The joy of giving

I guess it seems strange to some (given the reactions I've gotten from friends and family), but I've dreamed of volunteering for years. When I was working nearly 11-hour days during the career phase of my life, I just didn't have it in me to give time to others at the end of the day, and my weekends were the only free time I had, so they were too precious to give up on an ongoing basis. So, when I did volunteer work during my that time, it was a few hours here, a one-day event there, but it wasn't the kind of volunteering I wanted to do. That would have to wait for retirement.

I've now been retired for 1 1/2 years. In that time, I've given of my time by answering phones for the State welfare office, fundraising for an animal sanctuary, attending meetings of an emergency preparedness organization, reading to preschool children and interviewing and writing profiles of people doing good works for a volunteer- and over-50-focused website. I've gone from working 10-11 hours a day to working 10-11 hours a week (at most). My goal was to find a balance between being of service and being retired--and that's just what I've done.

I've been reading to preschool children at a Head Start school for nearly a year now. Back when I was dreaming of volunteering in retirement, literacy was always a field with which I wanted to be involved. I found a fantastic organization called "Read Aloud," whose mission is to not only prepare children for school and help them excel, but to actually foster a love of reading and books. Being a lifelong and avid reader, this was a mission that I could enthusiastically support.

About two months ago, I had an idea to do something special for "my kids" at the school. I started to buy children's books from Amazon in batches--focusing on books on sale when I could--to make my goal of giving every child I read to a book for Christmas. After checking with the school and with Read Aloud, I got the green light to make it happen.

The week before Christmas, I arrived with a big bag of books to my Monday afternoon class. I explained that, instead of reading to them, each child would get to choose from a selection of books as a gift from me. The kids couldn't believe it. "I can take this HOME with me?!?" many of them said as they made their choices. Their eyes got wide when I wrote each of their names in their book. "You're going to WRITE IN IT?!" they'd say in shock. "Yes," I'd answer, smiling, "because this is YOUR book to do whatever you want with." Their smiles said it all.

On Wednesday morning, I did it all again with my other class. The teacher gathered all the children with their books and took a picture of me with the class. As I was packing up to go, two little girls came up and gave me big hugs and said thank you. Maybe I gave a lot in dollars and books, but those two hugs and all the smiles in that picture were a priceless gift to me.