Read Me

Reading is fun.

My mother ,her mother, ,her mother’s mother before her, all took this to heart and they passed on to their children the love for reading. We are a “reading” family. We belong to that household surrounded with encyclopedias, guinness, dictionaries, biographies, the atlas and the bible. At three and a half I already knew, spelled, read ,pronounced and identified correctly the word: Chevrolet. Genius? Indeed not. Reader? YES. I couldn’t miss it. It was our neighbor’s pick- up truck.

The love for reading was not genetic nor was it imprinted in our DNAs. Nor was it surgically implanted in our bodies. It was encouraged in us.

The very first step of infusing into the minds of children the love for reading was quite a dilemma in our family. But just as parents today have found hundreds of ways in encouraging their children to EAT, my family devised creative ways in encouraging their children to READ. And books were not even the essential tools in the introduction to reading.

At the onset, the children just read aloud the words present in their immediate surrounding.
During breakfast as a can of evaporated milk was about to be poured to my cup of chocolate,my mother made sure the can was within my eye level.So that I could read aloud the words “….guaranteed to contain all the natural richness of pure cow’s milk….”

While preparing our meal, my mother would ask me to read aloud my aunt’s cookbook.
Diced, minced and chopped which were so highfalutin for me then became familiar terms .Or that one time when I was helping my little brother take off his shirt (a gift from a relative abroad),my mother made me read out the shirt tag :”wash cold with like colors, do not bleach.” Back then when I have never ever seen a “live” washing machine yet , I already knew what tumble-dry low , meant. My father on the other hand would set down in front of me that old piece of newspaper with which the dried fish was wrapped with. He would then ask me to decode words with him.

On my first trip to the airport,as my parents were about to fetch an uncle who just came from Saudi, the signage “Airport 45 kms ahead” never missed my eye. And the numerous signage thereafter…..”Dangerous.Men at work.”..”Sorry for the inconvenience, your taxes are working for you”…”House for rent”….”Wanted Driver…”Or that blue and white plywood which hangs on our neighbor’s house and which had the words : “Atty-at-law” under his name. And even the words……”In loving memory of wife, son and daughter”…Epitaphs, that too.

My introduction to books was a unique one.My mother, storyteller that she was, began to tell me a story. It was a tale of a village girl who lied to the King that she could spin thread into gold.And how an enchanted little man helped him make that lie into reality.And later on, in exchange for the favor, she must give him her first born. However, should she guess his name right, the baby stays with her. Just like it was in Arabian Nights, my mother told me that story piece by piece,day by day. But much to my disappointment, when the story was about to reveal the little man’s name my mother simply stopped telling the story. And left me wondering what the little man’s name was. My mother had just enticed me in “wanting” my very first book. And that Christmas, my present had on it, in bold golden letters, the words “Rumplestiltskin”… my first book, ever.

Thus, the beginning of my love affair with books.

I simply found myself inching my way to our bookcase, to our neighbors bookshelves and up to the public libraries. Given my personal experience on the precedents of reading, I believe parents should be creative in encouraging their children to read. And to start with, the child does not even have to be in a huge library filled with books. The kitchen will do. That is where my formative years of reading were. It didn’t turn out bad.

And in our family, today, we have carried on the habit. As for me I am passing it on to my baby RAFA…at four months he already has a few favourite poems most of which would make him giggle with glee..and some poems I had read to him while he was still in my womb….