Sunday, October 23, 2011

Empty houses? Needy families? Time to mix

There are certain sounds that are pure childhood joy. One is the clomping of little feet up the stairs. Another is the squeal of delight.

This past week, in a freshly renovated house in Detroit, those two sounds came together. Seven children. Running up the stairs. Running into bedrooms.

Cue the squeals.

"I call this one!" ... "This one!" ... "I got the top one!" They were laying claim to something every child ought to have -- a bed -- but they were giddy because they had been sleeping three to a mattress in a dingy house infested with mold.

Now this?

"I got top bed!" ... "I got bottom bed!"

Their mother, Kristy Wilson, followed in behind them. Her eyes were wider than a moving truck, and she kept turning left and right, putting her hand on her heart or her cheek.

"Whose room is this?" she asked, entering a bedroom with a queen-size mattress on a new frame.

"Yours and your husband's," she was told.

She fell to her knees, laid her head on the bed and began to cry.

www.freep.com/article/20111023/COL01/110230441/Mitch-Albom-Empty-houses-Needy-families-Time-to-mix?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p