We started a new read aloud book yesterday. The House of Sixty Fathers is about China in the late 1930’s shortly after Japan invaded. A young boy gets separated from his family and must find his way back to them with only his lucky pig for company. The first chapter last night got us off to a great start. Again, Kelly read the book to herself a couple of years ago when she was in fifth grade and recommended that we read it aloud now as it is part of Christian’s curriculum.
She said, “It made me cry once, but it is a great book.”
The best of the books have made us cry. I think that is a lot like life itself. The stressful situations that make us cry are the ones that make us grow. We got a nice note from a couple of our dear friends in Texas yesterday congratulating Kelly for winning the VFW essay contest. It got us to talking about our time there, how well we were treated, and how much we love the people and the time we had with them. The move to Texas was really put quite a stress on our family in many ways, but none of us would trade the experience for anything. We made some wonderful new friends and reconnected with some old ones. We felt a sense of community there that is truly rare and to be highly valued. The people there were not perfect, but they cared for each other and loved to be together. How much better can it get than that. We would not have experienced that community if we would not have gone through the stress of the move. Even the sadness of leaving at the end of our stay was a small price to pay for the kindnesses shown to us.