Letter 17

Is it worth it?

Dear Reader,

One of the things I look forward to most these days is reading with my daughter at night. 

She is 11 and quite capable of diving into any genre on her own, and usually does so before I head there right before tuck-in. 

In the past we have sorted through a Sherlock Holmes puzzle book and have read the biographies in multiple books from the Rebel Girl series. She let me choose the current book. 

I read The Book Thief when it came out almost a decade ago for my book club. When I chose it for our read-out-loud I remembered it having gorgeously written passages. Without giving too much away (as I totally recommend you reading this), it follows a German girl under Nazi rule during World War II. She lives with foster parents who are likable characters with complexities that often make me laugh out loud as I am reading, despite the dark circumstances. She steals books as reading and words become her solace, her escape and her passion. The narrator of the book is Death - a literary technique that hooked me.

One recent night I finished a difficult few paragraphs where Jews were paraded through the streets on the way to a concentration camp as one character showed compassion. I looked up and my daughter had tears streaming down her face. We sat there and cried for a while as she wrestled with how “humans can be so stupid.” 

Most discussions I have recently with my kids is doing the right thing when other people might not be doing so. These situations are by no means equivalent to Holocaust horrors, but they give them small choices regularly.

“That is disrespectful to your teachers,” I often say when they relay something going on at school. In another instance - “No, you can’t voice type. You need to learn grammar and spelling and how to use language.” Or various pep talks regarding how to disregard naysayers or those with less-than-helpful feedback.

We definitely have our flaws over here and I am sure there will be groundings and lectures as my kids test limits coming up. But each conversation does make me wonder - does it matter to *do the right thing*? Will this ever get easier to explain?

I am teaching a course online for the University of Missouri-Kansas City and I am finishing my nursing degree at Research College right now. Running essays through plagarism software, wondering if students are using ChatGPT (which is prohibited when you are handing in work that is supposed to be your own) are themes that pop up. 

Finding that people have tracked down exam questions, shared information and made it easier to pass an excruciating nursing program still baffles me. 

But I don’t have the headspace to dwell too much on it. I only know that I am sleeping fairly well. So that has to count for something, I guess.

Will leave you on a lighter note as KC has been in the headlines more than usual … you might have heard that Taylor Swift is dating some Kansas City guy? Even though I was actually more delighted to see TKelce in a flu-Covid vaccine commercial that day (yay for science!) if nothing else comes out of their relationship a local journalist gave us this gift. 

Warmly,

Traci