Learning from Two Women

I consider myself as a young woman on my late 20’s and always making fun of my “old” husband who is in his early 30’s. But trying to remember how I learned to read and write makes me feel older than him, because it is hard to focus on a single event that could have changed my perspective about reading and writing. The first time that I thought about how I learn to read, it came to my mind images of my grandmother and my mother reading me bedtime stories before I fell asleep. My passion about books and interesting magazines came from my grandmother stories and was reinforced by my mother’s encourage to read.

Looking back through the years I have a vivid memory of my bedroom at my grandmother’s house, it was a big bedroom with big and old windows from ceiling to floor, just covered with curtains made of small laces. We did not need to use a fan to cool the room, because it was cool enough in a hot and humid summer night. I used to stay with my grandmother, a petite and dark hair woman, because my mother had to travel when I was at school. Every night while I was ready to go to bed I had to choose a book from an old and rusty bookcase that my grandmother used to have outside the guest’s bedroom. I remember choosing a book just by its number on the spine, when I opened one and each of these books they had a particular smell like a fresh tree in the cool spring and the pages were not white but light yellow due to the pass of years. These books were part of my grandmother’s collection of Aesop fables.

I wasn’t able to read at that time, and my grandmother used to read to herself like 5 minutes the book that I chose and then she started reading it to me. I really enjoyed those stories with great endings and fun topics to learn about.

As time passed by I learn to read at school and as soon as I realized that I was able to read more than one page, I went to my grandmother’s house and look for those Aesop fables that she read me every night that I spent with her. Sadly I found out that those stories that I used to love and enjoy were just boring and hard to read.

“Mama, what happened to those funny and interesting stories that you used to told me every night? Did you change the books?” I asked my grandmother.

“My little Yaya, those books are hard to read and understand, aren’t they?” she replied.

“Yes Mama. Those books are nothing related to those stories that I was hoping to read when I grow up” I said.

“Well my little kid, those books are the same that I used to read to you, but I had to change the words so you can understand them and you can enjoy the story and don’t get bored. I used my imagination too so I was able to adapt the fable to some situations that you could had at school or with your little friends.” my grandmother said.

Since that day I learned from my grandmother, who was an older woman in age but not in spirit, that everyone can read any type of books, you just need to understand the words and change them until you get the message of the reading.

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