When I read The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time, I identified with her at every turn. I felt her emotions, I understood the plight she had with her mother. Funny how this time around (decades later) I identify more with her mother. As children we expect our parents to be perfect. As parents we keep the secret that we are still children, just older.

'Friday 20 November, 1942

None of us really knows how to take it all. The news about the Jews had not really penetrated through to us until now, and we thought it best to remain as cheerful as possible. Every now and then, when Miep lets out something about what has happened to a friend, Mummy nad Mrs. Van Daan always begin to cry, so Miep thinks it better not to tell us any more. But Dussel was immediately plied with questions from all sides, and the storiea he told us were so gruesome and dreadful that one can't get them out of one's mind.
Yet we shall still have our jokes and tease each other, when these horrors have fasded a bit in our minds. It won't do us any good, or help those outside, to go on being as gloomy as we are at the moment. And what would be the object of making our "Secret Annexe" into a "Secrete Annexe of Gloom"? '

If a 13 year old girl can keep a good attitude and look on the 'bright side' of the holocaust after being forced into hiding, then I can surely look on the brighter side of things every day of my comparably easy life.