Moving Day

No - we didn't move. I had several "moving" moments yesterday where I said to myself, "I have to blog about this." Hence the words below...

The first moving moment of the day yesterday was having the unique perspective of looking down on the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Center City as officer Cassidy's viewing/funeral was happening. My building looks right over the Cathedral and, let me tell you, you have not seen anything as awe inspiring as 800+ police officers, all dressed in uniform, paying their respects to one of their fallen brothers. I'm not one who usually gets worked up over spectacles like yesterday's but it was incredibly moving and one of those unbelievable moments that you just file away in your memory forever.

The second moving moment of the day yesterday was my trip to Sammy's Kindergarten classroom to be the "Mystery Reader." After my Dr. appointment (not a moving moment) I headed over to St. Andrew's School to read "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs." The kids seemed to like the book a lot. I was nervous... really nervous. I'm not sure why. There was something cool about watching the kids faces and answering all of their questions about the book. Throughout the reading I was asked questions like, "What is that?" about an upright bass one of the people was carrying. And one kid asked why the garbage trucks had to use forks and knives to clean the streets... a legitimate question by the young lad - the obvious answer is because it was raining food! The best question came at the very end of the book and it wasn't even a question. One of the kids said, "Look there is an S." I wasn't sure where he was pointing because he was simply looking at a picture of a hill of snow on the last page. I couldn't find it - so I had him show me. "It's right there!" he sternly told me. He was pointing to a line on the picture that was there to give depth in the illustration from one hill to another, but when you looked at it from another perspective it was very much an S. Well at this point all of the kids rushed the stage and had to see the S. See - S was one of the letters they've been learning about.

Watching the kids be so excited about the new stuff they are learning was very encouraging to me. Clearly they are having fun learning about this Alphabet thing.

Sammy got to sit in the rocking chair right next to mine and help me read the story to the class. Talk about a fun time! He was definitely surprised that I was the "Mystery Reader" and wasn't expecting it at all. Sometimes it is easy to forget how full children can make your life. Their bright eyes and their inquisitive minds are something to be held onto, also to be filed away in that space in your memory forever.

Having had come from just seeing the site of Officer Cassidy's funeral - I took the minute to give Sammy an extra squeeze before I left.