There is special meaning in giving something special to children who have nothing, and who have suffered beyond imagination.

I wish I could tell you the whole story of Issachar and Asher, two kind, lovely and intelligent boys, both students at the Bishop Maginn school, who have been to Hell and back, and have never stopped smiling telling jokes and looking out for each other.

But it would be inappropriate to do that on my blog or online. I hope someday they will be able to tell their own stories.

I can’t quite imagine how children can go through what they have experienced and seem so untouched, I know there are deep wounds and scars sometimes visible in each of them.

But their spirit and good humor and gentleness is strong, as is their humor.

Young men in America are proud of their sneakers and these two twins from Pakistan have never had sneakers, so this bugged me, and I spent a good chunk of Monday afternoon figuring out how their small feet correspond to big American shoe sizes.

I hope to raise money to make sure that the refugee students at Bishop Maginn have good shoes for the winter, not the sandals some of them still wear to school.

Kathy, a customer service rep at Zappo’s, was unbelievably helpful to me in sorting this out – she spent an hour on the phone with me – and today I’m bringing the sneakers which arrived yesterday to Albany. It will be a surprise.

I’m going on a mission of joy, to give Blue the money raised to help her, and to give Issachar and Asher some funky new sneakers – these are hot Italian designed  Japanese sneakers – in exchange for some jokes.

Later