The Girl...

She's just not a reader.  That's the statement we've lived with for the past few years.  She doesn't want to yet, she simple doesn't care.  Unfortunately, this isn't acceptable at a grade school level and so she's been getting extra help, we've been working with her on the basics and still, she doesn't care.  Or is that, didn't?  Picking up a book this weekend, a book from my childhood carried from tiny apartments to tiny house.  A book I had been saving for my future reader, she sat down and read.  She read in the evening.  She read in the morning.  She read when we got home from church and she read every time she sat to rest from her play.  She read at commercial breaks and she read long after the sun went down.  Hard words, stuck on the tip of her tongue.  Foreign words flowing off cherub lips.  Words holding clues to another world of mystery and intrigue.  Not monosyllabic fluff and filler but real words, ones that take you to another place.  Transporting words.  Have we held her back in our baby steps?  Don't push them, let them be kids?  What if our kids aren't progressing because they crave something harder?  When are the baby steps simply left for babies?   We supposedly learn as adults that the difficult path is often the most rewarding.  I could see in my daughters eyes the thrilling invitation of this road not taken.  The girl once again, becomes the teacher.