As a little girl I loved laying on my mom's bed while she read children's books to me. We would put our heads together on pillows and she would start reading and the books would come alive. She was a wonderful. She had been an elementary school teacher before getting married and her voice would change with each character, would speed up, then slow down, her voice rising and falling, grow softer and louder. It was captivating.
Sometimes she would open her big, orange book of children's poetry, and read one of my favorite's (and one of her's), "The Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee." In my mind I can hear her reading that poem out loud (Ho--my mom's voice would raise here--For the Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee (a light lilt on the end of the phrase)...But oh, he was perfectly gorgeous to see--here my mom would get a little twinkle in her eyes--the Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee). I could picture this swashbuckler, his black mustache curving, his chest full of gold, his parrot named Pepperkin Pye.
I have a real love for reading to my children because of my mom.
.
.
Tonight Abs wanted to read to me and said, "How about the Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee? I know the right way to read that one because you've read it to me." She recited the first paragraph of the poem from memory and we laughed when I said that's all I could remember, too.
We layed down on her bed, our heads sharing a pillow, as we opened up our poetry book and she read aloud the poem, her voice speeding up and slowing down, getting softer then louder, falling and rising with the verses:
My mom would have been proud.
No comments:
Post a Comment