Daily Writing Challenge

F-5

I remember being a tiny little girl and being fascinated with books, even before I could read. I was an early reader so we're talking really young. I thought that they were magical, somehow my mother could stare at those squiggly lines and decipher the nicest stories, the same story every time we read the book. I would follow along as she would run her fingertip below the words as she read. They slowly began to make sense to me especially once the ABCs made sense. The letters were sounds and the sounds added up to words. A lot of the short words I just knew. The longer words taught me to sound it out. The first book I read myself was The Little Engine That Could my mother had read it to me and a part of how I read it was memorization. But a lot of it was following the words with my fingers. From that book I read others by recognizing the simple words and sounding out the others. My mom had such a large collection of little golden books and I read them all. I was so proud when she told me they were mine to keep. I wish I still had them. I lost them when I moved to Lincoln I left them in my house in Stratton. I thought I would go back but I had to give up that bought and paid for house to remain in Lincoln to support my dying mother. I am a little bitter that my sister got it all handed to her for free and now I have seven more years on my mortgage here to get to what I lost in Stratton.