Quote for the Day 2/14/2012

Mr. Schrock (to all students): I have several announcements. First, Happy Valentine's Day. I love you all.

Next, about Thursday . . .

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That was nice. Everyone was already feeling warm and fuzzy (and a little silly) from Kristi having gifted us all with a hard candy molded into a pacifier nipple shape with a finger ring "handle." So a very great number of us looked fairly infantile part of the day today.

Sucking a pacifier is hard work, I discovered. I even slurped accidentally once and the few students in the typing room at the time chuckled with me over it.

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Hiromi and I doted on a very sweet Valentine tonight while Shane and Dorcas ate at Sushi and Miso, the new Japanese restaurant in town. Tristan was amazingly content here without needing a meal, a nap, or a diaper change. Watching fish, the bird, a mobile, seed catalogs being flipped through, the computer screen, cooking--simple pleasures for a very little person.

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On Thursday is LaVon Bontrager's funeral. He was 53 when he died early on the morning of the 13th. Only several days ago his only daughter gave birth to a boy, their first son. LaVon got his wish to live long enough to see the baby.

Mary, Mrs. John Miller from Ohio died recently, and may have been buried today. She was the mother of some of my students in the 1970s--a dear woman who helped mother my co-teachers and me, besides her own eight children. Three of those children--all boys--preceded her to glory, each of them via an accident involving a vehicle or farm equipment.

Mark K. is keenly feeling the loss of Esther about six weeks ago.

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I'm thankful for the flowers Hiromi brought me tonight, and the sentiments that accompanied them, but I would feel blessed on this Valentine's Day even if he had not done so. Ordinary days shared with loved ones are a great blessing. I can't imagine experiencing a fresh or even an old grief instead.

God bless all those for whom today is a reminder of loss. And God help all of us rejoice in what is yet ours to enjoy.