Member-only story
Much of my life has been spent in fleeing uncomfortable situations, relationships, and places. The idea of flight, moving, traveling is a theme that girds my years. I traveled to survive, to escape, to see different horizons, to keep a promise.
The first type of flight was paper and printed word bound together in pages stitched together with glue. In short, a book. I was an early reader or so I thought. At five I was reading on my own and English words that seemed a bit odd went unchecked in pronunciation as I wasn’t reading them aloud. This led to an embarrassing moment when I pointed to a photograph of an island and told my mother that it was a beautiful ees-land. The book was easy to carry, always within reach and filled with people, places, things that carried me far away. Reading was valued in my family. No one checked my books and they all admired how reassuringly quiet and obedient I was while chaos, sometimes thunderous, surrounded me. My parents arguing or my father raging at somebody was relieved that I showed little emotion except to tiptoe around the battlefield, so to speak.
