Of all the gifts in my life, I think the greatest one has been the gift of reading.
I didn’t acquire the gift early or easily. My mother and my first teachers tried to convince me that it was worth my time to try to decode those little black marks on the page. I remained unconvinced. I knew it was better to spend my time outside, hunting for stones and shells, and getting my feet wet and muddy.
And then, one day, when I was almost 8, no adult had time to read to me. I had a new book from the library, and I wanted to know what it said.
I pulled out some books that had been read to me so often I had them memorized, and I painstakingly compared words I knew to words in the new library book. The resulting comprehension was slow and incomplete: It sure didn’t give me a clear understanding of the plot of that book!
But what it gave me was confidence. With two parents and two older siblings who had always read effortlessly, my own inadequacy at the art and science of reading had stopped me from even trying.
Now, I became a secret decoder. I wanted to be able to read a story to my family, and surprise them with it. I laboriously built my vocabulary of reading words. Winter, my favourite season to be outside, was neglected that year. Never mind the snow forts or skating on the frozen pond in our aunt and uncle’s yard. I had something more important to do.
The big reveal was an anticlimax. The whole family had seen me, books open, going back and forth between pages. They wisely left me to it. But their pride when I read them that first story was better than surprise.
Since that day, reading has seen me through most of life’s ups and downs: helping me to earn a university scholarship, distracting me from a broken heart, relieving boredom during a long convalescence, making friends through a book club in a new city, and so much more.
Today, I’m the mother of two young readers. One is enthusiastic; one would rather look for rocks and shells. But, he recently decided that the library and the bookstore are interesting spots for an outing.
I know there’s a gift waiting for him, just around the corner.
