At Last...

My daughter has become a lover of reading. She has always loved books and she liked to read, but last night it hit me....she has fallen in love with it. When did it happen? About 9:30 p.m. when I put my head into her bedroom and saw a figure hunched over something unseen with head bowed, surrounded by a incandescent glow. It was Hallie, hunched over a worn copy of "Curious George Takes a Train" so engrossed she didn't even notice my silhouette in the doorway. Even more significant is that the exact same thing happened the night before, only involving a dog-eared copy of Henry and Mudge. And even more enthralling is that both incidents occurred only a few hours after she was glued to a Magic Treehouse book while I dried her hair.

To like to read is important, almost even necessary in today's world where you diagram sentences in first grade and are bent over homework for three hours a day just two years later. To love to read is is something else again. It is most definitely a blessing... it can be a curse...but one thing I know for sure is that it has been a saving grace for me. There is never a moment of boredom for a lover of books. Never a situation you can't escape. Never a lack of love, anger, rage, pathos or long strands of beautiful words describing something so perfectly it almost takes physical form in your mind's eye. Ideas are spun, lyrics are sung, images formed and fears lie wasted under darkened skies. The mysteries of language are decoded and the power of words becomes apparent, long before you lie full witness to their virility. I owe much of who I am to books....to Anne Shirley, Francie Nolan, Scout Finch...all of whom drew breath only in inky pages and the synapses of minds like my own, both fertile grounds for ripening intellect.