The boy's father was blind. He met the boy's mother, or really, she met him when she was volunteering. They fell in love. Despite her family's crossed arms and shaking heads, they happily married. And they had a baby boy, healthy and sighted.
The boy grows up. His father reads to him every day, or really, every night. Even in the blackening darkness the boy is not afraid. His father reads on, page after page, braille after braille, into the inky blankness. The boy later says, this is how I imagined, through my father's voice. This is his love.
I wish I were the boy. To have a father like his.
Daddy never read to me. He was either away or too busy or sleeping in. But he always read on his own. Books on computer science, on economics, on English grammar, the Bible. When we were in Minnesota, I found the most creative book ever: Invisible Man. I wondered how you could see and be unseen at the same time. A childish curiosity. I asked him, can I read it? His answer, to my shock was: “Oh, that. That’ll be boring for you.” Of course I was dumbfounded. My favorite person in the world had just rejected the greatest proposal a child could make. So I did not read it. I later understood why he had said that, because Ellison was a mastermind and I was just a child then. But I wish daddy read to me nevertheless. I wish I had asked instead, can you read this for me? A children's book, an impression on a soap bar, a label on a milk carton.
I wish I were the boy. To be a fearless child.
So I thought this would be unrelated to literature, and I tried. But it is, it became to be.
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