Music First, Books Later

Music: listening

The most powerful childhood memory I have is a song.

My mother, who later gave me her love for reading, first gave me her love for music. I did not inherent her musical skill the way I did her passion for literacy, but before I could read or had interest in picking up a book, my mother played music for me. Looking back, there was music on, either for her benefit or for ours, at almost every point in the day. Certain classical pieces sound more like sentimental lullabies than classics because I listened to them so often as a child.

Every night my sister and I fell asleep listening to music. Sleep Sound in Jesus I must have heard every night for the first several years of my life. Later we had more options, including the Pachelbel Canon, which gave me nightmares for reasons that I can't fathom now.

Even the television we watched, was essentially music. And the movies we watched, though a very small selection, were heavily musical. I spent hours as a child listening to music in bed, while playing, while eating. When I think about it, I was exposed to a huge musical variety, perhaps more than other children might.

But this early, intense musical introduction did not birth anything musical in me. I am not musical. I do not play or sing. Music for me, as a child, was an event, an activity. Reading eventually took over as that activity in my life, and music took a step back.

Books: listening

I didn't learn to read independantly and proficently until the second grade. Compared to my mother, who taught herself, and my sister, who learned in Kindergarten, I was slow to start.

But I knew I loved reading before I learned how. Books began to take over music's role in my life was through audiobooks. The older I got, the more often my sister, brother, and I would fall asleep listening to an audiobook. From the New Testament, to a dramatized Christiana, to The Sign of the Beaver, I listened to stories before I could read them.

Once, while my reading level was still remedial, my sister read out loud to me the entirety of The Westing Game, because it was so good, and I was physically incapable of enjoying it myself. My father read aloud the entirety of The Hobbit to us. Even after I was capable of reading books like The Hobbit, reading aloud and audiobooks remained traditions. My dad read us Little House long after we'd read them independently, because it was fun, and good time spent together. My siblings and I fell asleep listening to books on tape for years, until ultimately, we opted for silence.

Books: reading

Being homeschooled, my only way to gauge my success was by comparing myself to my sister. My personal love for reading grew slowly. Trying desperately to keep up with an older and smarter sister kept reading from being joyful for a time. I would lie about my reading level, and force my way through books I didn't really understand just to say that I'd read them. Although the competitive attitude kept me fighting, it also kept me reading. By the time I was in third or fourth grade, everything had evened out.

I read quickly, regularly, and for fun. Every morning, through till ninth grade, I started my school day with reading. My mother would assign me a list of any number of challenging books, and every day I'd read for 45 minutes to an hour. She wanted us to love reading, so she gave us the space we needed to learn to love it. Once, while reading Rebecca, all other school was canceled for the day, and I read for two days straight till I finished.

In a Liberal Arts heavy house, I also was assigned daily reading for History and English. My mother assigned me The Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid in ninth grade in a push that got me over the last barriers. By now I can't think of anything I can't read or wouldn't be willing to try.

Books: lifestyle

It's easy to get sentimental about reading as a skill. It's easy to pat yourself on the back for all the books you read. It's easy to feel a little superior when in conversation with someone who you just know isn't a "real reader." But I think that sort of behavior is stupid, and probably fundamentally wrong.

I'm not particularly proud of my skill or the shelves of books I own, but it does make me incredibly happy. Reading is not an art form. It's a form of entertainment. Just as I lay back and listened to music when I'm bored, just as I turn on the tv for two hours of straight Fox sitcoms on Tuesday, just as I go to the movies, just as someone (not me) might play a video game. Reading is a form of entertainment.

Even if you're using it as a form of education, or even if it does improve vocabulary...

Reading is not writing or drawing or singing. You're not creating anything new. And I think a lot of people might mistake reading for art. It's really not. It's fun or it's educational or it's both. But it's not some art form and it's not something that you need to necessarily be proud of.

The skill and the passion I have for reading is something I will forever keep. Out of every childhood experience, it is the one that has helped me most as an adult. And it's a skill I will always, always be grateful to have. Looking back, it is something that was unique to my childhood and my upbringing.

But that being said. I read because I love it, because my mother taught me how to love it, because I was raised to set time aside to appreciate stories, in whatever form that might be.