[Sharon]

HI!

I'm a mom and just read Old School pretty much cover to cover. Your writing style is engaging (keeps this over taxed mama reading to the end), and the topic is one in which our family can so relate. I am struggling with suppressed emotions after reading it. Suppressed in regards to not being able to share with others the emotions so unique to our situation.  How does one share the uniqueness of bringing your children up "in an old folks home", and the adjustment to that versus the outside world? But your  book touches on them, and is relatable. 

 My husband works in a Veterans' Home. For the first 12 & 14 years of my daughters' lives we spent entire days at the home visiting and serving the "grandma's and grandpa's" who first served us- giving us the freedom to be able spend our days with them. My girls spent time with soldiers who served with JFK, helped rescue the Apollo 13 astronauts, fought at the Battle of the Bulge. My girls learned to play cribbage, push wheelchairs, do jigsaw puzzles, serve, and care freely with their all their hearts. They shared stories of their daily childhood misadventures (both my daughters with them and they with my daughters), helped garden, write cards,  practice their instruments, decorate for Christmas, sing with them, honor them, and sled down the hill in front of the home for them in winter. My daughters invited their friends to get to know the Veterans, and my daughters got to know the Veterans' families and pets.  My daughters' did their schoolwork with them (they were homeschooled), and the Veterans' checked up on their work. It was an amazing opportunity.

The suppressed emotions? The shutdown cut off my daughters from the Veterans' and the Veterans' from my daughters. We grieve the loss of never getting to say goodbye, and with bittersweet tears of an era gone by as my daughters are now grown and have moved away.

Thank you for a book that I loved, but am going to be in a funk as I process memories of yesteryear. Thanks for bringing to remembrance the rich memories of the fleeting moments of the "one shot" at being a mom. 

 

[Gordon]

Hi, Sharon,

Your letter touched me deeply. It is lovely, and even exciting to me to know that your girls pretty much walked in Dexter's shoes! (Your Veterans' home must have been awash in Swiss Army Knives!) And how sad to be cut off for so long from their Vet friends, and to be unable to say goodbye to those who passed on during that terrible time of quarantine.

You may have only had "one shot" at being a Mom, but you seem to have given your girls a full taste of what it means to love and to serve others. That is pretty good mothering in my book!

Thank you so much for telling me this story. It adds a dimension to OLD SCHOOL that I barely understood existed!

                                               Kindest regards,                                                -----Gordon Korman-----