A friend wrote this reflection.

"When I see Layla reading chapter books of her own free will I am astonished how much first grade can improve reading comprehension - as if yesterday was a struggle to complete a sentence & now the story unfolds.

What it is to have a parent to read to as well as a parent who reads to you.

I remember a time in high school when I zipped up board, boots & bindings into a blue bag & boarded a train to Vermont to meet a girl & her mom who drove me to the White Mountains. I learned to snowboard following the girl who called the mountain her home. Fell in love with the girl... on the mountain... on boards... making turns... with a bit of chasing. Several winters yielded enough snowboarding for progression... and my hands were outstretched toward the girl... she took my hands eventually & we began snowboarding hand-in-hand. Snowboarding became a dance. There was rhythm that came from movement anticipating movement, consciousness' overlapping, two becoming one in motion. It was as if I could no longer resist her... the only & most beautiful snowboarder. I had to touch her while she was snowboarding... and sometimes she would let me & then I could not believe I was the one dancing on snowboards with the most beautiful girl who loved the boards on the mountain most of all. It was so fabulous we thought we had invented what would one day become an Olympic sport, we thought we would be doing it on TV & eventually teaching others our maneuvers & secrets. On the lifts we planned out our success. We must have looked like fairies, or birds or perhaps just young teenagers falling heels & toes into Love. Eventually each dance would end by letting go of each other's hands & me chasing her all over her mountain.

Life will have it's ways. We married but we did not snowboard much.

She gave birth but we did not snowboard much.

We began careers and we never snowboarded.

Until one day we snowboarded the White Face and everything changed.

Today our daughter took flight on a plane to the White Mountains & the slopes where it all began. But before she took flight I took her hands and danced with her on her snowboard as once upon a time i had done with her mother. We performed a maneuver hand in hand I had not performed since I was a teenager hand in hand with her mother. I had forgotten but it came to me, dancing on snowboards holding my daughter's hands. As we danced I told my daughter the story of taking her mother's hands & dancing with her on the mountain with snowboards - falling into Love together... my daughter smiled & listened as if she was remembering it all too."

It sounds as if part of the struggle is over, and the story is unfolding.