I’m writing from my daughter’s ninth birthday party.

We’re at the Russellville Aquatic Center. As the kids splash in the shallow end, I try to think back to when I was the same age as my daughter is today.

Nine full years of life, the entirety of my oldest child’s existence, is now a mere fraction — a fourth — of the days I’ve spent on earth. Old Albert was right; time is relative, but I can still remember third grade. A big year for me.

I failed my first test, a timed multiplication test. I had my first “girlfriend.” I got in a fight on the playground, got my lip busted, my nose bloodied, and went to see the principal.

My daughter’s yet to fail a test or take a trip to the principal’s office. To the best of my knowledge, there are no boyfriends. Not yet. But our ninth years do share one thing in common — a love of reading.

Buy Eli Cranor's books - #Commissions Earned

For me, this love started when I found the “Great Illustrated Classics” in the Dwight Elementary library. They were hardback, abridged editions of the best novels ever written with pictures on almost every page.

I read Herman Melville, Jules Verne, and Charles Dickens. I read every illustrated classic our little library had to offer, and then I sent my parents on the hunt for more.

Frankenstein was my favorite. Maybe it was because of the note at the beginning, a few short paragraphs about how Mary Shelley was only eighteen when she first penned the classic horror novel. Maybe reading that book at that age planted the seed of what would become my lifelong dream.

I’m not sure, but I do remember tearing through those pages, scared of the creature while also empathizing with his dreadfully painful existence. I remember telling people I’d read Frankenstein and Moby Dick and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I remember the looks on their faces when I proved it with details about Ishmael and Captain Nemo.

Over the last week, I’ve relived that experience, chapter by chapter. Through some stroke of internet magic, my wife found the exact same set of Great Illustrated Classics I read as a child.

Just seeing those covers brought back a flood of memories, but opening the books, poring over each page, marking my favorite lines, has been a completely different experience.

You see, this time around, I’m not annotating the book for me; I’m leaving a trail for my daughter, a path she can trace through my mind.

The Great Illustrated Classics are packed and wrapped in a big box I’ll give her tonight, after the pool party’s conclusion. The box is hiding in my office, under my desk, beneath shelves of books with notes scribbled in the margins, words I never imagined anyone else would read.

But if this birthday gift goes to plan, if it leads my daughter down the path less travelled, maybe, just maybe, I'll be wrong.