Reading Aloud and What It Means to Me
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Arts Entertainment

A Thank You to My Little Sister for Letting Me Read Aloud

This one's for you, Olivia Ree; thanks for always listening to all of my terrible voices and frequent stumbling over words.

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Dear Olivia,

You know me, I'm not the most…eloquent human being that has ever lived. Nor, on some days, am I even able to coast at a nice average. Something about speaking, it's some kind of mystery, isn't it? In the wide world of writing, a few sharp jabs at a button labeled "delete" or several firmly scrubbed strokes of an eraser make finely-tuned writing not only possible but within reach! I can hide errors with a click on corrective red lines and run my words through processors, I can proof and rework and reexamine and rewrite and I'm rambling aren't I? What I mean is, polishing writing to the standard level is straightforward. Polishing speech, well…that's a different adventure entirely.

Confession time: I'm not quite sure of how to say all I want to say to you right now. I didn't really have a set direction I wanted this article to go when I set off on it - I just wanted to let you know that it means something beyond any words I could find or invent that you listen and you care. That when I pitched the idea of reading "Peter and the Starcatchers" to you, you jumped at the idea instead of brushing me aside which, by the way, you were fully within your rights to do. You heard and you cared and…and it's made a difference for me in ways I wasn't even expecting when I asked you about it. Here, I guess, are just a few.

You've helped me to find ways of capturing a sense of adventure.

Now we both know and have talked about the fact that no one on this earth measures up to Mom and the ways she can read. My goodness, that brilliant lady can make a change of inflection into an entirely new character with a personality so complex you could make them up a full life story based only on the way she speaks. I've tried to learn from the way she can bring so much joy and excitement and thrill into a person's world through translating ink on a page into sounds in the air, and I've certainly discovered that audience matters. When I glance out of the corner of my line of sight to see your eager eyes glimmering with an energized sparkle as you hypothesize about what the book has in store, I find that energy contagious. You seek the adventure in every word you hear and make the story entirely real for yourself, even if in just the moments you can hear it. It is that sense of adventure that lives in you which teaches me how to bring words and stories to life. You make the story more real in hearing than I ever could.

You've shown me that mistakes don't matter. It is the bigger picture that shines.

I'd ask you to count how many time I slipped up on a simple word or phrase, but I am fairly certain that the number would just make me said. But the point of this is not that! Those mistakes don't matter to you. You are tuned in for the story. I am finding, slowly but surely as you guide me, that the passion and the vigor that I can offer to making the story real far outweighs the mistakes I make along the way. I can't get bogged down in the little things - that wastes time that could be offered to the story. For the adventures that you deserve, little one, I know I need to make my telling worth the story. I can't do that if all I care about is how to pronounce the words correctly, can I?

You've made me realize how important just a little time can be.

Days can get busy no matter what time of year it is, huh? Event planning can jam schedules full of things I wasn't expecting, and more often than not I find myself just a little bit out of it. Out of life, not entirely tuned in, a bit asleep. But you, ya little ray of sunshine, you change things. Just a few minutes of reading time with you and I get to stop, take a breather, and connect more and more with one of my favorite people in the world. Time with you like this won't always be readily available, so while God is giving me the blessing of it, you best better believe I'm gonna take advantage of it. You make even a few minutes brighter just by being you, and you show me with each minute that passes how I shouldn't ever let life get in the way of being with people I love.

I know your life will be a story worth telling, little one. Thanks for letting me tell you a story in the meantime.

Love,

큰 언니 (Big Sister)

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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