Kate hasn’t read any books or periodicals in years, but once in a while she picks up a book at home and puts it near her chair in our bedroom or near a chair or sofa in our family room. Although I’ve never seen her look at them, I assume she must have taken a glance before taking them off a shelf and setting them aside to be read “later.” She has taken particular interest in books that were from book shelves in her parents’ home.
This morning before going to Panera, she brought a book to the kitchen and said she wanted to take it with her. (She wasn’t just informing me; she was asking if that would be all right.) I told her that would be fine. When we got to Panera, she left the book in the car.
I had left a cup at Barnes & Noble yesterday afternoon. After lunch, I told Kate I would like to drop by B&N to see if it had been turned in. She was fine with that. I parked the car in the lot in front of the store and told her she could come in with me or sit in the car. She said she would like to remain in the car. When I returned, she was looking at the book. It was entitled Bird Life in Wington. She told me it was fascinating and wanted to read a passage to me. Her eyesight (from cataracts and her Alzheimer’s) make reading nearly impossible. She struggled, but didn’t read to me. She just leafed through the book and, periodically, would stop and attempt to read. I don’t know much about the book. From what I could see and what little she could read, it is a novel about a fictitious town called Wington in which all the characters are birds.
As she was perusing the book, I noticed her mother’s handwriting on one of the pages. I pointed this out to her. She was touched by that and pulled the open book to her chest. She was so taken with the book at that point that she didn’t want me to drive away; so we sat in the car 5-10 minutes as she skimmed through the book, stopping periodically when something on a page caught her attention. As she did this, I pointed out other places where her mother had written something. Although I don’t believe she understood much about what she was reading, she was thrilled with the book. It was a thrill for me to see her get so much pleasure from this discovery. I told her it looked like it might be a book that her mother had used in her Sunday school class she taught for so many years. It appeared that each chapter may have focused on a particular moral lesson. Of one thing I am sure. This was a special moment for Kate and, thus, for me.
