Amazing things happen out loud.
Birthing classes teach one partner to help the other imagine when pregnancy becomes uncomfortable or even difficult. She can be in a more relaxing place, like a nice tropical beach. I took my wife and child to Middle Earth. We encountered wizards and elves, orcs and dwarves and characters who found themselves immersed in strange situations, even as we also were journeying into this new realm of parenthood.
For the price of a book we can go places beyond our doors when our means are limited. If it is good book, we can go again and again. When we read aloud we create that world around us and we listen to it take shape, realizing all these things through voices we recognize and trust.
Before my son was born we had picked out his name. It would be a combination of his Great Grandfather’s (on my side) and his Grandfather’s (on his mother’s side), nothing too complicated or obscure. Of course, this is a father’s tale. So when the doctor held him up and I saw my son for the first time I called out his name and he turned his head to look at me. I like to think he recognized my voice from all the reading I had done to him while he was in his mother’s womb. This story is now part of his history and part of mine because that is what I chose to read into it.
Reading helps us learn who we are and who we can be. Reading helps us move beyond ourselves. Reading helps us hear who other people are. Read out loud to your partner, read out loud to your children, and if you are fortunate read out loud to your parents. Share the stories which are yours and theirs and ours. Reading is the adventure that takes a lifetime.
Peter, thank you for sharing your thoughts on reading with us! We should all be so lucky to have a parent who reads aloud while we are in the womb.
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