Behind Every Great Man | Mother's Day Post

As a child, I was encouraged to explore my curiosities.

I was a shy kid who mostly kept his head inside of books. Books were an exploration of the universe for me - words on paper that teleported me to my favorite places. Sometimes I was living inside of a peach with giant bugs. Sometimes I'd survive a plane crash, left to fend for myself in the woods with nothing but a hatchet. I rode camels in the Middle East as a merchant selling rugs. I took trains across America in search of secrets to save humanity.

My mom made space for all of it.

She took me on her own adventures too. We traveled to Mexico, exploring neighborhoods and tasting everything. We walked the streets and museums of Europe, looking at art and architecture that had outlived everyone who made it. On road trips around the U.S., when I'd get frustrated about a wrong turn she'd say, "Relax, now we get to explore somewhere we've never been."

She let me fill the house with fish and reptiles and animals. (Sorry about the escaped tree frog, Mom.)

When I got into web design in high school, she was there. When I wanted to be a travel blogger, she was there. When I got into propagating and selling coral, she was there. When I sold everything I owned and longboarded and hitchhiked to Mexico, she gave me some money and told me to be careful. When I came back and started a reptile business, she was there.

And she was still there when I told her, "I know this sounds crazy, but I want to start a bookstore. I think I can make it work."

The Midnight Oil came to be.

Then I started noticing something behind the counter.

There was a moment when a kid, maybe 8 or 9, walked up and put a copy of Cujo on the counter. I looked at the mom.

"Great choice. Has she read Stephen King before?"

"I don't even know where to start," the mom said. "She loves horror. I can't get her to stop reading and she's reading at such an advanced level that everything the school has bores her. She knows what she's getting into, and she knows she can ask me anything."

I looked back at the kid. "If you haven't yet, check out Needful Things. It's about a store that sells cool trinkets, and it takes place not far from here. I read it around your age." I glanced back at the mom. "I'm not sure my mom would have approved. I was reading Stephen King under the covers with a flashlight."

I've watched mothers walk up to the counter with banned books more times than I can count. Watching them do that, choosing knowledge over fear, trusting their kid's mind, never gets old.

One afternoon a woman came in and asked if I had a few minutes. Then she walked me across the street from our original location into the building we're in now.

"I want to buy this place and fix it up," she said, "but I want you to fill it with books. You already need more room and you're only going to need more."

"I don't know. This space is huge and we just started, and rent—"

She cut me off. "I'll work with you. I just want to know you're interested and think you can do something with it."

"I mean, I think so, I do need the room, but wh—"

"Perfect. I'll message you the details. I'll be back later for those bird books."

She left. I stood there looking at the space.

"...Thank you?"

That's the part people don't always see, the women who look at something half-formed and say I see what this could be. The ones who don't wait for proof before they believe in you.

From who I am to what this bookstore has become, I've had women throughout my life see something in me before I fully saw it in myself. My mother. The woman who handed me a building and walked out. The mothers who come in every week trusting us with their kids' reading lives.

To all of you: thank you. Your support is not a footnote, it's the foundation.

And to every mother reading this: what you do for the people around you, and for the next generation you're raising, does not go unnoticed. You should be celebrated. Always.

- Pablo