I can feel her hands, roughened by potato-peeling and nappy-changing and playdough-making stroking my hair, She smells of oranges and marjoram.

"Why does the mother never ever make up a story again? You wouldn't do that."

"Why do you think Margaret Mahy wrote that?"

(In our family, each book is announced before reading with the full title and 'by [the author]', as if being read on Ears or at playcentre.)

"Because the little boy needs to tell the story. It was his story to tell."

It is this edition, with gloriously seventies illustrations by Jenny Williams, that I recall. The mother, standing at the sink in a psychedelic mini dress, looks a little like my dark-haired mother. The little boy, with his swoop of dark hair in a seventies bowl cut, looks like my big brother.

The meadow, pink and purple and orange, swirls like the black and white paisley sheets I sometimes have on my bed.

Each word is chosen so carefully.  It is this book that later, when I am pregnant with my first child, my mother uses to talk to me about the poetry of picture books - one of her favourite things to talk about. It is a lion in the meadow - not the lion in the meadow - and this word makes all the difference. The lion says "I eat only apples" - so much more specific and decided than "I only eat apples."

The lion joins the very hungry caterpillar, the tiger who came to tea, and the myriad animals in Mr Gumpy's car in my pantheon of animals whose stories tell small people (and large ones too) so much about their world, their imaginations, their stories. Dragons can be tamed by brave small boys (and girls) who listen to stories.

On Friday it will be ten years since my mother died. Today, reading A Lion in the Meadow, I can nearly feel her hands stroking my hair while she reads to me.