A Love of Reading… Emily Miller

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,

I thrust the book into my older brother’s hands and demanded he read it to me. We sat down in the rocking chair, and he opened the book. He paused for a moment, squinted at the page, then shut the book. “This is hard, I don’t want to,” he said. “Pleaseeeeeee! I need you to read it.” He dropped the book onto the chair and left. To be fair, he was only six. The words were smaller and longer than any words we’d ever seen on a page. This wasn’t a book I wanted my Papa to read to me, though. I was determined; this book was one that I was going to read all by myself. My Papa continued to read to me, but now, he began to teach me the individual letters of the alphabet. Then he sounded out the syllables and asked me to repeat them; eventually, he did the same with whole words. “Oh,” he said slowly. “Oh.” I repeated. “The,” “The.” “Places,” “Places.” “You’ll,” “You’ll.” “Go.” “GO!!” Three years after that birthday party, I lay on top of my twin sized bed, my heels pressing into the green-andpurple handmade quilt. I held up the dense little book, my arms already growing weary. “Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow…” Months later, I was running down the stairs with the

book in my hands. It no longer weighed my arms down. “Papa, Papa, I finished it!!” The look of pride and happiness on my grandfather’s face rests deep in the crevices of my memory. I was ecstatic in that hour of making my Papa proud, but looking back, it was a bittersweet moment. It is where my memories of devouring novels begins, but also where my Papa’s days of reading Dr. Seuss to me ends. I read the rest of the books in the Anne of Green Gables series that year. After I had finished, I felt as though Anne had become a grown-up far too fast. I found myself re-reading the chapters about her childhood so that I could live through it over and over again. I now wish I could do the same with my own life. Anne of Green Gables turned into The Secret Garden, which turned into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, then Little Women, then Nancy Drew, then A Series of Unfortunate Events, then Harry Potter, then Lord of the Rings. I could always count on my Nana and Papa to feed my book addiction on every birthday and Christmas. As I read more and more, I began to write more and more. I sat in a dark wooden chair, my feet swinging, with a pencil in my hand and a sheet of construction paper in front of me. “Once upon a time…” The pieces of paper with doodles and words combined together piled up to a size that would make the trees groan. One day, I stopped adding doodles and wasting construction paper, as I began to receive notebooks for my birthdays and Christmases. Nine years had passed since my first memory of my Papa reading to me. I held a pen in my hand, and a sheet of college-ruled paper sat before me on the desk. My feet now

touched the floor. Neither of my grandparents were in the house, and my mother had taken a day off from work – a rare occasion. For once, I was at loss for words. Tears began to well up, and like my three-year-old self, I could not decipher the words on the page. The drops leaked from my face and fell onto the ink, smearing and spreading it into unintelligible patterns. The title “Papa’s Eulogy” dissolved into an octopus explosion. I was seven years old when I looked up what a “eulogy” was and how to spell it, which some would say was too young. I was twelve years old when I wrote one. I was far too young. The church piano softly filled the empty spaces between my words. I was reading to him now.