Whose gift it is that I exist

Rereading Confessions by Augustine, translated by Garry Wills, on this early Saturday morning. 

I thank you, my God, for your gifts to me, may you preserve them, thus preserving me, so that everything you gave me may grow and be improved, and I shall be with you, whose gift it is that I exist.  

Old, familiar books feel new to me when I return to them a few years later. I read this translation in 2013, when I was in med school. I bought it at Booksale, Robinsons Mall Manila, from my allowance. I was a prolific reader of non-medical literature, my way of coping. Being cooped up in the hospital, drowning in stacks of unread chapters of textbooks, I needed get a sense of being away from the hospital, from being a doctor-in-training. Books offered me that escape. Augustine was (and remains) a friend of my soul. That Booksale stall has long been replaced by stores that sold pastries and protein supplements, and so was the Ya Kun Kaya beside it, where I read my Booksale finds.