A Memory

Apparently some people think reading aloud to each other is oafy. (See previous post.) But I disagree. When my husband and I were young missionaries in the Solomon Islands, we often read out loud to each other for entertainment. Of course, at that time we had no electricity, and only one hurricane lamp, so there was only enough light for one person to read! Ah, the memories of sweating under that mosquito net, listening to The Princess and Curdy. That's lots better than listening to the buzz of mosquitoes trying to get into your cube of protection.

That reminds me once of checking on my sleeping babies. I remember being so personally mad at a given mosquito--how dare she suck the blood from, and deposit falciparum into, my precious child's arm as he lie there asleep with his arm pushed up against the mosquito net? The proboscis on that anopheles was long enough to push through the netting into my child. I don't know why, but somehow that vision is still a fresh memory, though that child is now about the same age I was at the time.

Sometimes I still read aloud to Gary, but now it is because sometimes it is faster for me to read soemthing to him than for him to use the technology he needs to read to himself (very strong glasses, closed circuit TV, big computer montior, special text-to-speech software, etc.).