She reads.

The child reads.

And I am there inside each letter, curled up in a ball inside every vowel and hoping to leap out and surprise her with how it sounds.

Like when I surprised her with those "Frozen" jammies that she had been asking and asking about by just casually laying them on her bed, where she would find them that night. She exploded with joy upon finding them and wore them night after night, even after they got toothpaste all over them. Even when they were quite a bit too big.

Or like when I surprised her by taking her to the windiest part of the city, where the apartment buildings are exceptionally tall and the climate seems to change out of nowhere. And there's a fountain. And lots of flowers. And deep grass. And that trip in the stroller seemed to last ages until she knew where we were and she was exuberant to get out and run and feel free in this new place only 12 blocks from our house.

But to surprise her with the word is to ruin the surprise.

Who knows where the instinct came from. From being a teacher? From being a reader? From wanting the challenge—"Don't tell me! Let me guess!"

I don't give away the surprise. She looks to me for the answer to the word beyond the first letter. p-l-a-t-e. She knows that's a P. She knows the "P" sound. But "pl" is trickier. It doesn't unfold right away, and she looks up from the word and searches my face.

All I give her is my wide eyes and my willing her to know it. Maybe I press my lips together…ever so slightly. A teeny hint.

I remind her to look at the word, at the letters. "You know these sounds," I tell her. And she achingly annunciates each individual sound like it's a boxcar on a train of sounds. And she cannot find the seamless link between those cars. And I can feel her lack of comprehension. It feels like static would feel if we could feel it.

She looks to me again. Shrugs her shoulders. "Look at the letters," I say. And then I bring in a gush of memories from my own emergent literacy years—the context clues. They don't age. They are keys to comprehension. And with a few words of my own—"What's he doing in the picture?" I feel her realization. It feels like sunshine. "Plate!" she exclaims. With big eyes. And roses in her cheeks. And a vast smile that I have to reflect back at her. Who could help it?

And we move on to the next word.