Not many people remember Valerie Rice anymore. Maybe not many people knew her then, either.
She was a hippie. A genuine, flowers-in-her-hair hippie. An activist years before anyone was called that. She was also my mother.

Mum must have been a striking young woman in her tie-dyed tee shirts knotted at the waist, bell bottom jeans, and Birkenstocks, towing about two small boys with bad haircuts. (Mum cut our hair. She wasn’t good at it.) All three of us carrying signs about outlawing nuclear power, or saving the whales, or equal opportunities for women.

She was a creative problem solver. Even though we often had no money to speak of, my mother always made sure we had food. And clothes. Our clothes were often homemade or purchased at a second-hand store and decorated with positive thinking. Most of our Christmas or birthday gifts were cleaver, creative, and homemade. Although I do remember one Christmas when I got a Steve Austin action figure. I have no idea how she afforded it.

Try to picture us if you can. My younger brother, and me, and our mum. Three hippies with signs protesting one thing or another. That’s pretty much how I remember her.

As we grew older, Mum’s focus shifted from the nuclear arms race and war in Southeast Asia to striking miners and animal testing. My brother and I started spending more time with our friends. When I turned 19 I left home, became a professional musician.

Mum kept her sickness from us for as long as she could.

When we spoke she mentioned that she wasn’t going out as much, but I assumed aging had slowed her down. By the time we found out how sick she was it was too late for any effective treatment. She died soon after the official cancer diagnosis.

But, that’s not the end of my mother’s story.

A couple of months ago I got a call from Mum’s brother. He’d been storing a trunk of her things for way too long. Would I please come and take charge of it? I brought it home, set it in the middle of the living room, and cut through the padlock with a hacksaw.

There were a few photos of the three of us that are now among my most cherished possessions. A couple of handbills about an upcoming march. A picture of Herman’s Hermits (go figure). And manuscript after hand-written manuscript of stories Mom had written. Love stories. Romantic fiction.

I was gobsmacked!

You see, I share my mother’s dyslexia. I find writing to be painfully difficult, and I can only suspect that she did, too. And yet, here were all of these romances she’d written.

Granted, I only knew her as my mother, and she must have had other relationships with other people, but who was this woman? The mum I remember was always in a hurry, often strident, and quite passionate. Of course, there’s a difference between passion for a cause and romantic passion, but I don’t recall ever seeing this tender, softer, sometimes wistful side of her.

I would have given anything to spend one more day with my mum even before I opened the trunk. Now, seeing her from an adult’s perspective, reading her private thoughts and the stories of her imagination, I often found myself crying tears of sadness and happiness in equal measure.

Eventually I got this crazy idea of sharing her stories with the world. It has taken months to type the pages and make them readable. As I mentioned, I’m dyslexic, too. And one dyslexic trying to understand another dyslexic’s writing would have been enough of a challenge without the tears that kept blurring the pages.

But, I’m finally done. I’ve loved every moment spent rendering the imagination of the woman who through genetics, and her example, is responsible for my own creativity.

Thank you, Mum.

I humbly submit the Valerie Rice collection to you here.

Love,
John Rice, proud son of
Valerie Rice, activist, author