the mother

She learned to read when she was four, before kindergarten. Her mother taught her. She remembers sitting down with a beginner’s reader, a Dick and Jane book. She was surprising herself by reading, and then the word “Mother” came along. She thought that was much too long a word and that she’d never be able to decipher it.

But she did decipher it, otherwise she would only have the memory of encountering an undecipherable word.