Pippi Longstocking, the 9-year-old red-haired hero of children’s books, turned 75 yesterday. The first Pippi Longstocking book, written by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, was published in 1945.

Pippi Longstocking first came to life in 1941, when Ms. Lindgren’s daughter, Karin, who was sick in bed for a long time suddenly said to her, “Tell me about Pippi Longstocking.”

The stories Ms. Lindgren made up were about a wild, but good-hearted young girl who lived by herself in a house called Villa Villekulla. The girl lived with her horse and her monkey. She was constantly surprising her neighbor friends with her crazy adventures.

But it wasn’t until three years later that Ms. Lindgren began to write down the stories she had told her daughter. When she finished her book, she sent it to a well-known publisher, but the book was turned down. Ms. Lindgren kept working on the book. In1945, Ms. Lindgren entered her book in a contest being held by a different publisher. Pippi Longstocking won the first prize, and the book came out in November.

Pippi Longstocking was quickly a hit with young readers. Who wouldn’t love a girl strong enough to lift a horse, and willing to risk her life to save children trapped in a burning building?

But the book was less popular with some adults, who felt like Pippi set a bad example. Pippi didn’t go to school, she lived by herself, and only followed the rules she wanted to follow. But with time. Pippi’s good heart won over readers of all ages.

Ms. Lindgren wrote many other books, including over 30 books for children. In all, she has sold over 165 million books. But Pippi Longstocking remains her most famous character. The three Pippi Longstocking books have been translated into over 75 languages, and have been made into several movies and TV shows.

In the fall of 1985，I was a bright­eyed girl heading off to Howard University, aiming at a legal career and dreaming of sitting on a Supreme Court bench somewhere. Twenty­one years later I am later I am still a bright­eyed dreamer and one with quite a different tale to tell.

My grandma, an amazing woman, graduated from college at the age of 65. She was the first in our family to reach that goal. But one year after I started college, she developed cancer. I made the choice to withdraw from college to care for her. It meant that school and my personal dream would have to wait.

Then I got married with another dream: building my family with a combination of adopt and biological children. In 1999, we adopted our first son. To lay eyes on him was fantastic...and very emotional. A year later came our second adopted boy. Then followed son No. 3. In 2003, I gave birth to another boy.

You can imagine how fully occupied I became, raising four boys under the age of 8!Our home was a complete zoo...a joyous zoo. Not surprising, I never did make it back to college full­time. But I never gave up on the dream either. I had only one choice: to find a way. That meant talking as few as one class each semester.

The hardest part was feeling guilty about the time I spent away from the boys. They often wanted me to stay home with them. There certainly were times I wanted to quit.But I knew I should set an example for them to follow through the rest of their lives.

In 2007, I graduated from the University of North Carolina. It took me over 21 years to get my college degree!

I am not special, just single­minded. It always struck me that when you’re looking at a big challenge from the outside it looks huge, but when you’re in the midst of it, it just seems normal. Everything you want won’t arrive in your life on one day. It’s a process. Remember; little steps add up to big dreams.

In the kitchen of my mother’s houses there has always been a wooden stand（木架）with a small notepad（记事本）and a hole for a pencil.

I’m looking for paper on which to note down the name of a book I am recommending to my mother. Over forty years since my earliest memories of the kitchen pad and pencil, five houses later, the current paper and pencil look the same as they always did. Surely it can’t be the same pencil? The pad is more modern, but the wooden stand is definitely the original one.

“I’m just amazed you still have the same stand for holding the pad and pencil after all these year.” I say to her, walking bank into the living-room with a sheet of paper and the pencil. “You still use a pencil. Can’t you afford a pen?”

My mother replies a little sharply. “It works perfectly well. I’ve always kept the stand in the kitchen. I never knew when I might want to note down an idea, and I was always in the kitchen in these days.”

Immediately I can picture her, hair wild, blue housecoat covered in flour, a wooden spoon in one hand, the pencil in the other, her mouth moving silently. My mother smiles and says, “One day I was cooking and watching baby Pauline, and I had a brilliant thought, but the stand was empty. One of the children must have taken the paper. So I just picked up the breadboard and wrote it all down on the back. It turned out to be a real breakthrough for solving the mathematical problem I was working on.”

This story—which happened before I was born—reminds me how extraordinary my mother was, and is, as a gifted mathematician. I feel embarrassed that I complain about not having enough child-free time to work. Later, when my mother is in the bathroom, I go into her kitchen and turn over the breadboards. Sure enough, on the back of the smallest one, are some penciled marks I recognize as mathematics. Those symbols have traveled unaffected through fifty years, rooted in the soil of a cheap wooden breadboard, invisible（看不到的）exhibits at every meal.