“My father only let me finish fifth grade and after that he beat me if he found me reading.” Those are the words of an elderly Italian woman in Wallis Wilde-Menozzi’s memoir Mother Tongue.
Can you imagine? I’ve been reprimanded for reading when I should have been doing something else (cleaning my room or going to sleep). But to be forbidden to read at all! To be punished for acquiring knowledge, or for traveling to faraway places though you haven’t stepped beyond the front door, or for vicariously enjoying a character’s pleasures and lifestyle that you’ll never experience otherwise.
Employed or not, most of us have freedoms we often fail to recognize. The simple act of reading Lull is but one example.
Today I’m grateful for the freedom to read, the skills to comprehend a written language, and the eyesight necessary to enable both.
[Art: A Girl Reading, by Frank Duveneck]
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