I remember.....

I heard something this morning and can't seem to get it out of my mind. Just a little blurb on the morning radio....yet so much more.

"It was on this day in 1942...that Anne Frank and her family took refuge in a secret section of an Amsterdam warehouse and hid from the Nazis for two years."

What they didn't say is when they were finally discovered, they were all arrested and shipped off to concentration camps. Seven months later, Anne contracted typhus. She died, but her diary lived on.
Besides her diary, during the time she was in hiding, from ages 13 to 15, Anne also wrote short stories, fairy tales, essays and even the beginnings of a novel. All while going through the normal craziness of those early teenage years. I am so grateful to her proud papa, Otto Frank, who was instrumental in her diary being published.
I remember my mom talking about how things used to be....WWII, rations, the Nazis, concentration camps, Hitler, victory gardens, goodbyes and homecomings, how so few young men were seen out and about here at home during the war, President Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, and how her dad, my grandfather, had to be gone so much as she was younger...overseas to help battle for our freedom. And so much more. It seemed like it had happened such a long time ago. BUT....my mom and dad turned 13 years old the year that Anne and her family were discovered in hiding. They REMEMBER that year. Just like I remember the year I turned 13....and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. That was MY 13th year to remember. That still doesn't seem that very long ago. So, it really had been so recently that Anne was in hiding when I first read about her. So recently that men had lost their hearts and treated other human beings worse than rodents.
In sixth grade, at Binns Elementary in Columbus, Ohio, Mrs. Hampson introduced us to Anne Frank's Diary. I remember reading it that same day when we went to Mombo and Chic's house (my paternal grandparents). I sat in the cool shade under their grape arbor and read while my brothers played ball in the big back yard. I remember the beauties of their corner of the world....of the fruit trees calling to be climbed, of the pears we would bite into before they were ripe every year and convince ourselves they tasted great. And of the grapes themselves, hanging like bunches of promises from lacy leaves and twisted and curled vines. Of Chic's colorful and orderly flower garden at the side of the gravel driveway, of the old well pump that I knew didn't work anymore but I always tried it anyway. Of the big stone fire stove that sat in the northwest corner of her backyard. How I loved to be outside there. I thought that it must have been horrible to NEVER step out the door.....to smell the air after it rained, the grass after it's mowed or the big white soft snowballs of viburnum blossoms Chic and Mombo would always let me pick. I felt so bad she didn't get to enjoy nature like that.
I couldn't stop reading. Things I had heard my mom talk about were right there....in the every day world of this girl half a world and 25 years away. Yet, I felt like I was in the hidden attic apartment with her....with all of them. History came alive....and so did something else. I recognized some of her feelings.....growing pains, some would call them, and also, the grand desire to get it down on paper. The joy of the writing. I understood that. I understood another thing, too. I understood that we can decide to never give up. That we can choose to keep going, to keep on growing.
Books are treasures and friends to me, and I have known and loved many. But, The Diary of Anne Frank is on the very short list of those books that live in my heart. Yes, Anne Frank has inspired my life. Perhaps this book should be required reading for ALL students in this country... and any adults who haven't read it. Lest we forget.
I remember something she wrote....I guess I've remembered it for just about 40 years now. She said, "Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." It really IS our choice, isn't it?
And of course, her well-known wish of "I want to go on living after I die".
You have, Annie. You have.

Just a blurb on the radio.....