Fortezza, Umilitade, e Largo Core - Courage, Humility, and Largeness of Heart.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Sometimes you have to make room...

My husband and I are in the process of trying to make all of our stuff fit into a condo that really only fits one person comfortably (or two if they do not have a lot of stuff, such as 5 bajillion* books). Since Jeff and I have more books between the two of us than the average small town community library, one of the things we are attempting is to pare down is our books.

Both my husband and I are learning disabled and came to reading late. Each of us has that special book that broke through the barrier and helped us gain the ability to read without tremendous effort. For Jeff that book is The Hobbit.

We have the fancy binding edition of the Tolkien trilogy and Jeff was going to sell his original mass market print editions. As he was getting ready to put it in the "to go" pile, he shared his story of the breakthrough, of how his mother, despite money being tight, rushed out to purchase her son these books that he was excited to read. Although Jeff would probably deny this, I could hear the lump in his throat as he told me about the moment when he finally was able to read at his grade level. The books that he held in hand were the exact books responsible.

Knowing the pain of struggling to do something that your heart calls so strongly to do (both of us come from families of voracious readers) and the elation of finally breaking through, I immediately told him to put the books back on the shelf, that we could make room for such influential books.


*yes, I made that word up.

2 comments:

  1. How interesting the LD folks seem to gravitate towards each other long after the LD is no longer easily apparent. I am LD as well.

    I wish I could point to some particular book that was a break though book for me. Books were the one thing my parents would buy me whenever I asked, but instead of reading lots of books, I picked out books and got my "gifted" little sister to read them. By the time she was 8 she had read most of the Classics-- I have no idea how much she acutally understood, but I would hear of a classic novel on Jeopardy or something and then find it in the bookstore and convince her to convince our parents to buy it for her, and then she'd actually read it.

    Sadly, I didn't start reading for entertainment purposes until I was in college (and long after I was reading beyond grade level- God Bless my LD Teachers, if only they could see me now).

    So glad you and Jeff found out how special books are early. Although now I'm terribly curious about what your break-through book was.

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