It all kind of came crashing down on me this morning. I was finishing up my breakfast as I was finishing up my latest book. The kids were using all the library books as roads and were playing with all of Daddy's legos. Tyler comes over to me and says that they needed one more book and could he please use the book I was reading. I told him to wait 1 minute and I would be done with it. He looks down and says "wait a minute Mom, this says 345. You read 3.4.5. pages!!"
That's what took me back to the first book I remember reading.
I was in 1st grade. We were all required to read a book to the class. Mortified is how I felt about the assignment. I remember being all upset and my Mom telling me that we would find the perfect book and she would help me read it over and over until I was really good at it. You see, I was a horrible reader. It didn't come easy to me. I couldn't spell ('of' was spelled 'ov' for many years) I couldn't remember all the rules for all the letters. I loved being read too, but for me to read... that was just one of those things that I hated to do. I messed up more than I got it right.
I don't remember the book, maybe my Mom does, but I remember it was about a little kangaroo named Joey. I remember reading it over and over and over and over, to make sure I got all the words right. I remember how scared I was the day I had to read it for class. I even remember sitting outside at recess leaning up against the bricks that had been warmed by the morning sun, reading through my book one last time before I had to read it in class. Funny, I don't remember reading it to the class, but I remember how I smiled after I was done because I accomplished something that was really hard for me.
Sadly this experience didn't infuse my love for reading. It did the opposite. It was shortly after this time that my parents decided to homeschool us (the decision had nothing to do with my reading assignment). After that I remember being read to all the time. My Mom was always reading to us. We would take trips and as we traveled my Mom read. She read to us all the stories that she loved as a child. Happy Hollisters was one of my favorite. She also read to us about places that we were visiting, she read to us History. She would read for school. She would read to us for fun. Have you gotten the idea that my Mom read to us? And still, my heart refused to love my Mom's cherished gift.
As I grew, we moved, and then I started a new school. Reading and writing were apart of our daily routine. Reading moved even lower on the list of things that I liked to do (and writing was even lower). I would rather clean the bathroom than read! I remember the first summer after my first year back in school. My Mom drove me to the library (which she had done a millions times before) and said that we were going to stay until I found a book that I would read. This was my summer assignment from my Mother, I was required to read 30min everyday. Oh how I hated to read!
Standing at the rows of books, my Mom started pulling out different books, asking me if I was interested in this or that. I am sure she got frustrated with my then pre-teenage, eye rolling, big sighing self. But she kept at it until she found a story about a horse. I conceited to taking that book home to read. And that my friends, was how and where my love of reading started.
I know that it took time to develop my love. Hence the 30min everyday, my Mom had so much wisdom (she still does). But by the end of that summer, I had turned from a girl who hated to read, to a girl who was willing to go to the library to pick out new books to read, to a girl who by the end of high school would roll a towel and lay it at the bottom of the door, to block my light, so that my parents didn't know that I would stay up all hours of the night to finish my book.
I LOVE reading. When I start to read, the world slowly slips away and I am transported to the time and place of which I am reading. Much to Kevin's frustration, I can become totally clueless as to what is going on around me when I am engrossed in a book.
Once I started reading, I realized very quickly, that I love reading period books. So basically I love reading stories set anywhere from 100 years ago on back. I loved gleaming the bits and pieces of history from the books. I especially loved reading books set in America during the 1800's & early 1900's.
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