Sometimes a simple sentence can make you gulp back tears and
realize how lucky you've been.
I received the following note from the Hamilton Literacy
Council re the donation of sales revenue from the launch of The Artful Goddaughter mob caper:
"As I write this note to thank you...I am reminded of
the dream of some of our clients that they will one day be able to write a note
of their own."
The Hamilton Literacy Council is my charity of choice. I first came across them when I worked in
health care at an urban hospital. We had
an Out of the Cold program that treated
homeless people with health problems, and provided people with blankets and extra
clothing to keep them warm on the streets.
Warm on the streets…I
should mention here that I live south of Toronto in Canada, where we have winter
for four months of the year. Real
winter. This year we have had 38 days
in a row below freezing.
I won’t describe the health problems suffered by people who
live day and night on the streets, under bridges, and in bus shelters. That is a topic for an even more serious
post.
The person I am thinking of now is a woman I met during that
time. She was middle-aged, which at the
time I thought was forty-five. (My guideline
has changed since then.) We gave her
care, for which she was grateful. And
for that care, we required her signature on a piece of paper, in order to
please our sponsors.
She stalled. We
pressed again, in plainer English, in case it was her second language. It wasn’t.
We were baffled. She looked away and then she told us. She couldn’t write her name.
It’s an odd thing.
When I think of someone being illiterate, I think of them not being able
to read books and newspapers. It wasn’t
until this moment that it dawned on me that being illiterate also meant not
being able to write.
At SleuthSayers, many of us make at least part of our income
from writing fiction tales. We produce
reams of manuscript pages, year after year. We may labour over the perfect sentence. We grumble when editors try to change our
words. We joke (at least I do) about putting
a mob hit on said editors, or at the very least, killing them off in our next
book.
Writing is my therapy.
Reading is my escape from the real world. I can’t imagine enduring the calamities of life
without that escape. And I don’t live
under bridges or in bus shelters.
Next year, I will have a book launch again, and I will
donate the sales from that launch to the literacy council. It’s so little to do, when compared to those
who actually volunteer as tutors. I will
continue to write books that are easy to read, and hopefully, entertaining for
those who are acquiring the skill of reading.
Learning to read as an adult takes concentration, determination,
and immense courage. I think, perhaps,
that no one understands the value of the written word more than those who have
struggled to master it.
This is my salute to the men and women who dream of writing
a note of their own.
The Artful Goddaughter on Amazon
www.melodiecampbell.com
