To be a Reader

I believe that life is not necessarily marked by calendars, birthdays or appointments.  Rather, it is counted by experiences that shape who we are and who we become. 

In my world, one of those events was when I became a reader.  I grew up loving stories.  My dad is a fantastic storyteller of both true and not-so-true stories.  As we were growing up, he would entertain us in the car and around campfires with stories ranging from ancient monsters to ghosts to tales of his youth.  Who needed books, when you had my dad around?  (Little did I know, that many of his stories came from books that he had read).

Then came second grade.  The scenes are still burned into my memory.  By Whiting had asked Mrs. Hicks to read "Where the Red Fern Grows" to the class.  Each afternoon, we would flop onto the floor, mesmerized by the tale of a young boy and his hounds.  When we finally reached the end of the book, Mrs. Hicks, with her voice cracking, could barely read about the death of those dogs.  We all lay on the ground crying our little seven year old hearts out, unable to believe that a story could end this way. We comforted each other.  We laughed about the good memories and questioned the necessity of the bad.  We had just experienced about the power of the written word. We had become a community.  Since then, I've read the book many times.  Each time, I cry.  I've read it to my class, and with my voice cracking, I've had to read about the love that Billy shared with Old Dan and Little Ann.  It's one of those books that I pull off of the shelf when a reluctant reader comes to me.  For me, this book marks the time when I started to realize that there was a world outside of my own.  And yet, that world was not so big that I couldn't find common thoughts, experiences and emotions within it.

So you can imagine my satisfaction when Lauren abruptly stopped reading out loud a few nights ago.

 "Mom," she said in a hushed voice, "I can't go on."

Looking up from the dishes, I walked over to where she was pointing in her book.  "Mom, her mother just....died!...."  Lauren looked up at me, her eyes welling with tears, willing me to say it wasn't true. 

My eyes filled with tears as well. 


My daughter had just become a reader.