Meeting the Doe

The first word I ever looked up in a dictionary was - doe.
Don't know why this memory has stuck around. It was aeons ago, and I was 6 or 7. Don't exactly remember where I had read the word, yet a faint memory says it was some poem. But I can vividly recall the settings.

It was last room on the left of the corridor, with a big window facing the kitchen garden, and there was a pretty but small tree of pomegranate outside. Have spent hours just staring at the bright orange-red flowers of pomegranate. Our tree was too young to bear fruits. It hadn't even attained its full height.

And there I was on a bright sunny day of May or June.

The window sill used to be my favourite place to sit. I would just pull up the curtains, to get that private space, and sit and read on the sill for hours. Have read a lot of stories and novels sitting there year after year. Sometimes would even sleep off there, in the afternoon sun.
Once my parents went around looking for me all over the house and the garden and the backyard, when I was actaully dreaming away behind a closed curtain on the window sill of the drawing room. Lemme tell u it was a really broad sill, an adult could easily sit or stretch with some adjustments.

I used to stack all my story books there, what a convenient place!!

Getting back to "doe" - it was the first time my Mom taught me how to use a dictionary. How is it arranged and how does one read and understand one. I still have that big blue Oxford dictionary stacked away back home. And the page with "doe" folded around the corner.
Many times when flipping across the dictionary for various words, I have just out of curiosity opened up the doe-page and re-read the meaning over.

Aren't they a marvel with those beautiful eyes. Indeed are one of my favourite animals.