Gift # 4 - A Calendar

Hey.

I'm reposting this from a prior essay about my father.  Still one of my favorite gifts ever.

1995. I was about to start my senior year of high school, and we were broke. My grades in school were commendable, I was part of a wide variety of volunteer groups and extra-curricular activities, but that wasn't going to be enough to get me out of my hometown and into college.  My dad knew this.  Because I was aware of how bad things were, money-wise, I asked my parents not to get me any gifts for my 17th birthday, which occurred during the first week of school.

The morning of my birthday, I get a knock on the door, and my dad comes into my room.  I made you something, he drawled.

And then he pulled out a large office calendar and laid it softly on the bed. The calendar was covered with two kinds of ink:  Red for one month prior, and Black for the final due date.  In the back of the calendar, he had included application after application for scholarships.  In the pre-internet world, my own father had spent months researching scholarships, printing out applications, and charting exactly when submissions were due.  For me. 62 scholarships in all.  I still tremble when I think about it.

That year, I completed all but five, and I won five scholarships from that batch.  That, combined with serendipity allowed me to go to college.