Reading aloud

Pen and Ink Drawing "The Naming of Things" by Melanie Nerenberg

"Reading begins when we put names to things, like face and body parts (nose, eye, arm, head, toe) and to feelings". (from www.readtomeprogram.org)

It's been over 40 years since anyone read to me. My sister and I lived with my grandparents and parents in a 2 family house in Brooklyn, Canarsie to be precise. At bedtime it often took both my parents and my grandmother to move my sister through her bath and to bed. We are twins but from that day to this my sister and I could not have been more different. For my sister bedtime was the first act in a drama of operatic proportions. For me bedtime meant I would run into the bedroom and leap into bed my grandfather would tuck me into silky soft oft- laundered cotton sheets and one of my grandmother's home-made down comforters. And he would read to me. Slowly, he would sit down on the bed next to me- his weight a gentle reassurance of companionship for a little while in the dim light from the bedside lamp. He read carefully, in heavily accented English. I remember Bible stories- about Moses and Esther and kings and slaves. About Joseph and his brothers. There was little inflection and if I questioned (and I DID) he would smile, answer softly and whisper- "Shah, close eyes now. Listen". I never saw him put out the light. The next thing I saw inevitably was morning.

I have had the great blessing of being allowed to read a special bedtime book to my friend's 3 year old son. "Pajama Time" by Sandra Boynton is our book. I read it to him every night for months to give his mom a break in the evenings. I thought that books naturally put children to sleep. Enthusiastically I would launch into the familiar phrases- do voices and sounds and gestures- and inevitably he was wide awake, night after night! I couldn't figure it out. A very good friend and dad of three grown children pointed out to me "Who goes to sleep when there is so much ACTION going on?". And then he spoke to me in the bedtime story voice. Soft, slow, almost, but not quite, a monotone. I felt my eyes slowly drifting closed and my own breath begin to slow. (This friend also informed me that all new parents get sent home from the hospital with the baby with a 3-book set of everything you need to know about child-rearing. I think he had to give the books back when the kids were grown, but he still remembers a few important things. The three year old didn't stand a chance when I used "the voice". There were many nights we didn't make it to the end of the book, but both of us were smiling, awake or asleep.

A lover read to me aloud one night. It was late and a fair amount of evening and wine and food and a long walk in the rain preceeded it. He sat up, propped against pillows and I curled myself around him as he sat cross-legged and read to me. It was poetry- not love poems- stories of a man searching for himself. The perpetuation of Thoreau's idea of men leading "lives of quiet desperation". Choices are never without a price, the scars are not always visible and words to describe how that feels, really feels, exceeds the ability of most of us to describe it.

Most, but not all. Some have the gift- to give a voice to the pain and joy of this life and when we find those words, written by another, our feelings have wings, and sounds that make sense and the heart is no longer burdened with the weight of being alone. Sharing those words- reading them aloud, is a sacred moment. It is a golden hand outstretched to the other and in it's palm a ruby red heart- fragile, dazzlingly beautiful and completely open- protected by just the faintest idea that these are the words of another mitigating how intimate and real that instant is. The sound of breath between the words, the rasp of a turned page and the susurrus of one page falling against the next. The voice is aware of being heard and reaches to be clear, and when the words strike deep, the little break in the tone- like a moment's return to adolescence and the intake of air as words strike close to the bone, spoken and another barrier is removed and in that second the reader and the listener move closer together.

This night I was the listener. Freed from moving my eyes from word to word- from the effort to take letters and make words, from the work of reading sentences as sentences and to remember, at every period, to let my voice drop. I could let the sounds and feelings wash over me. Share what it sounded like in another voice- not the one I hear in my head when I read. Free to really hear the words and what they meant to the reader. And in the sharing, to know what I meant to the reader that he could share his life with me this way. And free in my silence, to feel what he meant to me.

Shah, close eyes now, listen.

:) X