Flashback Forward

#FlashbackForwardFriday!

What in your past influences your today?

I always reflect back to my childhood--my early childhood. My mother had a collection of her high school textbooks (Booker T. Washington Senior High) in our home. As a toddler--yes toddler, I would look through them for the pictures. I am a visual person, and it was evident from the beginning. It was the images that urged me to find out what the words meant--what were they saying about the images. That was the catalyst for my mother "absentmindedly" teaching me to read between the ages of two and three.

My mother--Josephine, used a trick to stop me from bugging her while she completed household chores. That "trick" had me shifted to a "beginning reader" at the age of three, and several grades ahead by the time I entered preschool and kindergarten. My relationship with my mother and with reading defined my experience with school, and ultimately my career and lifestyle. I am forever grateful to my mother for her patience and love. She was always "soft" with me, and knowing who I am today--it was what I needed to be me.