Reading was always there in my life, but I just never had to interest to pick up the book and read it. Having a single mom with four children all within five years of age, she was always working and never had the time to sit and read to my brothers and I. Different relatives watched us kids, we rarely were together due to the craziness of my brothers and then me always yelling at them to stop picking on me. I was special being the only girl in the family and got to spend my days with Aunt Joy. Aunt Joy is a pleasure to be around, with her caring personality, and very slow to raise her voice, unlike most of my relatives. Spending days with Aunt Joy gave us a special bond right away.
Watching Aunt Joy’s love for books never really influenced me to pick up books when I spent time at her house. On my fifteenth birthday I received Redemption by Karen Kingsbury. With it being 350 pages long I placed if off to the side and with the attitude of, “why did she get me this book, I’ll never read it, it’s more than 100 pages”. She then got me another book for Christmas by the same author but the next book in the series. What was she doing getting me all these books all of a sudden?
With all these books being placed to the side I had quite the pile. Mom still spent countless hours at work one summer and with 4 kids still at home and in high school, she allowed us to stay home. Almost every day I road my bike the four miles to Aunt Joy’s house to drink iced tea and talking about what we were thinking. One day she asked me to join her to go up to Napa Valley California to her friend Karen’s house. I just wanted to get away from my crazy brothers who just waist their lives away in front of the television. That hot summer day up north, Aunt Joy and her friends did wine tasting on Karen’s vineyard, while I was told to set on the wood deck and tan, but Aunt Joy placed Redemption in my hands and told me to read it. I was stubborn at first when I was told to read this book; I got into the book after a few chapters and finished it within a few days. At that time in my life, finishing a book in a week was not like me.
The next week I ended up reading Remember, the next book in the series. Once again I finished up this book really quick and I felt that I finally achieved something in my life that someone was proud of what I have done. I was starting to discover that reading was so much fun and it is important to improve my reading if I am ever going to graduate high school with a decent GPA. Also I had the goal to be the first in my family to go to college, this was not going to happen if my reading score is low. I knew from then that I was going to do everything I could to improve my reading, and try my hardest to make something of my life.
Sophomore year was easier for me in my classes due to my higher reading level and a different mindset. Even though I was to ride my bike home after school, I knew this would be the last year I would be able to see aunt joy every day due to the move mom planned for the end of the school year to be closer to her brother who was not doing well. Aunt Joy never had children so I was like her daughter and she was my mom in my eyes, she was always there for and teaching me everything I needed to know in life like reading. One year later after getting the books from Aunt Joy, I was reading everything I could get my hands on. The newspaper was my favorite way of getting news instead of watching the 5:00 news in the evening while we had dinner. I would read magazines, but I never cared for them so I stuck mainly reading novels.
Because I never read while as a young child it was really hard for me to understand the vocabulary and comprehend the words n the page. I never blamed anyone in my life because I did not think that it was a skill that I needed to be taught. I just thought that it was implied that I needed to be able to teach myself. So by reading I was building up my comprehension, vocabulary and a new hobby.
