Reading, for me, is entertainment and an escape from the real world. But it can also inform and stretch the boundaries of the life I live.
He amused me. I could not and and did not consider him a person. A real person. He was my baby, rather like a pretty living doll that belonged to me. I was myself too young and unformed a human being to think of him as a human being. I loved him. He was cute. He laughed a lot and gurgled and he was mine.