I Enjoyed Mom Reading

Growing up, I lived books. Ever since I was a baby. Somewhere in a photo album there is a picture of me on my elbows – I may have been crawling by that point – leaning with raised eyebrows over a little wooden and foam picture book. I have always loved books because my mom read to me.

The library was a great place to go for a little kid. The books were colorful and fun to look at, and the stories talked about entire lives that we could never live, but could enjoy vicariously through mom’s readings. We would sit as she read to us in the library, then we would fill up one or two large canvas bags – that was before the unfortunate twenty-book limit was enforced – and proceed to work through them, five or ten picture books a day, until the next week, whereupon we would troop back in to the library, say hello to the nice librarians – we all knew each other by name – and troop out with another several bags worth of reading material.

My first real love was the Chronicles of Narnia. Mom started reading those to my sister and I when we were four and five years old. We did not follow much, and Mom was able to skip pages when the chapter was running long, but after a couple years we were able to pick out when she “missed” pages, and at that time, I was hooked. Sadly, after reading Prince Caspian Mom had some time-consuming issued come up. I never understood why, and I don’t suppose that I ever shall, but while we still read picture books together she did not have time to start anything longer. Distressed, I begged and begged for her to start the next book, but she encouraged me to do so myself until she got more time. That was out of the question because, at age ten, I still could not read – my parents had been worried and it was suggested by some kind of specialist that I was Learning Disabled, but at that my parents had vehemently determined that I would read whenever I was ready, possible disorders aside.

So one day I decided that I would try out Voyage of the Dawntreader, the sequel to Caspian. If Mom would not do it, then I would just have to man up and do the job myself. I finished the book in a couple days and moved on to The Silver Chair before Mom knew what had happened, and I have been reading great fiction ever since.

But the overdue advent of my reading career did not keep my mom, sister, and I from reading together. Dr. Seuss and the Berestain Bears were replaced by J.R.R. Tolkien, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Longfellow, but we carried on the tradition through middle school and into high school. Some might say that going so far was a bit much. I would never have exchanged a moment.