At age 21 when Hemingway had “given up on growing up” his mother stepped in and because she did, he met the woman who was the catalyst for his renown writing career.
She told him that a mother’s love is like a bank. She had made all the early deposits: the pain of childbirth, the years of patient understanding and encouragement. But now that manhood was here, it was his turn to make deposits of his own, she said.
“Unless you, my son Ernest, come to yourself and cease your lazy pleasure seeking borrowing with no thought of returning, stop trying to graft a living off of anyone and everyone. Spending all your earnings on luxuries for yourself to fool little gullible girls, Unless you come into your manhood there is nothing for you but bankruptcy. You have overdrawn.”
His father was an outdoorsman who loved hunting and fishing with his son.
Hadley Richardson’s confidence in Ernest Hemingway at age 21 allowed him to get started on the path that made him world renown. She loved it that his writing style eliminated everything but what was real, necessary and strengthening.
She said to him: “I know how it feels, but remember me and don’t ever get confused. You’ve got to Live, first for your happiness and then for mine” She was strong like his mother. Hemingway wrote two books by his mid twenties and published his masterpiece “A Farewell To Arms” before he was thirty.
(from the PBS documentary on Hemingway)