Learning to Read

As someone who teaches literature, loves all things words-related, and gets excited about eloquent turns of phrase, I wish I had a great story about the day that the frustratingly independent lines of letters on a page miraculously resolved themselves into words that I could suddenly read.

But I don't.

The fact is that I don't recall learning to read at all. I remember that when I got bumped up from four-year-old preschool to kindergarten halfway through the year, I was sent home with a giant stack of worksheets to complete, so that I could catch up with the rest of the class. I remember that these were mostly sheets to practice my writing of letters. (And I remember being completely delighted that I would no longer be subjected to the tedium of naptime!) I remember the thank-you note that my first-grade teacher wrote to me, in very careful printed letters, when I took her a plant on some occasion: I was so proud that I could figure out the word "coleus." I remember writing a longing note to that same first-grade teacher that read, "Please give me some homework." And I remember my deep disappointment that her response was, "We don't have homework in first grade."

Somewhere between being handed worksheets that taught me to recognize and write individual letters and being able to compose a note to my teacher begging her to save me from my own boredom, I obviously learned to read. But I have absolutely no recollection of the process.

Which is why the last few months at our house have been such an utter delight: Son, since mid-summer, has been learning to read. And last week, he read Green Eggs and Ham from cover to cover, by himself, aloud to all of us, as we sat in the doctor's waiting room. It is fortunate that Green Eggs and Ham is a long book ("Mama! I read SIXTY-ONE pages!!") because when we called ahead to the after-hours clinic to find out if there was a wait to see a pediatrician about an allergic reaction Daughter was having to her antibiotics, and we were told that No, there was not anyone waiting at that time, we made the mistaken assumption that that meant that we would actually get to see a pediatrician quickly if we zoomed right over and planned on having dinner afterwards--because, of course, children do not have allergic reactions to their antibiotics at any time besides 4:45 on a Friday afternoon--and so we DID zoom over, only to find out that while there were not a lot of families ahead of us, the pediatrician herself had not arrived because of car trouble, and thus we were forced to wait for nearly an hour and a half before we ever saw a doctor. But, you see, this leaves lots of time to be filled by slow readings of Green Eggs and Ham, so it's not all bad.

That evening, Son said to us with a sigh of deep satisfaction, "Dr. Seuss makes the best books for kids to read to theirselves." "Theirselves" aside, it was a sentiment I could totally get behind. And then, the next day, I heard a murmur from the backseat as we sat at a traffic light, "no...turn...on...red...Mama? What does that sign say?" I started to laugh. "It says 'no turn on red.' You just read it!" And then I realized that as a phrase, that makes no sense if you don't know something about traffic rules, so I explained what it meant.

Even so. The boy can actually read. Not all words, certainly, and sometimes the process is just too exhausting. But he is getting to the point now where he can read with just enough rapidity that he comprehends whole sentences instead of simply sounding out words. That leap has happened just in the last two weeks. Not so long ago, he could have read a Dr. Seuss book, but it would take him so long to get through each laborious word that he (and even I) would forget the first part of what he'd read by the time he got to the first period on the page. He would read all the words, one by slow little one, and then ask me to "read the whole thing fast now," so that he would know what it said.

And then suddenly, it's as if words are magically beginning to speak to him. The patterns of letters are making more sense, and he is recognizing more words on sight (it, had, was, he, the...) so that reading a whole sentence is more efficient. His delight at being the one who got to read the funny jokes in the books has been palpable. His smile as he works his way through a page with a lot of words on it has been glowing.

I've been trying to teach him about vowels, and last night we were playing a game where I was giving him a three-letter word and asking him to tell me what its vowel was. He had to figure out how to spell the word and then identify the vowel. "What is the vowel in mop?" I asked.

"MOP!" His eyes lit up. "I haven't spelled that one before." He thought for a minute. "O," he said, with a little question in his voice.

"You got it!"

He pumped his fist in the air. "YEESSS!" he shouted, bouncing with excitement in his chair.

Of course, it does my heart good to have a child who gets excited by his ability to spell words he hasn't tried before. Of course, I love having a child who is understanding the concept of vowels. Of course, it makes me happy to have a child who thinks it's fun to play rhyming games and do quizzes to see how many three-letter words he can write down on a single piece of paper without help (forty-four!).

But even more than that, I adore having a child who is this eager to learn. One who I can see already wanting to devour books. One who takes delight not just in the thing he can already do but in the process of learning to do a new thing.

I don't know if, when he gets older, he will remember learning to read. Perhaps it will simply be a thing that happened one day when he wasn't noticing, somewhere between the two weeks he spent eating "new foods" in New York City and the day Mama came for her first art parent visit at school--or whatever milestones mark this past spring and this fall in his mind.

But I've noticed. And it has been amazing.