in your youth and naiveté, have overlooked.
The greatest gift you can give another human being is that of teaching them to read and write. My husband and I adored teaching all of our children. We also thoroughly enjoyed reading a bed time story too - complete with silly voices and funny faces, and when time or our jobs did not permit us to do so, there were a plethora of cassette tapes (oops - that’s just given my age away!) and audio CDs to accompany books once the routine was established.
I was given a wonderful gift of a Kindle at Christmas two years ago by my youngest daughter, and I wept like a baby, for many reasons; the fact that it was such an expensive gift from a newly-qualified graduate, the relief that I never have to be without a favoured volume, and that my shoulders will no longer ache from toting heaps of books around. But most of all tears of joy, because she knew just how much reading means to me.
“The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Geraldine Walsh-Whiteside is married with a beautiful family and a penchant for scribbling poems and short stories. She devotes more time to writing now her children are grown. This is her first published piece.
Ryan Medlock