We read to know we're not alone. (C.S. Lewis)

Something peculiar my mother did for a long as I can remember was read to my father. When I was a baby, a toddler, a child, it was sweet how I would sit between my parents in their bed and my mother would read and my father would hold me and listen intently.

When I was a little older, ten maybe, I walked by my parent’s bedroom and behind the closed door, under the low glow of her bedside lamp, my mother read to my father. I sat outside their door and listened. Her voice was muffled as it filtered through the sealed bedroom but I could make out the story. There was something beautiful about it, as strange as it seemed. My father was like a child in the way my mother treated him and cared for him. I fell asleep outside their door and slept there on the hardwood floor until my father left the room in the middle of the night after my mother had fallen asleep. He scooped me up and tucked me into their bed beside my mother. He paused in the doorway and returned to the bed. He climbed onto the edge of the bed and watched us, I know because when I stirred in the night between the warm bodies of my nearby parents, my eyes creaked open and there he was: wide awake watching.

“Shh,” he whispered with his index finger to his lips, “go back to sleep, Honey.”

I rolled over and fell back asleep instantly. He was proud that we were his family. It’s a comforting feeling to know your parents are proud of you before you even do anything to earn it. It didn’t slow my drive though. I kept learning, dreaming, reaching.