Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Little Kindnesses Among Siblings

"Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness."
Henri Frederic Amiel

Tonight as we drove home from a school reading event, my son wanted to keep reading his book in the car.  As I looked in the back seat, I saw one of his sisters holding her phone with the flashlight app so that he could read.  "Did he ask you to do that?" I asked.  "No," she replied with a very sweet smile that had no trace of wanting to be a too-cool teenager. 

That small gesture took me back a number of years to a power outage after a hurricane.  We had no electricity and only a couple of flashlights, including a very small one with a lens about the size of a quarter.  In the midst of the madness, I marveled at how each of my daughters took a turn holding the small flashlight while the other took her turn coloring.

Despite the sometimes seemingly endless days when children are young, childhood goes by in a flash.  But those moments of pure kindness among siblings -- when bickering seems momentarily forgotten -- last forever.

No comments:

Post a Comment