MargenMy father went blind the year I learned to read. So we learned together: I learned the letters; he learned another way of touching them.
Every night I sat beside him and read aloud, while his fingers ran over the same page as mine, one line behind, like someone following you without meaning to catch up.
He died in spring. On his bedside table I found a book I had never read to him. I opened it looking for a message, a goodbye, something.
There was nothing written. Only the soft print of his fingers wearing the paper thin, page after page, to the end. He had wanted to read it alone, in the dark, without troubling me. I ran my hand over it, slowly, and for the first time I understood what he had been reading all those years: not the words, but the warmth of having me near.