It’s 4:48 in the afternoon and as I write this I have tears in my eyes.
I’m a sensitive soul, and for those of you who read that, you will not hear me admit to it often. On the TV in the background is a repeat episode of the Oprah show and on that show the audience was give $1000.00 to use as they saw fit so long as what they used it for was some type of paying it forward.
I happily watched as people shared the wealth with those less fortunate then themselves, helping parent of ill children be able to visit with them; I watched with joy as one woman presented another with money to start on the road to surgery to restore her smile after she’d been shot in the face by her at the time boyfriend.
Then the tears started to flow, I am sometimes awed at what makes me cry and I’ve long since stopped trying to figure it out. On my TV screen was a gentleman who at 83 years old learned to read. The $1000.00 was used to supply him with books of his very own. He learned to read by attending school for the first time in his life and was reading at a grade 1 level when the show was aired.
His utter joy, his immense thankfulness, his tears, they are exactly what triggered my own.
I think because of my love for the written word, I am deeply touched by those who find their joy through words on a page. I cried because I imagined his desire to read, for let’s face it, all of his life and finally in his twilight years he got his wish.
He conveyed how he was born a twin, but he never got the opportunity to go to school because his father fell ill and someone had to work. His twin however did get an education.
I imagined the torment of a mother having to make a choice like that and can’t imagine that I ever could.
I cried at his pride as he conveyed how his mother used to pray to God that one day he would learn to read and be able to have the education he was denied in his formative years and I cried because after 68 years he finally had been able to honor his mother’s wishes.
He could read …
HE
COULD
READ…
Those who know me well know the little secret that I have just shared with half of Delphi. I am a mush-ball, I am sensitive (perhaps to a fault) and it takes very little to make me get teary when it comes to matters of the heart.
I am so thrilled that this man was so full of pride, and joy, and thankfulness and as the tears of gratitude flowed over his cheeks, so too did mine...