“As I learned each new word in braille, the doors to reading opened before me.”
When I was four years old I learned all the letters of the print alphabet by studying a set of engraved blocks in my toy box. I was thrilled by this achievement and couldn't wait to start school, where I would put my knowledge to use and learn to read real books.
By "real books" I had in mind those wonderful storybooks that my parents read to me at bedtime, and naptime, and any other time I could persuade them to hold still. I was convinced that school would unlock the mysteries of those flat pages, and at last I would be able to read like everyone else.
One day my mother showed me a stiff sheet of paper covered with clusters of dots. She told me this was braille, and explained that I would learn to read braille at school. I still remember my disappointment. Those weird little bumps had nothing to do with books, I thought -- not with the books I wanted to read.
But when I started school, attending a resource room for blind children, I made a glorious discovery.
As I learned each new word in braille, the doors to reading opened before me. Soon I was reading real books, losing myself to the magic worlds that lay within their pages. Not only could I read, but I could write my own thoughts and imaginings. As the years passed I filled endless notebooks with stories and half-finished novels.
More than thirty years after my mother showed me a sample of braille for the first time, I sat on the floor reading a picture book to my four-year-old daughter Janna. Her hands followed mine along the braille lines while her eyes drank in the colorful illustrations. "When I go to school I'm going to learn braille," she told me happily. "Then I can read just like you." I remembered my long-ago disappointment when I realized that I would not be taught to read the flat pages my mother understood with such ease. I remembered my joy as I devoured my first braille storybooks and knew that I could read all by myself. "You'll learn to read print," I told Janna. "And you WILL be reading, just like I do."
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