The language

 
The summer after I finished kindergarten, I read Little House in the Big Woods. That's my go-to reading anecdote, and it has been relevant in a surprising number of conversations in my life.

*Oliver and I discuss our childhood educations* - "You started school when you were 7? You didn't read until you were 8? I read Little House in the Big Woods the summer after kindergarten!"

*Discussing lifelong love of reading with friends* - "I can remember the first "real" book I read; Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods."

It's a tiny detail I look back on fairly often. Sitting in the family van on a long vacation road trip, nothing to do for hours and hours... I can picture the seat reclined back, and remember my mounting excitement as I realized "Yes! I am doing this!" A switch was flipping and a whole new world was opening up for me.

It's such a good feeling, that switch flipping.

I've got a bit of that going on right now, actually. I'm 150 pages into Eat, Pray, Love. It's an honest-to-goodness grownup book, and it's in German. I am reading a real book in German. I don't understand every word, but I am in it 100% and giddy at how much I can do. Yes! I am doing this! Is this what it was like back on that road trip? Did I miss words in every paragraph, but piece it all together and teach myself new things out of nothing but my own excitement?

I had this glorious moment somewhere around page 100. Liz and her boyfriend had been having problems, and the third paragraph on the page opened with her boyfriend proposing a "crazy idea." What? What was this crazy idea? I wanted to know, but only got half of it on the first pass. Okay, so read it again. And again. And again. What's this word, "miteinander?" Hm... Liz and her partner weren't sleeping "miteinander" anymore...

Wait.

mit = with
ein = one
ander = other / (another?)

With one another! With one another! They weren't sleeping with each other anymore! High five.

Wait. There are so many other words...

Ineinander (Intertwining one another)
Hintereinander (behind one another)
Voneinander (from one another)

I am a long way from fluent, but where I am right now is fun. I know enough to start making all sorts of connections, and that excitement can only inspire me to do more, right? Maybe soon a whole new world will open up? Feels like it's close.