What The Giving Tree Gave Me

When I was six years old, I planted a tree in my front yard. I watched the immature plant grow into a small but recognizable tree for the next two years. I remember distinctly asking my parents to buy me seeds from the garden store so that I could plant my own tree. They insisted on buying a baby tree that had already begun to grow, so I settled with that. As a child, I would become very fascinated with certain things for an amount of time, the tree being among these things. I would look out my window everyday, eager to see if my tree had grown.
Around the age of three or four, I was not fond of the nightly bedtime stories my brothers enjoyed so much. Unlike most children, I did not like books, and I hated that I did not have the ability to read the books myself. It made me feel dumb, as I did not like things I was not good at as a child. I hated books until I finally, when I was five, I read my first “Bob” book cover to cover with hardly any help from my parents; that’s the story they tell me anyways. Even then, reading remained a difficult task for me. I. But as I continued my journey through kindergarten and then into 1st and 2nd grade, I came to realize that I did not have the ability to do everything perfectly. I was rather bad at math, and despite my previous struggles in reading, I excelled in it by the 2nd grade. I realized where my own strengths and weaknesses were at a young age, and still recognize the same ones today.
My realizations about my own imperfections oddly came from the story The Giving Tree, written by the poet Shel Silverstein. My parents read me this story when I was about four, but my bitter attitude towards books kept me from truly listening to the story. I lay in my bed with my mom as she read it to me, pretending to listen, when instead I was consumed with thoughts about how much I hated books. I never told my parents about my disgust with books, but I think they realized it when they saw the contorted look on my face, cringing