behindtheax

the little things

My daughter had an assignment to do at school. She had to write about her favourite thing and bring this favourite thing in to show the class.
“So, what is your favourite thing?” I asked.
“The Christmas ornament that Kyle made me last year.” She said.
“Well, maybe you should ask Kyle first. He might not want it to be shown to the whole class.” I questioned as I tried to figure out what a ten year old boy might feel in a situation like that.
“Mom, Kyle moved away.”
“He did?”
“Yes, I told you that.”
“Sorry, I forgot. Do you miss him?”
“Yes, can you get me the ornament?”

I sighed and thought, the last thing I wanted to do at that moment was to pull out Christmas boxes and look for one ornament in a sea of many, so of course I tried a few other tactics. “It's pretty fragile, it might get broken if it is going to get passed around the class.”
“No, it isn’t going to get passed around.”
“Is there anything else that is a favorite thing? You have a pretty special cat. You can bring in a picture of her?
“ I want to show them the ornament.”

So, off I went and retrieved the ornament and as I handed it to her, I said “be careful with it now.”

She turned, walked down our narrow hallway, is about to make a turn into the dining room but tripped over her sister’s sneakers instead. The little snowman ornament flew from her hands and smashed into a million pieces. She was devastated. I have never seen her so hurt. After she recovered a little, I said, “Why don’t you write about it anyway, it ican still be your favourite thing, you can tell what happened and since you got a good look at it again you can describe what it looked like.
So, off she went and a little while later came back and read me her assignment, she got as far as it had little black dots in shape of a half smile, and she started to cry again and I hugged her and thought about this school friend who moved away, who use to call her to talk most evenings last winter, who bought her a teddy bear for Valentines but by May they were no longer buddies and during the summer he had moved and that must have hurt her alot but I didn’t have any idea. She just kept it to herself.
I took her assignment and read it out loud and told her she had done the most wonderful job of describing this gift and at the bottom, she had taped a broken piece of the silver bulb to her page and beneath it she had written. This is all that is left.

posted by mary j. @ 2:10 PM