First Love

We moved there when I was seven. A falling down farmhouse in a rural area, cornfields separating our acres from the nearest neighbors, and an occasional cow straying into our front yard.

I was years away from being able to ride my bike three miles into town, to meet the other children that lived there, and to buy candy cigarettes and Big League Chew from the tiny corner store with money earned from scouring the road for pop bottles to take back for ten cents each. I was years away from the confidence in my physical abilities to do anything except wash dishes. I was years away from the knowledge that I could think fast and think hard and use my brain for something other than figuring out how to avoid another confrontation with my father.

There was a sun porch on the west side of that farmhouse. My parents put all the moving boxes on that porch after we moved in, so it was filled with cardboard and one leftover couch, stuffing falling out, that they put in there while they decided the best method of discard for it. I found myself on that porch a lot, hiding from him, working on my homework, and dreaming of how I could run away and never be caught.

I learned how to read there. I was very good at regurgitating information before that. I knew the letter 'a' meant a and I knew c-a-t spelled cat, but it wasn't until there was a cat in our farmhouse that I suddenly knew that c-a-t meant Penny, that annoying cat who scratched me so badly that twenty-four years later I still have a scar on my wrist. I joyfully reread all of the old assignments that I had worked so hard on and realized that it was all really easy. All of it.

And there I read. I fell in love, first with Ramona Quimby. She was misunderstood. She was bright, but confused about her place in the world. She was the youngest. She was just like me. As an adult, I read those books and I want to smack Ramona, but she was my first. My first confidant, my first chapter book, my first window to a world that I could escape to.

As I grew, I introduced new characters to my fictional world - Francie Nolan, Sara Crew, Mary Lennox, Anne Shirley, and Black Beauty all became my friends sitting on that couch - but the love of learning to read and learning escapism via my mind, that's my true first love.