What is the role of literacy in my life? How and why do I value literacy? What role do I play in literacy? As an educator, I am given the opportunity to bring books to life for children and to guide my students to more doors in life. Without literacy one’s options and doors to walk through in life become limited. We need literacy to explore math, science, social studies and everyday aspects of life. Through an innate desire and guidance from my teachers, I have a love for literacy.
I remember sitting in on parent-teacher conferences when I was either in kindergarten or first grade and hearing my teacher tell my parents that I was “reading.” Back then, the books that I had come to memorize were short stories that contained short sentences such as “Gus rides the bus” and others of this rhyming and repetitive nature. Regardless, I remember beaming with pride at my teacher’s comment.
That year I also remember my teacher asking me and my parents if it would be alright to allow me to go to the second grade classroom for my reading instruction. This, too, was a moment of pride. It was uncomfortable at first to go into a room full of older children whom all new each other, but knowing that I was being challenged and that my advanced skills were being noticed was such an empowering feeling. I truly believe that the encouragement and positive response I received from the adults in my life contributed to my success with reading and writing.
Fifth grade is also a year that stands out to me when I think of my literacy experiences. I cannot recall if it was a read aloud, book of my choice, or required reading, but it was then that I read Island of the Blue Dolphins. I remember feeling so connected with the main character-- she was a young girl of strength, beauty, and independence. The author made it very easy for me to paint the story in my mind-- the cliffs, the indigenous lifestyle, and the dolphins. Fifth grade was also the year that our school held poetry contests, and I remember receiving recognition for a Thanksgiving poem that I had written. For the remainder of the year, I continued to write poems. Eventually, I came across an opportunity to submit a poem to The National Library of Poetry. My parents were excited for me and reluctant to pay the fifty-dollar fee to have my poem published in a nice leather-bound book, but seeing my great desires, they paid the fee and I received my book of which I still have! I remember my aunt and father being so proud of me. I can still recite each word to that poem to this day. My aunt and I have toyed with the idea of making it into a book and using her artistic skills for the illustrations.
In middle school I clearly remember both my seventh and eighth grade Language Arts teachers appreciating my writing and we were given many opportunities to produce work. I loved creating characters and I loved making paper come to life through words. I feel like this was when I was first given the opportunity to really create stories for an audience. Thankfully, I had teachers who praised my writing and kept me inspired.
When I entered high school I was placed in Honors English. I loved the challenge, but being with so many other peers that were much more advanced than me, I felt rather incompetent and chose not to on to go on to AP English. I think I could have succeeded in AP English academically, but there was a social level that I never felt worthy of inclusion. Most of the AP students came from nuclear-based families, both of their parents were college-educated, and they all held a higher socio-economic status than my family. I do wonder how my educational path would have been different if I stuck with AP English, but I am very content with where my life has taken me thus far. Nonetheless, I find it interesting and disheartening that I was intimidated to take an advanced course due to not fitting in with the other AP students.
I went on to complete my undergrad at the University of Alaska Anchorage where I continued to receive positive feedback from my instructors regarding my writing. One of my favorite courses was Oral Communications where I was given the challenge of writing speeches and presenting them to my peers. Nearly all of my life, I have had a desire to speak publicly and this course just made the spark come alive even more! The power of captivating an audience with your words, your life, and your enthusiasm is truly exhilarating to me. We all have so much to share, we each have a story to tell, and it is through the power of words that we can do so.
On New Year’s Day 2005, during the middle of my sophomore year in college, I lost my dad to Hepatitis C. This is when my value of literacy took on an even greater role in my life. My dad was a man of very few possessions. He had rips in his windbreaker pants, holes in his worn-out shoes, and t-shirts that could hardly cover his belly. He picked cigarette butts off of the ground and would smoke the last bit of those because he couldn’t afford his own, but still had the addiction. On our visits with him we drank a lot of Tang and ate a lot of Cream of Wheat. When my dad passed away he was living in a shack that was about the area of two loveseats put together. It wasn’t insulated and he had a floor heater plugged in as a heating source. In front of him were boxes of his medical records from his many hospital visits during his lifetime, and all of his food from the food bank. Worst and best of all, our dad was surrounded by photos and letters from us girls (my sisters and me) that we had sent him over the years. They dated as far back as my early elementary days!
You must know, I wasn’t raised with my dad. My mom left him when I was around three years of age. He wasn’t able to hold a job so there wasn’t a custody battle-- Dad just didn’t quite have things figured out yet. With my dad living in Fairbanks and my mom living in Anchorage, it was rare that I saw my dad in my elementary days. So, we wrote letters. We always ended them with, “Remember, if I don’t see you here on Earth, I will see you in Heaven.” I have a hard time remembering why I first wrote this, but I started one time and then never left a letter without it again. It all seems kind of ironic with the way things ended.
I also remember there were days that my family would come home from an outing and would find a piece of torn paper on the door with a scribbled note that would say something along the lines of, “Sorry I missed you. Daddy loves you.” Those were the most difficult letters to receive. I was Daddy’s girl and, being so young, I didn’t understand things the way my sisters did. I just wanted my daddy and it broke my heart knowing that we had missed seeing each other.
Fast forward to a few days after my dad’s passing and my ex-husband and I were cleaning out the shack that my dad had been living in during his last days. It was so sad and so beautiful to find all of the letters that we had written him. Not only were there letters from us, but there was even an audiotape that I had had made for him when I got my new karaoke machine back in the fifth grade. I told him who my best friends were, the books I was reading, what we were doing in each subject, and I read him all of my poems. Playing this tape a decade later, as an adult at my father’s deathbed, brought so many tears and even a little laughter. Though he made mistakes and didn’t quite have his priorities figured out, my sisters and I really were his world. He cherished us in his heart in a great, big way-- just as a father should. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to experience his love in full capacity.
As my ex-husband and I went through Dad's few belongings, we also looked through his medical records. They were such a mess, but there they were, surprisingly. There were quite a few different doctors’ names, many different little orange-brownish medicine bottles, and several different reports of hospital visits. Ever since I could remember, my had had been “sick.” I put that in quotation marks because I don’t know the different reasons why he was sick, but there always seemed to be something. To this day, I actually hate seeing those orange-brownish medicine bottles in abundance-- they literally make me feel ill. Anyhow, it was really interesting to sit down and go though all of the medical paperwork and try to piece together who David Nelson was and what his life had been like in and out of the hospital. Was he addicted to prescription meds? Were his doctors giving him more than he needed? Were his doctors doing enough? Did he have a social or mental disorder? Had doctors really told him that his body was free from Hepatitis C? There were so many questions, and each medical record just created new ones. At some point, we had to stop looking and to stop trying to understand. He was gone and the records only brought pain and left a lot of unanswered questions. Who was our dad and what was his life like?
I must take a deep breath here because this is the first time that I have shared this part of my life with others, in writing. It is also my first time realizing how much literacy was involved in my relationship with my dad (the letters, the audiotape, his medical records, etc). As I stated before, my dad was not a man of many possessions. He didn’t have a car, money in a bank account, or even a home that he rented. What am I getting at with all of this? Well, in that terrible little shack where my dad was found, amongst all of the letters and pictures we had sent him through the years, there were also letters to us girls. They were letters that had never been sent-- they were almost like journal entries, but they were all addressed to us: Lisa, Tina, and Misty. Not a single letter had a date on it. We don’t know if they were written the day he died, the day he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, the day he was told he had a brain tumor, or even some random day in our younger years. We have no idea, but that doesn’t matter. Not for one second did I wish for any reason that I knew the dates of those letters. There was no reason to know. The words in his letters were all we needed. He wrote things like, “Tell your mom she did a good job raising you girls. Daddy doesn’t know why he has to go, but I have fought the good fight. I am so proud of you girls.” He always told us that—that he was proud of us. And he always told us he loved us. Of all the things that my dad could have left us, those letters were the greatest, the most treasured, and the most valuable.
So, when you ask for my personal narrative on literacy, I cannot help but share this story. Those letters are a huge part of my life. I don’t know that I would have had the peace, the love and faith, and the closure that I got if I hadn’t had those letters. It has been at least a few years since I took out those letters and read them, and I will again one day, but there is a lot of emotion that comes with reading those special letters and I have to be ready for it when I do.
Today, my life consists of reading books for professional development, reading books that have been turned into movies (a nice little incentive), Facebooking, journaling, blogging, and sharing my love of literacy with young children. When I moved to rural Alaska, I started a blog about my adventures here. Blogging is such a great way to keep in touch with family and friends and to share quick thoughts and photos. This past fall, I started another blog. This one is called Letters to Dad (luvlittlelittle.blogspot.com). After all of these years of not writing to him, I finally have the courage to write again even though I know he won’t be writing back.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my literacy narrative. This is the first time that I have put these words to paper, and it was a truly emotional experience. More importantly, it needed to be written because without writing our stories down, they can get lost or forgotten. Quyana.
