Literacy and Love of Language Pre-dates Memory

My favorite memory of reading as a child involves snuggling beneath a mound of homemade patchwork quilts, nestled against cool, crisp sheets, while my grandmother read Monster Night at Grandma’s House to me. I was already afraid of the potential demons that lurked in my closet, especially in the dark night after the house settled into sleep, so I felt more comfortable knowing that someone else—Toby, the little boy who was the main character in the book—was also afraid of nighttime monsters.

Reading, even then, had its real-world applicability. It apparently taught me to empathize before I knew the definition of empathy. My father used to relish in relaying the story to others of me reading from one of Bill Keane’s Family Circus comic strip compilation books and crying. At two or three years of age, I shed tears because the older kids refused to allow P.J., the youngest of the clan, to play baseball with them. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let him join them.

My parents had read to me from the time I was very young. Reading, to me, pre-dates memory. I can’t recall a time I couldn’t read. I devoured books, memorized them, read them, and re-read them until their pages were tattered.

I was lucky in some ways. A sickly child, plagued by minor illnesses every few weeks, it seemed, I spent much time in bed with nothing to do but sleep or read. If I were very ill, I preferred sleep. When my condition made a turn for the better, I would vociferate my request for Mom, Dad, or Granny to come and read to me. They were always obliging. They left other tasks and diligently sat bedside to indulge me in my craving for narrative. I remember time after time my grandmother complaining of her eyes hurting from reading so much; nevertheless, she kept reading. Looking back, I must have had one of the best childhoods anyone could imagine.

At elementary school, my love for reading was fostered by some dedicated and passionate teachers who cherished the written word. One of the most memorable was a fifth grade teacher, Ms. Helen Summers, at Ramer School. The memory of her reading to us is so vivid even now, over 25 years later, that if I close my eyes, I can still imagine sitting in those small plastic classroom chairs listening eagerly as she read from Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows, E.B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan, or Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain. Her voice undulated with emotion and intensity as she made those stories come alive.

Certain times of year, I could purchase my own books when the Scholastic Book Fair made its visit to our school. I could hardly wait for that day to roll around, for my classmates to form an orderly line, and march to the library where the books were stacked neatly in cardboard display cases on library tables. I had pondered with great precision the books I might purchase when that moment finally arrived. I had circled and marked out and re-marked my potential purchases, trying to stay within the budget I knew my parents would set for me. Walking into that library and breathing the aroma of those pages, all those new book fibers, was almost more than a body could stand.

My initiation into the literate world not long after carried over into my desire to create my own tales. I recall sitting for hours pondering over Sears catalogs, devising stories about the clothing models contained therein. Sometimes I would wax even more creative, procure scissors and glue and poster board, and proceed to cut the models out and make my own story board in which to display my unique narrative.

It comes, therefore, as no surprise, that ultimately I chose the teaching of English as my vocation. I still love the element of story. I love language. In fact, I savor language—English or otherwise—whether it be sacred or profane, cacophonous or euphonious, narrow and skeletal, or latitudinous and vast.

In the university composition course I teach, last week I assigned my students the task of composing their own literacy narratives, the stories of how they, too, grew to become literate. I encouraged them to engage the reader through incorporation of the senses and compelling detail. I look forward to reading their tales of immersion into story and language. I wish to impart to them and to endow to them at least half, if not more, of the love of language I have harbored since childhood.

My grandmother, Mary Moore Jones, and me at age 3 1/2 (May 28, 1977)