Emerging

Today I looked around the house and found it was covered with notes and posters and lists, all labeled with various forms of L-A-U-R-E-L, and then maybe another random word. Like hello. Or camel. Laurel is just on the brink of learning how to read and write. She can do her first name by herself and can write most letters of the alphabet. She practices a lot, on her own mostly, because I am cautious about meddling. I realized too that she's started choosing at least one "baby" book each night, the sort with very few words, that she can read to me or to the stuffed animals lined up next to her pillow. It's wild to me, this effortless shift into literacy, because I spend all day at work moving mountains to make it happen for other kids. Today at training one of the Reading Warriors lent me a book to read. I've noticed this start to happen - kids trading paperbacks and making recommendations to each other. But never have they had the confidence or awareness to give me something to read. When children's books were mentioned many of them even jotted down the title and author. Tiny victories for my cause. But then at home, where literacy isn't a cause, just a thing we do, the victories are tiny as well. So maybe there aren't any mountains to move after all.