The boy climbed onto the arm of his father’s chair. The man scooted over so the boy had a comfortable spot partly on him and partly on the chair’s arm.
Reading time. The boy held two school books. Short books. Children’s books about turtles learning life lessons and a boy who imagines the wildest things based on the stories a girl tells about the most common of things.
The boy read the stories well. Occasionally, the man had to point out a skipped word or two.
On a few occasions, the man would have to stop the boy from mispronouncing a word. Some of the boy’s pronunciations were tributes to the creativity of the human mind.
Having established the appropriate pronunciation, the boy would realize he already knew the word. It was already part of his spoken vocabulary and now he would recognize it on the page.
There is comfort in such rituals. It is why, for generations, parents have read to their children and, as their children learn to read, they read to their parents.
Comfort lies in the cadences of voices. Such readings calm the day’s troubles. They bring families together. It is why parents often read their children to sleep.
There is comfort there. Perhaps too much comfort.
At some point, usually deep within the pages of the boy’s second book, the mother would notice that the mispronounced words might go uncorrected. She would hear her son read with no word from the man.
She would walk into the room. There, she would find the boy reading from his place on his father’s chair. The man would be slumped over, in the comfort of his chair and in the company of his son, in the soothing place of his home, asleep.
That’s how the boy often came to read his father to sleep.
Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times assistant managing editor.
Dean Poling
Changing places
- Dean Poling
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Roosevelt Marshall
Roosevelt Marshall of Valdosta passed this life Dec. 14, 2010. Funeral services will be held at 3 p.m. at Union Cathedral with Bishop Wade S. McCrae, Pastor officiating. Burial will follow in Sunset Hill Cemetery. Final rites are entrusted to Harrington Funeral Home.
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Alice W. Johnson
Alice W. Johnson, 55, of Valdosta died on Monday, Oct. 11, 2010 at the Langdale Hospice House following a lengthy illness. Services for Alice W. Johnson will be held at 4 p.m. today, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010 in the chapel of the Carson McLane Funeral Home with the Rev. Jay Watkins officiating. The burial will follow in the Riverview Memorial Gardens. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Langdale Hospice 2263 Pineview Drive, Valdosta Ga. 31602 or to the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge, 2121 SW 16th Street Gainesville, Florida 32608. Condolences to the family may be conveyed online at www.mclanefuneralservices.com. — Carson McLane Funeral Home
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Independent radio station changes man’s life
After years in construction, Cody Fender left building structures from the ground up to building the kingdom of God out of thin air.
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Crofts launched Labor Day Gospel Sing
Given his involvement with the Labor Day Gospel Sing, many Valdostans probably think Brother Benny Daniels started the event which is now in its 22nd year.
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America’s Last Freak!
And so it came to pass that a traveling carnival re-instituted a long-lost American tradition: The freak show.
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A city of trees
Much will be written and said about the architecture of the new Lowndes County Judicial Complex.
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Talking to yourself on the phone
He was elbow-deep in the guts of a copying machine. No one else stood with him. And he was just talking away.
Not under his breath either. He talked like nobody’s business. -
Forget an overpass, 84 needs a leapover
A recent event could well hold the answers to resolving a long-term problem and teaching a new generation that just because something looks easy doesn’t mean it is.
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Sign of the voting times
Maybe we need a new way to elect our leaders.
Less than 18 percent of Lowndes County’s registered voters participated in Tuesday’s primary election. That sounds like a mandate of an apathetic populace that wants to do things differently. -
Wiregrass, um, Technical something or other
There’s nothing really wrong with the new technical school name of Wiregrass Georgia Technical College. But that’s quite a mouthful for folks used to calling its tech school the two-syllable Val-Tech.
- More Dean Poling Headlines
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Roosevelt Marshall
