Photoessay #845 - Reading

I've always loved to read. Since that day in the first grade when the teacher put up that first sentence on the big piece of tagboard. "See see see Ann" and asked what it might say. I looked at it and all the pieces came together in my head and I KNEW! I knew what it said!!! My hand shot up, I could read! My mother had specifically not taught me to read because her own frustrations as a late reader. But I had wanted to read for the longest time. Deeply disappointed in kindergarten that they didn't teach us. I remember in kindergarten looking at the back of the work books and it really looked like we would read. But then they only taught pattern recognition, matching letters, etc. Geez, would we ever get there!

After that, I took off and read every reader I could find. I raided the cupboards for the extra readers, for next year's readers. I think I've already told the story. In 1962 my parents did what all good parents did at that time. They bought a set of the World Book Encyclopedia. As a 10 year old, I was delighted. All that summer, I would select a volume, go onto the screened porch and read. I thought it was a great opportunity. I started with 'A' and went from there. I read the entire thing. What else would you do?

I loved the special pages with the filmed illustrations. The parts of the body, etc. Seemed odd to me that my younger siblings didn't do the same thing.

In 1968, a friend of my mom's gave her a whole bunch of New Yorker magazines. I don't remember why. I started reading them and I LOVED them!!! I read the entire stack. In fact, I would lay out in our backyard of our sacramento home when the sprinklers were on (how un-green). I calculated that the magazines disintegrated about the same time as I finished reading them.

I think my mother fretted that I didn't aspire to anything other than reading everything in sight.

So, for a long time, I yearned for a New Yorker subscription. Somehow I thought that somebody else had to buy it for me. One day, I realized, from out of the blue, that I could buy my OWN subscription. What an idea! So I've subscribed ever since.

Now, there have been times where I've been real behind in reading them. Like years behind. It's only recently I was still reading "pre-Monica" issues. I always knew I would catch up. Now that Naomi's gone off to WSU, I realized that now, after 27 years, the day was coming when I would be CAUGHT UP WITH THE NEW YORKERS! Kind of a life marker.

Plus, this past week I've read "The Optimist's Daughter" by Eudora Welty