The loss of a joy – a lesson could be learned

Traveling half the world and landing on the other side of the Earth opposite to China put my English skills that I have learned in my previous life into a test. After a disappointed discovery of not much to show for the hard work from past one and half decade, I managed to make myself a babysitter to an eight-month-old boy and his seven-year-old sister. Chatting to the girl and conversing with the stay-at-home mom improved my English just as much as I talked to the baby boy. And then my son came to join his small family at the age of still wanting to be read bedtime stories. The urgency of reading him those fancy stories inside the books, that were covered with colorful cartoon figures and he had picked out from the library bookshelves, challenged my ability of improving my second language.

After a few tries reading to him at his repeated begging, I talked myself out of the responsibility by convincing him the benefit of reading them himself and the would-be damage resulted from my strong accented broken English. Each time after closing his bedroom door behind me, I would find new excuses to heap to the growing lump of guilt.

Now he has grown up and into a fine young man, sailing out to search for his own destination, as I am finally equipped with the satisfaction of being able to maneuver my second tongue after a long process of struggling with it.

However, the joy of bedtime stories had slipped away and strode past us long before the alarm of loss jolted me to my senses that why I had not let him read to me instead or why I had not planned ahead to practice the reading or translator the stories into Chinese.