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March Slice of Life No. 13

I remember it well.
It was a Saturday morning.
Unannounced, he came into my kitchen.

“Gramma, can you help me? I forgot I have to read a book for a project.”

“Really. By when?”

“Monday.”

“Monday? Like after Sunday?”

He nods.

“Have you started?”

“No. I don’t have a book.”

“What! You don’t have a book yet? What kind of book does it have to be?”

“It can be any book. Well, not a short one.”

By now we are in the room that my youngest granddaughter thinks is a library, thumbing through books on the shelves. He settles on a biography from my old presidential biographies series. As he looks at the page number on the last page, I ask, “Do you think you can finish it by Monday?”

“I don’t know.” Then a bit dejectedly, “I have to.”

Being a book lover, being a teacher, being his grandmother — being all these things, I offer him help. I offer to read the book with him.

In the garden room, I get comfy on the sofa; he sprawls on the floor. He reads out loud. Then he hands me the book, and I read out loud. Then he reads; then I read. Back and forth. Page by page. Chapter by chapter. We stop to make sandwiches for lunch, and in the middle of the afternoon, a bowl of popcorn. As the last rays of the winter sun stream through the garden room windows, he reads the last page and closes the book.

We did it!

{I never did know what his Monday project was.}

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This memory was rekindled by “Reading with My Mini Me” by Megan Watson — a lovely post about reading with her little daughter, about her father reading with her when she was little.

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March 2019 SOLC–Day 13
Thank you to
Two Writing Teacher