The First Read

Among the images that make up my memories of parenthood, I have a favorite I like to replay in my mind. It's my daughter Sonya learning to read.

The way I remember it * Sonya is about six years old. I am sitting on her bed holding the book so she can follow along as I read. Sonya leans forward from the bedcovers until her face is perhaps a foot from the open pages and silently mouths the words as I say them aloud.

I pause for a brief moment to take a breath.

Suddenly, a different voice reads the next sentence ... and the next. And then, within seconds, she completely takes over my role of narrator.

Her voice swells with confidence as I turn the pages. And when I don't keep pace, she shoots me a glance.

As the scene fades in my mind, I am beaming with the shameless pride of parenthood and the realization that this magic moment was a forerunner of greater and deeper transitions—graduations, proms, and perhaps even borrowing the car keys.

Sonya's version of the event is much different. Like a screenwriter adapting my novel, she diplomatically demotes me from my starring role. "That's not it, Daddy," she corrects me gently when I share my memory. "Of course, you and Mommy were very helpful, but I started to read before that."

As she recalls, the moment happened in school. The director of her early childhood program sat her down in the reading corner, put a familiar book in her hands, and said, "Read this to me."

Sonya told the director that she couldn't read. The director reassured that she could and said, "Go ahead." So she did. She read The Carrot Seed from start to finish, with all the poise and dignity of someone who had "watered it and pulled the weeds" many times before.

If my wife's version of the story is correct, however, Sonya and I are both a little off the mark. The way she reconstructs what happened, learning to read began with a toddler who barely sat still in our laps. In her mind, the crucial moments were when we started to read to our daughter, when we sat with her and turned the pages of the books again and again. Our voices filled her eager mind with the words of simple stories. And she, in turn, began to associate the reassurance and stimulation of our attention with those flat, colorful things of paper and cardboard that we found so fascinating.

Whose point of view is closest to the truth? I suppose it lies somewhere in between. As my wife suggests, Sonya's reading was, of course, part of a continuing process. And if Sonya remembers first reading in her early childhood program, I am sure she did. But it's my right—and I choose to exercise it to stick to my own version.

So when I daydream of yesteryear, Sonya begins to read in her bedroom at age six. And I am right there turning the pages—a little bit too slowly.