a gift
I remembered when I was young my dad would do small things that seem so insignificant at the time, but they were pebbles thrown into the lake that rippled through my entire life. To this day my dad's action still 'ripple' into my life.
One gift he gave was the gift of reading: my dad didn't have a budget to buy anything we wanted as children, but whatever resources he saw he would avail himself to it. One such thing was books. At the school where he was custodial manager he would collect books that the school would throw away and he would bring them back to the house.
Bring them back he would: boxes of them!
As a child there was no greater experience then perusing the books with different pictures and stories. It was a world at our feet for my sisters and I. I read about Abraham Lincoln to George Washington Carver to Curious George. This path and my dad's example of always reading his newspaper and a cup of coffee set me on a foundation of reading. My sister is an English teacher with an M.A. all in literary and education. I am now in communications existing in a world where I must read all the time.
Reading kept me out of trouble, expanded my mind and made me a life-long reader.
My dad didn't think much of it: there were free books and he scooped it up for his children. In turn he gave a priceless gift of life-long learning and the love of reading.
I doubt if my dad would ever consider how this simple act would have resulted in the ramifications it did.
Thanks dad.