what are you reading?

Since I asked the question, I will go first.

Last July, I told you about the seventeen books that were resting on my reading table (i do requests). Since then, I have managed to knock off only four of them. And several others have joined the pile.

I usually read books in the order I received them, but I allowed one to jump the queue. It is the book I am now reading -- the third installment of Charles Moore;s authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher. Herself Alone. This volume covers the period from her landslide election in 1987 through her political decline, resignation, and her final years as a private citizen.

I have always been fond of Mrs. Thatcher. Part of that admiration comes from how the women on my campaign staff adored her. For them, she was part of a triumvirate that included Elizabeth Dole and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

Seven years ago, I watched The Iron Lady -- a biography film starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. I shared my thoughts on the film with you (the tin lady). Because it was offered on Netflix last night, I watched it again.

What I wrote seven years ago seems to still be accurate. Mrs. Thatcher's personality and policies were far too complex to be captured in a single film. That is why Moore's work now exceeds 3000 pages.

But I watched the film within a different context last night.

It starts and ends with the former prime minister as an old woman dealing with the ravages of aging. I can appreciate that because I am going through some of that myself. But my mother, who is twenty-one years older than I am, is further down that road.

When the film begins, Mrs, Thatcher is living alone. Her husband, Denis, has died years before, but she clings to his memory -- literally. That is symbolized by the fact that she has not been able to clear his clothes out of the house. She still sees and talks with him as the other half of a very affecting love match.

When her daughter tries to motivate her to get on with the clothes,  Mrs. Thatcher snaps: "I haven't sorted those."

I have lived that scene. My brother and I have been urging Mom to sort through some of the boxes of items she has accumulated over the years -- such as, her real estate files. Her house is not cluttered. But it could do with a bit of vetting.

She has been reluctant to take on the task. If I had given the matter any thought, I would have realized why. Even though moving several times in the past decade has caused me to divest myself of a lot of the detritus of my earlier life, I always manage to hold on to some of the oddest items.

What is true for me was true for the film version of Mrs. Thatcher -- and is certainly true of Mom.

What an outsider would see as a just a pile of old real estate documents, my mother sees as a tangible memorial to the decades she devoted to her profession trying to match clients with houses they could turn into homes at prices they could afford. She was the realtor who would spend hours with low-income families while some of her colleagues served only the well-to-do.

One of my most-prized books is Thomas L. Shaffer's On Being a Christian and a Lawyer. My mother lived out Shaffer's arguments. She put her Christian principles first in her profession.

The people she helped are a memorial to her life. The documents she now treasures are a mere reflection through a mirror darkly.

At the climax of the film, Mrs. Thatcher gives away all of Denis's clothes -- with the exception of enough clothes for a business trip. She packs them in a suitcase and dresses Denis as if he were simply going away for a weekend.

As he walks away, she cries out to him to stay -- that she does not want to be alone. He responds: "You're going to be fine on your own, love. You always have been."

The truth embedded in those two sentences sums up how I look at my mother's project sorting through her life. She was never prime minister (though she would have been a good one), but she was a successful businesswoman who managed to juggle her profession while maintaining a home and raising a family.

If a few scraps of paper help her to hang on to all of that, who am I to begrudge her? After all, I suspect whoever will be tasked to go through my possessions after I die will undoubtedly be perplexed why anyone would hang on to a political brochure from 1988.

No one will write a three-volume biography of any of us. But that is fine. We write our own biographies every day.