There is a Gratitude Challenge going around on Facebook right now.  It encourages people to spend a few minutes each day reflecting upon their blessings, and then posting about them.  Last week I was nominated, and I have decided to accept the challenge.

Sorta.

I am blessed to say that listing 15 things, people, moments, or experiences for which I am grateful is an easy task.  So I’ve decided to transform this task into a writing challenge for myself.  Can I carve out some time for the next 15 days to write about these moments of gratitude?  I will certainly try!

On this Day 1 I am grateful for literacy.  For education.  For great authors and their amazing books.

Books that changed my life, like Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret  when I was a a child and A Thousand Splendid Suns as an adult.  Books that change my students’ lives, like Speak.  Books that kids love but adult try to prohibit… like The Fault in Our Stars.  Books that bond my family, like Harry Potter and Matilda.  Books that keep my son up into the wee hours of the light… from his early reading days of Ready Freddy to his annoying phase with Diary of a Wimpy Kid to all the sports book he now inhales by Tim Green and Mike Lupica.  And books that keep my daughter up into the wee hours like… um…. hmmmm…

To be honest, there haven’t been any.

Until now.

Bring on Marley.

It’s not that Maggie doesn’t like books.  She is first to leap onto the couch during family read aloud nights, and the silly humor of Mo Willams has always been her favorite.  But Marley is the first book she’s read on her own that has made an emotional connection for her; the first book to teach her the power of falling in love with a character in print.

Maggie came home from her school library with the young reader adaptation of Marley and Me by John Grogan.  I’ve read the adult version and know the basic plot:  crazy cute yellow lab puppy (Marley) becomes the heart of a family.  But those of us who have endured Old Yeller and How the Red Fern Grows know how this ends.

I knew we were in trouble when Maggie asked, “Why did my librarian say this book is sad?  It’s soooooo funny!!”  She proceeded to read me the part where the author met “Clearance Dog,” the breeders’s nickname for Marley:

He plowed full steam into me, throwing  a cross-body block across my ankles.  Then he pounced at my shoelaces as though he was convinced they were dangerous enemies that needed to be destroyed.

She was laughing so hard she could hardly get the words out.  Clearance Dog.  Shoelaces as enemies.  Good stuff when you have a new puppy of your own that acts the same way.

Fast forward a few weeks, and all was calm in our home.  It was the 9:00ish hour, and the kids were upstairs reading.  I too had retired with a good book, and Clark was downstairs watching TV.

Cue the wailing.

The screeches from Maggie’s room were so intense that everyone raced to check on her.  Even Sam.  Based on the intensity of her outburst I fully expected to see blood, but it turns out her trauma was purely emotional.

It was grief.  Pure, unencumbered, intense grief.  She had finally read far enough into the book to realize that poor Marley was not immortal.  I’d tried to prepare her, but she insisted she could handle the book.

Clearly she had fallen in love with Marley more than we realized.  She has since finished the book – more tears were shed, but thankfully they were less intense.  And she says it was worth the read, even though it ripped her heart out.

I hope Marley is the first of many characters Maggie will grow to love on her own, and someday she too will realize what a gift it is to live in a country where literacy is a core value.