My father grew up in a village where school was something other people's children went to. By the time he was eight he was working. He never learned to read.

He never told me this. Not once, not directly. I was seven years old before I understood why he always asked me to read the menu at restaurants, why he handed letters to my mother without opening them, why he never once read a road sign out loud.

I thought this was a game. I thought he was playing. It was only when I was grown and my mother told me the truth that I understood what he had really been doing all those years — showing up. Every single night, showing up.

He didn't let his shame become my limitation. He didn't let what he couldn't do stop him from giving me everything he could. He held the book so I would love books. He sat beside me so I would know I was worth sitting beside.

My father passed away eight years ago. I still have one of those books. Sometimes I hold it open and turn the pages and don't read a single word. I just sit with him for a while.

He taught me that love is not about what you have to give. It is about showing up with what you have, every single night, without fail.