In My Grandfather's Garden

Timothy G. Spokes

The Hidden Gifts of Dyslexia, Difference and Death

Can your difficulties become stepping stones to a successful future? Can a young boy overcome a serious reading difficulty and achieve beyond all expectations?

For a few gruelling years in a Catholic boys’ school, where the Brothers carry a lash under their gowns ready to strike any boy who offends their strict code, Tim struggles with math and English and keeps mostly to himself. But he has an observant inner life, with hours spent wandering in the cemetery his grandfather tends, learning about death the leveller and the falsity of social class and wealth.

Tim has pitch perfect hearing and a voice like an angel, and is marked out by the Principal Brother to become a priest. Not him! Suffering the tragedy of losing the only three close friends he makes over the years, he experiences living with dyslexia as a cross to bear, until he finds the key to a fearless destiny as a paramedic, trauma and emergency nurse, and academic.

The gift of dyslexia has taught him to say, “Don’t reach for the sky — hell! Go for the stars. You really can do anything you want.” Wisdom, he says, is found in the strangest places.

 

 

About the Author

 Tim Spokes, born in 1963 in a country town in Victoria, Australia, has many strings to his bow. He is an accomplished musician who plays many instruments, is a trained nurse and midwife, has worked as a remote area nurse midwife in Australia’s Outback and as a flight nurse with the Royal Flying Doctor service. Now as a nursing academic he shares his story so others may see the secrets within. With a serious learning difficulty, dyslexia, he struggled with conventional schooling, and has suffered the loss of three close friends. As a young adult, he found the key to living life to the full: “you really can do anything you want to. You just have to find—not be told—what it is”.