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Thank You To The Flowers.  A poem by my 10-year old niece in Newtown, Ct.

5/7/2013

1 Comment

 
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As we all know too well, on December 14th, 2012, a gunman entered the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.  What happened next changed our lives forever, shattering the fragile porcelain of out children’s innocence.  There has been enough written about the tragedy already, from news stories to survivor accounts to unfathomable acts of bravery by the teachers, so I’m not here to talk about that.


My teacher, Mrs. Costello

was standing by my desk…



I’m the proud uncle of three children who live in Newtown and go to school there.  My sister’s children, Maddie, Colin, and Ryan, are my world, so when I got text messages and then phone calls and then turned on the news that morning, I couldn’t wrap my mind around what I saw.  I rushed down there in time to see them get off the bus safely, and as an uncle my instinct was to wrap myself around them like armor, to make sure nothing would every happen to them again.  But there were empty seats on the bus that day, so I can’t even fathom what a mother feels - all of the mothers in Newtown.  And those who have lost?  It’s too much to talk about.    
 

her face was like a flower,


Five months later and we’ve seen a sun beam of healing through the clouds, thunderstorms of controversy and heated debates, and another tragedy in Boston that diverts our national attention.  Some people in Newtown have pieced together those porcelain shards as best they can, while others will forever be stuck in that day.  But that’s not for me to talk about.   


in a meadow that was only filled


What I do want to share with you is a poem my ten-year old niece, Madeline, or ‘my little blonde Rasta girl,’ as I call her, wrote about her teacher, Mrs. Costello.  It is, perhaps, the single most beautiful and powerful thing I have ever read. 


with trees.    


I am a professional writer yet I will never come close to emulating Maddie’s poem, the purity of human emotion a child sees when she looks up at her teacher’s face and sees her hero, her armor when we can’t be there, the protector of her innocence – flowers, in a meadow that’s only filled with trees.  

So what I really want to say to all of the teachers out there is, from the bottom of my heart:

thank you to the flowers. 


-Norm Schriever

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1 Comment
카지노사이트 link
4/10/2024 08:29:57 pm

길 때에만 느낄 수 있는 생생한 현장감을 온라인으로 제공할 수 있게 된 것입니다. 컴퓨터가 딜러 역할을 맡을 때와는 당연히 천지 차이일 수밖에 없습니다. 그래서 현재는 지구 반대편에서 내 손 안의 휴대폰으로 게임에 참여하여 딜러가 나눠주는 카드를 확인하여 베팅할 수 있습니다.

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    Norm Schriever

    Norm Schriever is a best-selling author, expat, cultural mad scientist, and enemy of the comfort zone. He travels the globe, telling the stories of the people he finds, and hopes to make the world a little bit better place with his words.   

    Norm is a professional blogger, digital marketer for smart brands around the world,  and writes for the Huffington Post, Hotels.com, and others.

    Check out South of Normal his Amazon.com best-selling book about life as an expat in Tamarindo, Costa Rica.

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    Follow Norm on Twitter @NormSchriever or email any time to say hi!

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