Our Journey North

We were blessed this past weekend to spend the weekend up North with my friend Tina and her family. What a lovely get-away! For those of you who have never seen northern Minnesota in the Fall, it’s breath-taking. For those of you who have never seen any part of Minnesota, north or south in any season, for shame! 🙂

We took Karen E. with us in spirit (unbeknownst to her!) because our drive-time read-aloud was a book she recommended. We devoured all five chapters of Twenty and Ten in one sitting! My three oldest (ages 9, 7 and 5 ½ ) and I loved it loved it loved it—thank you, Karen, for the recommendation. I don’t know whether or not this book is appropriate for every kindergartener, (see this post for the background on these remarks) but I will say that my Maria (who will be 6 in two months) was chomping at the bit to hear how it ended.

The scene where the children were sharing the chocolate gave us pause. They enjoyed it one lick at a time. “Can you imagine, kids?” I asked. “They hadn’t had chocolate for years.” No, my kids couldn’t imagine. Nor could I. We’ve had a pretty cushy well-fed existence, comparatively.

And the image of those children sharing their meager bowls of soup with one another! I thought about how it’s sometimes a challenge for my family to even be hungry at all for supper, what with the chronic snacking habits of us Americans.

So. With my thoughts on pursuing a more heartfelt spirit of sacrifice, we arrived at the resort. (Yes, there is irony in that statement.) We had no sooner gotten to our cabin (used in the loosest, most comfortable sense of the word) when— bzzzt! The power went down throughout the resort. And it stayed down for hours, which meant our plans for cooking supper in the kitchen went kaput along with the electricity.

What an inconvenience, right? It is, after all, our vacation.

And what an inconvenience to have to drive into town to get a big bag full of hamburgers, hot dogs & chicken fingers from Culver’s. And to have to go to Fleet Farm to pick up a half a dozen candles (“Angel Food Cake”-scented, no less) to illuminate our rooms. Heck, what an inconvenience to have to drive anywhere at all, right?

What nonsense.

In my way of thinking, the merit of books like Twenty and Ten (and The Family under the Bridge, and Escape from Warsaw (formerly titledThe Silver Sword) is that they foster a greater appreciation of just how good we’ve got it. I mean, really. And perhaps, should we be called to a higher renunciation a little further down the road, (the road up North, shall we say?), we will be ready on account of all the many little leaps of self-denial we’ve made already.