I learned to read at 52, sitting next to my grandson

I never went to school. My father didn’t believe girls needed to. For fifty-two years I signed my name with a thumbprint and let other people read my letters to me.

Then my grandson started first grade, and I started sitting next to him every evening while he did his homework, pretending I was just keeping him company. I wasn’t. I was learning the alphabet at the same time he was, matching sounds to shapes, one page behind him every single night.

It took two years before I could read a newspaper on my own. I still remember the first headline I read without anyone’s help. It wasn’t important news. It didn’t matter what it said. What mattered was that, for the first time in my life, nobody had to read it to me.