On not being: A real reader

I still often feel guilty that I'm not what in my family growing up, we called 'a real reader'. I can read, sure. I do read. But I do not 'get through' books in the way that my sisters did as children or as they have done as adults. I can't say I have that need. It still saddens me a little since it was afforded so, so much importance and status as I grew up, an accolade to obtain and behold. This was perhaps exacerbated by the childhood my siblings and I had, growing up in a small village just outside of the city of Accra, Ghana, West Africa. It was vibrant and simple and bereft of the many norms of childhood of that time (at least of the British childhood of friends and family that we had left behind and heard murmurs of) - television, parks, ice cream vans, Sindy dolls, Bagpuss and the Bay City Rollers (favourites of my sisters'), The Brady Bunch, Abba, red phone boxes and chopper bikes. We had none of these. Our exposure to this world came in small doses as relatives sent birthday gifts or when my cool Uncle would visit, my dad's younger brother. He was the one who introduced us to VHS and episode after episode of Dallas which he would bring over in his huge suitcases once a year, if we were lucky. He brought us Donna Summer, Michael Jackson, Musical Youth, Barbara Streisand on vinyl, The Godfather, Jaws, The Sound of Music. This was all so far from our world of 'reading books', 'going to market', 'fetching water', 'power cuts' and we savoured it like a last sweet. We escaped the heat of the African sun with tales by Enid Blyton of five children adventuring together, drinking ginger beer and eating neatly cut sandwiches. We saw and climbed mountains and saw wild animals when we entered the world of 'Look n Learn' magazines. We took on mystery diseases and attempted to find cures as we delved into my father's medical books that littered our home. We encountered love, of the strangest kind when we entered the world of the romance novel, my mother's books -  since she, at that time was 'a real reader'. All of this is to say, our world was full of imagined places that we longed one day to visit. It provided a feast of longing, of adventure, of nostalgia, of wanting to travel and explore other places, a desire to experience the world, to look, to see, to taste, to touch, to feel, to smell, to take in all the 'otherness' that reading allowed us to bare witness to.

When people ask, as they frequently do, why I don't let my kids have videogames or consoles, why I don't transmit television channels and simply watch bought dvds, this is what I think of. This. This childhood of mine. One of the earliest conversations that I had with my now husband, on one of the early dates during our courtship was about our similar experiences of childhood. It came with such relief that I didn't have to explain away the differences or justify the less usual, he too had experienced the same but different childhood. He too, naturally hovered between two worlds - the real and the imagined. The kind of worlds that are frequently explored by those that spend hours basking in literary travel, those whose parents had chosen the 'otherness' experience too. 

I have been reminded of these things very much so this week. My youngest son is not a 'real reader' by my family's definition since his dyslexia makes reading stamina a big challenge. He is however ' a real listener'. I believe I am too and always was even as a very young child (although my family did not bestow this act an accolade of its own.) A real listener, listens and takes it in. Allows it all to seep. A real listener doesn't need to be at the helm, it isn't about quantity or direction or pace or even acquisition but purely about being transported. About reflecting, about stopping and asking the reader questions, about thinking out loud. Reading aloud so frequently with my ten year old as I do, has transformed my relationship with books and with reading. I have made peace with identifying confessionally as a non- real reader. Reading with the eye is such a different sensory experience to reading with the ear. I can connect the dots now when I look at my hobbies and my creative journey: journaling using cassette recordings, preferring listening to audio books, making sound art as my major, singing and songwriting and being a vocalist, telling oral histories, performing oral narratives. 

I often wonder where my youngest son and fellow 'real listener' will journey to, which roads he will choose to take. I hope along the way he happens upon many 'real listeners' and is able to utter words of encouragement and the example of hope and adventure. I feel blessed to be amongst many 'real listeners' and many like minded 'non real readers' in the work that I do and it gives me such joy that I am able to say to others - 'There is more than one way to read a book. You can read with with every part of you and you can definitely read just with your ears, just like 'real listeners' do.'

Colouring Outside the Lines

When I gave birth to my second son it was a different experience. From the moment he was placed on my chest, I could literally feel the difference in weight. His older brother had weighed in at nine pounds and three ounces and so that size of baby felt familiar to me. Yet when this second boy of mine arrived and was placed on my chest, I was so aware of how light he seemed, so very little, my little puppy dog curled up into a six pound and eight ounce ball. He immediately reminded me of my childhood dog 'Sindy' (a high honour) whom I had held on my chest in much the same way when she too was very young, whom I instantly fell in love with and who changed my life forever. Much like this second son of mine.

I have often said of this boy, that he is my 'out of the box thinker', never one to follow the crowd or to want to please the crowd even but neither a rebel nor an 'outsider' either but definitely 'Marmite', you love him or hate him! That may sound harsh but I mean it in the best possible sense, it is hugely reflective of his temperament. Some might call his 'energetic', 'hyper', 'spirited', 'fidgety' and really all of those descriptions apply and whilst I realise they could and do apply to any child, I am speaking specifically about him. 

I often find myself saying 'I don't worry about him, he's one of those people that will land on his feet, he'll be alright, his head is switched on, he's savvy and wonderful, creative and interesting, a great problem solver, practical and brilliant'. But I also know that as he's getting older there are some challenges to face,  ones that I remember mentioning here when he was younger when we first began to suspect he, like his father, was dyslexic or as the jargon goes ' had some 'learning difficulty'. I have also known that there is often a loss of confidence that follows as children grow older and become more aware of differences. I hoped that it wouldn't happen but I definitely have seen it emerging over the last twelve months. It is subtle but mean, it can be both brushed under the carpet and almost forgotten or can whimper loudly before burying itself with hardly a trace of the sadness. My mother heart breaks with it and wants to roar loudly, especially to protect my boy from those who should know better, from those that don't see him and all the potential, from those that just see a boy colouring outside the lines. 

Tonight on our walk home from the childminder, as he talked about his day he described some of his frustration and he we talked things through. I got on with making lunches for the next day, then cooked dinner and then whilst my husband cleared the kitchen and the eldest boy was in the shower, there was a window. This youngest boy was playing at the dinner table with his beloved lego, with characters he's been role playing with for days and I was suddenly hit by a wave of nostalgia thinking of the hours and hours I spent playing with various toys and characters with both of the boys over the years. Back in the days of full time mummying, when there was enough time and time had a different rhythm. 

So we played, not for a long time but for long enough for me to hear his deep belly laughs. Long enough for me to stroke his face and cup his chin with one hand and tell him how precious he is, long enough for me to get competitive and start to use language like 'I will destroy you with my laser carving weapon ha ha ha ha!!!'. Long enough to leave behind the debris of the day and to see him, in his full scribbly lined garb and it was great. Parenting is hard and wonderful and exhilarating and exhausting and all kinds of crazy brilliance and heartbreak, it's tough to get it right and to sustain getting it right and many days, I fail, miserably. However, tonight, it's one point to mama, for remembering to take photos to capture a moment, even when the broken ironing board is still up and there's washing on the radiator and mess in said pictures, for remembering that play is so important and can heal cuts that sometimes words fail to heal, and for remembering that a little distraction and a little love go a long, long way. I won't worry about this second son of mine, he'll be just fine, he'll colour and brighten up this world and I hope he never, ever, learns to colour inside the lines.

This post has been written with his permission ... kind of, although I may had said more that I intended to.