"we're a family of readers", says my mother, and she is right. books, the first weapon she armed us with, have been apart of my life since before i could speak. an advocate of the written word, my mother made the art of buying books and reading books, as much of a tradition as celebrating ones birth. she cultivated a love of words so deep, first within her own children, then within her grands, i'm partly convinced that words are in our dna, as real as skin or moles or "good growing" hair. i wasn't surprised when she announced, the other day, that it was time for toots to have her own library card. having read every book to her from her own growing collection, i'm excited about the new imaginative places we're sure to visit with a world of books at our disposal.
i was bred to be a writer. regardless of whatever creative path i choose to journey through, at my core, i'm rooted in words. my mother instilled the beauty of reading and the structure of writing. my father, who use to read parts of his memoir to me, cultivated the art of shaping words into emotion, like the way an artist strokes paint in blank spaces, deliberately.
words make me happy. language is astounding.
i am drawn to people who use them artfully, distinctively, each time that they speak. like my sweet-voiced, clever word using toddler is learning to do. toots, who loves books and adores the library. who memorized her favorite story so well, you'd swear she could read. who loves poetry and cadence and the rhythm that language can sing. it's pretty awesome, to share a love of literature with her, to just be able to experience her falling in love...with the written word, too...
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