Hidden Messages

Have you ever had the experience of unexpectedly unearthing a letter or note in the hand of a beloved one who has died?

It is an arresting occurrence and brings back the life of the person for an instant and is mixed with pangs of loss and longing even as we experience the momentary joy of rediscovery of the one who is precious. With the glimpse of their handwriting, once so familiar, and reading their words, the one now absent from us seems somehow also forever present with us. It is a gift from them, like a sudden caress.

A friend recently opened her copy of our family's favorite book of all time, The Chestry Oak by Kate Seredy and found a surprise tucked inside the cover. Her books are sprinkled throughout our Top Picks lists and I once published the imaginary letter I wrote to her. Just last evening, the family of the friend who recently passed away from us was here for dinner and we talked about A Tree for Peter, as well as her other  special books which they also treasure, special gifts their mother shared with them while she was alive. So imagine my delight to receive word from another friend later last evening that she was sending a letter Kate Seredy once wrote.

How often as a child or even now, have you read a book that caused you to write, if not an actual letter, at least one in your mind, addressed to its author? Have you ever at least wondered to yourself about whether the author was writing about real incidents or characters they knew, had had the experiences they recreated for you to enjoy, or how their imagination had woven together such a story? Usually these questions are forever unanswered. Curiously, we wonder how the author feels and thinks about their own book. This letter from the past sheds light on some of that mystery regarding those questions for this particular book:

Waiting, as I am now doing, for one of the books I've written to reach the boys and girls I've written for is like waiting for rain after a long, hot, tiresome summer day. One can never be sure that rain will come, but  one can hope. I can never be sure that boys and girls will like a new book. But, of course, I always hope they will. When they do - it rains! It rains letters full of questions like these: "Is it a true story? Did you know the people the story is about? How did you come to think of the story?

Perhaps I'd better answer these questions here and now - hoping, of course, that the question-rain will  come and knowing that all too often I haven't time enough to answer each letter. 

All the people in The Chestry Oak are real, and everything that happens to them in the story has happened. I don't mean that I know them, one by one. But I've known boys like Michael, men like his father, and women like Nana; and I often meet people like Pop Brown and his family among my neighbors in Orange County. What happens to Michael in the story has happened to countless boys and girls all over the world. In a way, Michael's story is my own; it is the story of all those who have had to leave their country, their family, and their friends, and make a new life for themselves in America. Yes, it's all real.

Even Midnight, Michael's horse, is real. It's because I met Midnight personally that I came to write the story. Two years ago, I went to the County Fair, where the Army was showing cavalry horses. Among them were some that had been brought over from Europe, and the most beautiful of them all was a black stallion  from Hungary. Looking at him, I thought how far away from home he was and yet how little difference it made to him what language people around him were speaking as long as they were kind. And I thought how wonderful it would be if human beings were as wise as horses; if we could stop building barriers of the differences in language, race, color, and creed, and learn the universal language of kindness and  understanding.

Stories, like plants, grow from one small seed that falls on fertile ground just at the right time. Seeing the Hungarian stallion Midnight at an American County Fair was the seed from which grew The Chestry Oak. While it grew, it took nourishment from all the things I remember of Hungary and strength from all the things I've learned of America and her people. So The Chestry Oak is my own story, and it is very true."

"I am Hoping for a Rain of Questions" by Kate Seredy, written in 'Young Wings: The Junior Literary Guild, The Book Club for Young Readers' Feb 1949

Again, I thank you, dear Kate, for the love and care you showed in planting that seed, watering and pruning  it, so that we could enjoy the fruit. It is a gift from the past that we will treasure and pass down to coming generations.

For the joy of reading,

Liz

A Time to Read and A Time to Weep

Years ago, I was taken aback when a mother told me she could not read The Rag Coat to her children because "It has death in it." Mystified, I didn't even respond, but pondered the remark a great deal afterward. To avoid death in children's literature would be to neglect such treasures as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, Little Women and the vast host of children's classics most beloved by generations of readers. Indeed, the books that are nearest and dearest to us, I am certain, are probably those that have pierced our hearts in the tenderest places as we suffered with the characters and shared in their painful losses.

Last Monday, it fell to my lot to read the closing chapters of Where the Red Fern Grows to my youngest child. My tears were not flowing because I was surprised at the tragic death of Billy's beloved hunting dogs. Since my children are widespread in age, I have read this book five times before. As my son sniffled  unashamedly, I was weeping again because Billy's pain was mine again, and was penetrating the heart of my little boy. The loyal dogs got between Billy and a vicious mountain lion, losing their lives protecting his.

As Billy stood at the graveside of the first dog to die, reflecting on all he had gone through to earn those  dogs, to train those dogs, and the adventures they had had together, he said, "You were worth it, old friend, and a thousand times over." When the second dog died a few days later, Billy's suffering caused him to  question: "Why did they have to die? Why must I hurt so? What have I done wrong?" These are the very  same questions that have risen from the hearts of men throughout the ages. His misery turned to bitterness, as he expressed to his mother later, "I prayed for my dogs, and now look, both of them are dead," which causes his mother to shed sympathetic and helpless tears. Seeing her sadness, Billy is quick to respond, "Mama, please don't cry...I didn't mean what I said."

Later on, his father speaks to him at just the right time: "Billy," he said, "There are times in a boy's life when he has to stand up like a man. This is one of those times. I know what you're going through and how it hurts, but there's always an answer. The good Lord has a reason for everything He does..." These were comfortless words to Billy.

"Papa could see that his talk had very little effect on me. With a sorrowful look on his face, he sat down '[to supper]' and said, "Now let us give thanks for our food and for all the wonderful things God has done for us. I'll say a special prayer and ask Him to help Billy.""

But death is brutally permanent. As Billy continues to struggle with its irrevocable reality he tells his mother, "No one can help, Mama...no one can bring my dogs back." True, true, Billy, but time and distance will dull the pain and, in the spring, God sends a special work of nature to gladden his heart and promise hope for his  future in the form of a rare Ozark Mountain phenomenon in the blooming of a red fern (hence the title of the book). In just such ways God, in all our lives, sows little mercies to help us bear the unbearable.

Because the death of those near and dear to us comes, never wanted, without warning. That very Monday afternoon we were to attend the funeral of a friend, the mother of my son's close friend, a library mother whose six young children are suffering the very real life experience of the deepest kind of loss. Her illness came on suddenly and her death has wounded all of us who loved her.

It's impossible to describe all the ways a life touches and impacts us, but when the loved one is gone, we feel the severing profoundly. Kim was the first mom I knew who followed Charlotte Mason's methods, explained the benefits of reading slowly, and what a reader! Many of the facts I know about the best authors and books are from her, many of the titles in our library are from her recommendations. To say that she gave the gift of loving literature to her children is an understatement. "Reading was what she did," as her husband puts it.

Three days before her death, our entire church gathered on the front lawn of her home and lifted our voices together in song, her favorite hymns of faith and trust, and the glorious choir of families and friends reached her ears through her open bedroom window. Afterward, her husband shared with Emily and I in particular that she had asked to be put on oxygen a few days before, "So that she would have enough breath to still read to her boys a little longer."

It was her daily practice. She was a mother unreservedly devoted to her children, and that devotion was borne out of a life fully dedicated to her Lord. The pain of loss for all who knew her and were blessed by her laugh, her friendship, her sympathetic spirit, cuts deep. We weep, but not without comfort or hope.

Billy's loss and battle with grief are not unknown to us, though they may yet be unknown to our children who are introduced to it through the pages of Where the Red Fern Grows. I am thankful my children have had the experience of coon hunting with Billy, though they most likely will never know that activity personally, and am also thankful they have hurt with Billy at the graveside of his dogs - thankful because death does come, thankful that those little fictional hounds demonstrated "no greater love" than laying down their lives for a friend, the pattern walked out by the very God we believe in, who mercifully rescued us from eternal death in his Son. In some inexplicable way, that book may prepare them for facing death in real life, give them empathy for real friends near them who walk through the Valley of the Shadow, and give them a taste not only for the bitter cup of sorrow we all surely will drink of, but shine a ray of hope about the beauty of life here and now, even after losses, as well as the life yet to come where death will never touch again, and where glory more permanent than the promise of a blooming red fern lasts forever.

For the joy of reading,

Liz

Fourth Installment of Home Education [Audio Book] is Available!

We are pleased to announce that the fourth installment of our 

Audio Version of Charlotte Mason's Volume I, "Home Education," 

is ready for download! Each portion is one CD in

length and will be released throughout this spring.

Please visit this link for more information.