28 October 2026, Freewriters Community Daily Writing Prompt Day 3270: not very resilient
“I would say the most difficult thing for me as a hard-driving Army veteran as a grandfather raising my little grands and little cousin is to remember: my Ludlow littles are very strong, and they have had to be. If they were not very resilient, they would not have made it. But the point is not to push that strength so they can do what I did: provide deadly service to the country. They are children. It is very important that they get to be cherished and loved and healed, not pushed to the limits of their resilience.”
Capt. R.E. Ludlow was giving an interview to the Veteran's Lodge's newsletter about some of the more unusual things Lofton County's veterans were doing, and picking up eight little Ludlows and adopting them was an even more interesting story than building a company and selling it to its workers in less than a year.
“Well,” Sgt. Joseph Parr said, “most men would love to do the Ludlow Bubbly, but most would not between the ages of 55 and 58 fight for the right to adopt eight little ones outright.”
“One has to know the difference between money, duty, and love,” the captain had purred. “I'll work and create for one, but I will fight, kill, and die for the last two, all day long, and that's how me being who I am as a soldier interacting with gathering up my grandchildren and taking in my little cousin out of situations that … well, let's just say that God is good and I remember that civilians just aren't ready!”
Sgt. Parr, the interviewer, was getting ready to get married, and did not intend to set aside the whole day to speak with Capt. Ludlow and his wife Thalia, but he found himself in tears as all eight little Ludlows eventually came in and sat or snuggled down with their adoptive parents after words of thanks.
“This is what we men who want a family all want,” he said quietly.
“The path to it is not what most men think it is,” Capt. Ludlow said, “and once you know what it costs, be sure you want it enough and where to get it. Obviously if we as men were not very resilient, we couldn't make it … but what you see me blessed with here pushed me beyond my limits, into the grace of God.”
Most of what Sgt. Parr learned would not make it in the article but …
“Changed my life,” he said about it later. “We forget we are not alone out here even as Christian men … the things that we most desire don't depend on our strength and resilience although we need those things … a lot of things are things we have to humble ourselves to be graced with.”