For A Granddaughter Starting Kindergarten

Lena,

I am glad that you will be starting kindergarten soon.

Would you like to know the best thing about going to school?

The best thing about going to school is that it gives you a chance to be kind to people you never had a chance to be kind to before.

I know that you love to think, and that makes me happy. Here is something good to think about: "How can I be kind to people and not be mean to them?"

It is good to be kind, and it is bad to be mean.

Sometimes I hear grownups talk about things that happened to them when they were very young. Although they have forgotten many things, they often remember very clearly those times when someone was mean to them. I like to think that nobody will ever remember you being mean. Instead, I imagine that, many years from now, some troubled person will say something like this: "The other kids were mean to me sometimes. But Lena Lundquist was always nice to me."

I hope that you like school. But I can think of something even better than liking school. That would be if your teachers and the other kids like school more just because you are there.