Creative Pieces… 29
A Love of Reading by Emily Miller
The orange ceiling lights contrasted strongly with the black night sky outside the windows as 1940’s big band music softly filled the empty spaces between the gentle recited words of my Papa. My parents were still not home. They said they would be back three hours ago, but now, none of that mattered. Papa was reading to me. He pulled me off of the scratchy, brick red couch that my three year old feet did not reach the end of, and onto his lap; so I could see the pictures and the words that I could not yet decipher. I was entranced. “I do not like green eggs and ham,” he read, in his voice he never raised. “I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.” This is where my love of reading began. Not in a tranquil library, not with the most masterful literary piece ever written, but in the warmth of the first man I had ever loved. Tinker Bell decorations surrounded the room as I sat on a matted carpet in my white and purple dress. A lonely number four birthday candle lay on the table, dejected, with its burnt tip still smoking. My Nana and Papa handed me a small rectangular gift wrapped in lavender paper that felt strangely heavy in my hands. I tore it apart with all the strength my chubby toddler arms could muster. It was the thickest book I’d ever seen, apart from the even thicker leather book with gold lettering on the front that sat on my grandparent’s coffee table. “Anne of Green Gables,” my Papa said. “It was my favorite book,” my Nana said. “When you can read it, maybe it’ll be yours, too!” Later that night, after my Nana and Papa had left,
