At dinner two nights ago, my adorable,, curmudgeonly father-in-law, Jabez MacLaughlin, talked with me about the importance of reading.  He opined that children whose parents read to them fare better in life: in school and in their work-place existences.  He spoke in emphatic tones about the need for children to both learn and use this fundamental skill.

And in that moment, I recalled how I learned to read.

At age 18 months, a disease deprived me of my ability to walk.  At the time, no one knew whether the condition would persist or what my ultimate state would be.  My father had many faults, but one good thing that I can say about him is that he took me under his wing in that moment and taught me to read. With  my small head next to his and my small hand on his, we traced the words of articles in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch evening after evening, week after week, until I could read to him, outloud, in my little-girl voice, the summer before I turned four.

My father was a poet and he came by his proclivity honestly. His father, John L. Corley had attended Notre Dame Law School and wrote poetry for the literary magazine there.  Both men had old and tortured souls, which made their poetry maudlin and their interpersonal relationships difficult.

I lost and found my way as a writer over the decades of my life.  But words never failed me; and the love of words cultivated by my father has never left me.   Whatever else my father did or didn’t do in his whole, sad life, he has two things to credit:  He was a hell of a grandfather, and he taught this Missouri Mugwump to read.