December is upon us and Fall Into Reading is almost over! Can you believe it? We still have a couple weeks to wrap up our fall reading, but the bustle of the holiday season is all around us, and I know it can make reading feel like a distant luxury.
Thanks for sharing all the ways you encourage others to read in your comments last week. Keep it up!
Time for this week’s question:
Share a special memory relating to books or reading — something you’ll never forget.
I have so many book- and reading-related memories! I could tell you about working in my elementary school library — organizing, stocking, and filling the card catalog with our librarian, Mrs. Kaye. I could tell you about summer afternoons when I walked from my parents’ ice cream store to the library many blocks away (or at least it felt like “many” to 11-year-old me), curled up in a corner of the kids’ section and read for hours. I could tell you about the time I got Mono in college and my dear roommate, Shelah, read to me in the afternoons and evenings to entertain me, comfort me, and keep my mind off my illness.
But instead, I’ll tell you about the last few days I spent with my father. My dad passed away in 1995 after a long battle with cancer. I was already married and living six hours away when his health took a drastic turn for the worse. He was under hospice care at home while my mom ran the ice cream store, and she called me one night to tell me that he had slipped into a coma. It wouldn’t be long… I packed my bags and drove to my childhood home to help her out and to spend some time with Dad.
I worked at the store in the evenings, and spent days at home, in a quiet house, my dad breathing quietly as he lay in a hospital bed in our home’s sunny downstairs. I talked to my dad, even though he didn’t respond, and then I had an idea — I would read to him. I was currently in the middle of a re-read of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, so I pulled a chair up close to my dad’s bed, and spent some time every day sharing my reading with him.
I don’t know if my dad ever heard me reading to him. And I was home less than a week when he passed away. But that time was special to me. We were together. And I was sharing something I loved with someone I loved very deeply.
And that is a reading memory I will never forget.
What about you? Do you have a special reading memory — from your childhood, teen years, or adulthood — that you’re willing to share?












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