Formative years do matter

I read aloud Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge to my children when they were small, so imagine my delight when my daughter-in-law, C., sent this picture (via the Internet) depicting the skating adventure in Sweden that she and my oldest son are having.

My son, M.. spent a lot of time in his late twenties and early thirties learning to speed skate and subsequently competed in races.

Although he has long given up the racing, one item on his bucket list was to skate on a frozen river for days on end, just the way Hans did in the book.

This he is doing right now, albeit in Sweden, not the Netherlands. But . . . when I saw his silver skates, I was absolutely tickled.