Country, Liberty, Courage

by admin

The 4th grade book is Toliver’s Secret and Ryan is work­ing his way through it, with a com­bi­na­tion of long and short response home­works every evening.  It’s the story of a 10-year old girl in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary New York who is asked by her grand­fa­ther to carry a mes­sage to couri­ers for George Washington.

On evening when the home­work is run­ning late and Ryan is tired, it makes more sense to read to him than have him strug­gle through read­ing him­self.  Last night was one of those nights.  The chap­ter we read described how Grand­fa­ther explained to his grand­daugh­ter why she needed to take the risk to tak­ing this mes­sage alone across the Hud­son to New Jersey.
At one point, it men­tions that the lit­tle girl is 10.…Ryan’s age.
“I couldn’t do that,” Ryan says.
“Don’t be so sure,” I said.  “If you had, to res­cue Mom or Luke or Julian, you would.”
“Not alone,” he says.  
“You would.  You would sur­prise your­self.  You can’t imag­ine doing it now, but if you had to, you would do it.”
He would.