Seedlings

At school Aaron created a picture book in Hebrew, about a seedling that was all alone until a little boy planted it in a garden with seedling friends. Then he read his book to a first grader, and helped the first grader plant kale seedlings, which will later go in the garden. To add to the sweetness, the first grade class is named Seedlings (shtilim), and the fourth grade class is Trees (ilanot).

Misunderstanding

A few days ago, Aaron reported a thorn from his school day: He had been drawing by himself, when another kid snatched his drawing away and crumpled it up. Aaron was pretty distressed and sought help from a teacher. The teacher had the other kid write an apology to Aaron, which Aaron shared with me.

Dear Aaron,
I am sorry even though you were being really mean and I crumpled up your drawing! but Please don't hurt or insult pusheen!
From: [redacted]

Aaron said he was not very satisfied with this apology. He says he was just sitting drawing a minotaur as usual and he had no idea why this person had done this to him. I probed to find out what else may have been going on, and he said another friend of his might have said something silly right around then, but it had nothing to do with him. I asked him what "pusheen" is and he said it is a meme; I looked it up, and found that Pusheen is this cat. I think the drawing in the letter is of Pusheen crying.

It seemed to me that there was a misunderstanding and that Aaron was disturbed, so I suggested that he write a letter back to the Pusheen-lover, asking what the heck is going on.

Dear [redacted],
yesterday, I think we had a misunderstanding. in your note you said I was being mean, but I think I was just drawing. [Other friend] might have said something but otherwise, I don't understand why you said I was mean. also, TIP: Don't call people mean in apologies because that might make them want another one. Could you explain why you called me mean? I hope you see how I feel.
your confused schoolmate, Aaron.

I think this is a pretty good letter. Okay, the recipient is unlikely to welcome Aaron's tip, but I think he makes a fair point. And overall, I think there is a spirit of being ready to listen to the other side, which is important in this kind of tricky interaction.

He delivered his letter the next day, but has not heard back. Oh well.

Tzedakah letters

A small portion of our kids' allowance is set aside for tzedakah (charity). They usually just let it pile up for a while, and then every so often they decide to make a donation. I guess we let it pile up for a long time because it's only a dollar a week and they had gotten up to $70 each!

I asked each of them what social and political issues they are especially concerned about lately. Aaron is particularly worried about the environment, and Jordan is concerned about constitutional protections. I picked a few excellent charities suited to their interests and let them choose who to support (based on their own exploration of each organization's website). Aaron chose EarthJustice and Jordan selected the ACLU. Both kids were very impressed with these great organizations fighting for things that they care about.

I think when a kid makes a donation they should write a letter, so to help them out, I gave them a template to fill in. They found this helpful, and generated their own letters without complaint.

Then they had to locate the mailing address of their organization, and watch me write a check, and actually address and stamp an envelope, which is a life skill that kids don't always learn these days. 

Not too long afterwards, Jordan got a fabulous response from the Washington chapter of the ACLU. The executive director wrote him a personal letter thanking him for his donation, and enclosed a bunch of great ACLU swag, including awesome stickers, ACLU magnetic poetry, and a pocket constitution! 

Smart people over there -- Jordan was so impressed, he's probably an ACLU member for life now. (I hope EarthJustice is as forward-thinking with Aaron.) 

The first thing Jordan wanted to do was write to his US Studies teacher and tell her all about it. He enclosed photos of everything.

Hi Heidi-Marie, this is Jordan. a little while ago, I had the choice of what to spend my tzedaka money on. (tzedakah is donation money, it's part of my allowance) So I decided to donate to something defending the constitution. my mom did some research and found a couple of companies she thought l might like do donate through. first we looked at the ACLU, and I didn't need to look at any more. I had made my choice. so we donated. I sent them a letter with my name, age, and and why i donated. Later they sent me a letter back! it comes with some really great stuff [photos]. I was wondering if you could find some place in your class for u​​​​​​​​s all to do this.
sincerely,
Jordan
PS: your the best at discussing politics, no one better. i swear
PPS: i'll bring these to class on monday

His teacher wrote back the next day:

Hi Jordan,
This email made my YEAR. What an awesome step of personal advocacy that resulted in such a positive response! I hope you feel very proud of your efforts. I would love to do a project like this our class. I will adjust the curriculum to make some room for it. For extra credit, would you be willing to introduce your process to the class as a demonstration? I think we could do this next week (March 13-17).
Let's discuss further together this week!
Impressed and gratified,
Heidi-Marie

Is this a fantastic experience or what? I am so delighted with the whole thing!

Ankle surgery

Dale had surgery last week to repair the damage done by his skiing accident in Leavenworth. He initially saw a sports medicine doctor at the UW Medical Center, a great guy who is part of the doctor team that treats the Seahawks. However, even this illustrious doc said Dale's injury was "above his pay grade" (that's probably quite a pay grade) and sent him to be evaluated by one of the best orthopedic surgeons in town, over at Harborview. The Harborview surgeon explained that although the only fracture is to the fibula, the real problem is the ankle: Dale tore the connective tissue that hold his ankle together, and some of that goes up his leg between his fibula and tibia, such that yanking on it broke the fibula. Ow.

We spent Monday of last week at Harborview, going from one pre-surgery appointment to another: consultation with the surgeon and his resident, new x-rays, vascular imaging to make sure there were no blood clots in his legs, and a pre-anesthesia education session. Tuesday we waited at the hospital all day for the surgery (during which poor Dale could not eat or drink!); he went in about 6pm and was done at 9pm. Apparently reassembling the 3-D puzzle that is the human ankle is a fairly tricky business - they eventually got it right using live CT imaging during the surgery, which is some trick. Dale had to spend one night at the hospital while he finished waking up from anesthesia, and I got him home Wednesday morning. He has pins holding his shin bones in place, which stabilizes both the ankle and the spot where the fibula is broken.

After a few days in bed Dale has been reasonably comfortable, or as comfortable as you can expect to be with one leg in a giant plaster splint thing. He doesn't need much in the way of pain meds.

He gets around pretty well using the wonderful rolling knee scooter. At home, he can do for himself, even emptying the dishwasher and making dinner for all of us once in a while. At a doctor visit last week, he zoomed ahead of me on the ramp out of the parking garage, and said, "Try to keep up!"

He'll be in this bulky splint for another week, then a cast for six weeks. At that time his left leg will be "a toothpick" (as a nurse described it); he will need extensive PT both to rebuild his leg and to break up the stiff tendons and ligaments in his ankle. We hear it hurts. But eventually (six months to a year), he'll be back on his bike and schlepping his drum gear and all that good stuff.