I have decided to bring a reading pillow into my life. Of course, no sooner do I write this than my editorial side asks, “When did they start making pillows that read?”

Not an entirely crazy question given the number of people who will, out loud and out of thin air it seems, ask someone named Siri or someone else named Alexa (I’ve never met either one) for advice, and they answer! My point is, any notion that they’d make a pillow that could read (To who, me?) would not make me topple over in surprise.

I’m talking about a reading back-pillow for reading in bed, with a nice size back, arms, sometimes a pillow attached to the top. With a reading pillow like this I can kick back with a large, lovely, hardcover book and feast away on words. And, it’s those large lovely hardcover books that made it clear a reading pillow was, well, a must.

Hardcover books are the very reason I’ve decided to bring a reading pillow into my life. I’m 70. If I’m lying in bed, my head propped up on a pillow or two, holding a large hardcover book high enough so I can read it is simply not comfortable anymore. Too heavy and awkward.

No doubt aging plays a role in this and while I understand aging is an unstoppable process, I’ll be damned if I’ll let it rob me of reading a hardcover book in bed at day’s end. Aging doesn’t deserve that kind of decision-making power.

Oh! One more thing. As real as aging is, it can’t read. Aging is illiterate.