Our Red Kettle Passion

My mom survived the Good Friday Earthquake.

This historic event is intrinsically tied to our family history because of my grandfather's service in the Alaska Air Guard at that time.  We have a few family tales that we bring up now and then, and when we lived there we would occasionally visit Earthquake Park. (I even wrote a poem about it in a high school creative writing class that I discovered could be read to part of Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique").


We enthusiastically drop change into every Salvation Army Red Kettle we pass because of my mother's experience with their soup kitchen after the quake.  I don't know if my children will ever experience the emotional connection to the event, or these acts of Kettle donation, that I have--they have never seen the remnants of the destruction, and thus far they haven't really heard all the tales.  For me, I get a little choked up inside each time I hear the kettle bell ringing.