Whenever I am at risk of forgetting how lucky I am, the mail arrives and brings me something like this. My agent has sent me six copies of the German Reader's Digest anthology featuring the condensed version of The Poacher's Son. I don't speak a word of German (other than what I picked up from watching "Hogan's Heroes" as a kid), but seeing the sentences I wrote transformed into these strings of cryptic symbols gets my heart racing.
Here's the opening of the book:
Ich war neun Jahre alt, als mein Vater mich mitnahm, um mir tief in den Waldern von Maine ein ehemaliges Kriegsgefangenenlager zu zeigen.
Sounding those words out, sensing what they mean but not sure how closely they correspond to the ones I wrote, send chills down my back. I hope I never take these moments for granted.