Hours spent close, sounding out each letter one by one.
The letters slowly blend and become words.
Words follow one another and become stories.
Stories both older sisters sounded out in earlier years.
Stories they heard her work out as they worked out their own assignments, cheering her on one story at a time.
Early the morning of her last lesson, she was the first of my girls to wake. I asked if she wanted to slip downstairs and cuddle as she read her final lesson of her reading book. She had been counting down the lessons. She surprised me with her hushed hesitant answer,
"No, I don't want them to be over."
Oh baby, this may be the final story in this book but there are so many more that just wait to take you on grand adventures. We'll still sit close and read them instead of letter by letter we'll read page by page, then chapter by chapter, adventure after adventure.
