The Giving Book by Jaimie

The Giving Book by Jaimie - May 2017 Scholarship Essay

Imagine having the opportunity to go anywhere you could imagine, any place, any world, any time, literally anywhere. Literature gives us the opportunity to visit the places we dream about. They shape us, teaching up valuable lessons that not even our parents could lay upon us. However, some books help us escape the world around us and guide us through life more than others. Between the plethora of novels I have come across, the book that has best influenced my life is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. While it is a short book largely targeted to children, it made a huge impact on my life, not only as a child, but as the young adult I am today.
The Giving Tree is a short children's book about a tree who finds happiness in life through “giving” to a young boy. As a child, the boy spent a lot of time with the tree, but as he gets older, the only time the boy is seen with the tree is when he is in need of something.
There are many interpretations of the message the book is portraying, including religious perspectives, environmental perspectives, and friendship perspectives, however my interpretation deals with the relationship between a child and their parents. I gathered that the book is trying to teach children to always be grateful for their parents and everything they do for you.
When I first read the book, I thought I was the perfect child, always doing everything for my parents, but in reality, I thought too much about myself. It took me until last fall, when my whole world was thrown upside down, to realize that I wasn't as selfless as I sought myself out to be.
It was the middle of October when my father was first admitted to the hospital. When I was first informed, I didn't think much of it, especially since my mom told me he was okay, but she was wrong. My father had unknowingly been living with Multiple Sclerosis, a disease where the immune system eats the protective covering of nerves. When I first visited him at the hospital I did not recognize him. He was not the same person I had seen two nights before at dinner. He had no idea that he was in the hospital, did not know my brothers name, was on dialysis, and was plugged into a million other different machines. And to make matters worse, one of his nurses, right in front of me and my brother, told us that she did not think he was going to live. I was numb.
I was a complete mess, my grades dropped, my social life became nonexistent, and I was a fountain, crying non-stop for over a week. But one day, as if someone had placed it there for me, I saw a book sitting on my desk. The book was none other than The Giving Tree. I am someone who believes everything happens for a reason, and this is one of those instances that makes me believe so. I picked the book up and read it as my tears fell upon its pages. The book hit me hard, and I promised myself that if my dad was given a second chance, that I wouldn't be the boy in the book anymore.
My dad started making a miraculous recovery, and, sooner than anyone expected, was brought to rehab. I visited my dad almost everyday, keeping him company and telling him stories to try and help him regain his memory. Not only was I treating my father the way he deserved to be treated, but my mother as well. My mom has done absolutely everything for me, and it was my turn to return the favor.
I genuinely believe that the outcome of my life would not be the same without The Giving Tree. That book was placed on my desk for a reason. That one book helped change me to the person I am today in such a short amount of time. It may look like a short children’s book, but it is so much more than that. It is the most influential book I have ever read, and without it, I truly believe that not only my life, but the life of many other people, would be extremely different.