by Stephanie Piper
Reading up on life
I learned to write from reading and I learned to read from my father.
I don't think he actually taught me my letters; I did time with Dick and Jane and Puff and Spot like the other first-graders of my generation. My father taught me a more fundamental lesson. He taught me that reading was like breathing. It was something you did to sustain life.
The homes of my childhood overflowed with books in every stage of development. Boxes of tissue-thin manuscript pages shared space with floppy galley proofs on my father's desk. The Black Hawk pencils he used to edit in his neat, spiky handwriting spilled from every drawer. Books were my father's daily bread, but they were also his treasure. In time, they became mine.
I am speaking now of those ancient evenings before the 12-inch black and white Sylvania television set came to live at our house in Pleasantville, New York. Each night after dinner, my sister and I would settle ourselves next to my father in the red room, named for its red-patterned wallpaper, and the journey would begin.
He read to us from Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web and the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. He read fluently, expressively, inventing character voices for Wilbur the pig and Fern and Stuart and Snowbell the cat, pausing sometimes to explain a complicated passage. He didn't skip the gory parts of the fairy tales, understanding that occasional horror is a necessary ingredient of enchantment. He gave us time to look at the pictures, but I preferred the ones that appeared in my head, snow queens and goose girls, witches and trolls, conjured by my father's quiet voice.
I broke my leg when I was four. Sidelined from tree climbing and backyard games, I accompanied my father on Saturday errands. He set me up in style in the children's room of the public library, my miniature cast propped on a wooden bench, a pile of picture books at hand. I couldn't read yet, but the message of those solitary hours was loud and clear. If you have books, you will never be lonely, or bored, or awash in self-pity. If you have books, you will be safe.
I grew up and moved out of the children's room and discovered Steinbeck and Hemingway and J.D. Salinger. Since books were my father's business, I brought each new find to him. Dad, I would ask with breathless 14-year-old enthusiasm, did you ever read Grapes of Wrath, or A Farewell to Arms, or Catcher in the Rye? A long time ago, he would say. Tell me about it. I'd launch into a rapturous plot summary, my father nodding in recognition. For a brief half hour, the battleground of adolescence became friendly territory.
I read to know I'm not alone in the world, C.S. Lewis wrote. I first read that quote with a flash of recognition. It was a lesson I had learned early and well. My own house overflows with books, piled on the floor by the couch, teetering on the kitchen counter, balanced on the bedside table. At the end of each day, I turn to them with gratitude and relief.
My father was the son of orphans, both of whom went to work at 13. Education was the grail of their lives; next to faith and family, nothing mattered more. It was the gift no one could take away, and no sacrifice was too great to win it, or to pass it on.
My father was long on expectations and short on approval. He did not—does not—suffer fools gladly; he will never be canonized for patience. Sometimes his best advice sounded like a rebuke.
Finding me reading in some remote corner, his greeting was always the same. Give yourself some light, he would say crossly, moving a lamp closer to my chair, adjusting the shade.
Give yourself some light, my father said.
Thanks to him, I have. I do. I will.
August 3, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 31
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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