a rugs life

…it was going to be grand: Rada would get back mobility in her arm. We would preserve the cast for posterity, displayed in some honored place in her room, not unlike a moose head. For me, life would return normal: No more lady-in-waiting. And no more strange contraptions constructed out of plastic bags and masking tape every time she took a bath.

The removal procedure was kind of neat: they used a thing similar to a blade saw (don’t worry! keep reading!) but with such a blunt edge that you can put it directly on your skin with just a slight tickling sensation. It bites through plaster, nothing else.

After the removal, we went to Radiology for an x-ray to see how it was healing, and then they said something about coming right back for the ‘next cast’. Oh sure, I thought, some kind of temporary splint that comes off at night. No problem.

Um… well… not exactly. They put another cast on her. This one for another 3 weeks. After that there’s a temporary splint and then finally she’s a free girl.  I thought she’d be on the monkey bars by Christmas but it looks more like it’ll be Martin Luther King Day.

The new cast is slightly shorter, so she has a little more mobility. Rada chose a patriotic theme and here she is with her favorite dog-friend Zeus:

photograph kindness of Zeus’s person, Poul.

Last week, Rada fell off the monkey bars at school and fractured her wrist.

I got the call at noon on a Friday and rushed to school to find a sobbing girl cradling her arm in the nurse’s office.  A series of trips to primary care and Children’s Hospital resulted in the fine cast you see below, with a lovely soccer pattern for its decor.  The prognosis for her wrist is excellent: the cast comes off before Thanksgiving, and by December, she can return to the monkey bars.

After an initial few days of pain and discomfort, Rada quickly settled into the life of royalty:

Everyone in her soccer team signed her cast; in school she is assigned a daily helper to assist with getting her coat on and off and carrying her backpack around school; the lunch ladies pick up her tray for her in the cafeteria; and her teacher lets her miss spelling tests and math quizzes.

At home, she no longer has to clear plates from the table or put on her own socks. I also comb her hair and ‘prepare’ her toothbrush.

Rada’s return to normalcy happens in 2 weeks when she gets the cast off.  I’m counting the days until the princess reverts to civilian.

The principal of my daughter’s school is an African American man. The governor of the state we live in is an African American man. And our president-elect is an African American man. But these men are so much more than the mere color of their skin or accident of their gender. They’re all good parents, wise leaders, good listeners and each one is humble in ways that a true leader is humble: serving their people, their country, their students, and their state.

My Kazakh-born American daughter is growing up in a world where people of all colors and genders are leading our country and leading the world, hopefully to a better place. It is a truly wonderful day today, such a good day to be an American.

I stood looking over the school yard this morning as my daughter filed in with the rest of her classmates and teachers, such a rich group of nationalities and ethnicities in the school. I noticed another mother standing next to me, and we turned to each other in wonderment, sharing the amazement and joy. She said “I told my son this morning he can do anything he sets his mind to, he can be anything he wants to be”. I nodded, agreeing, tears in my eyes for some reason.

Such a nice day to be an American.

My track record with resisting temptation of the edible variety is not good. I spent one summer, after quitting smoking, systematically clearing out the local convenience store of M&N chocolate peanuts. The situation got so bad that I would get one bag of M&Ns after lunch, swearing it  would last the rest of the day. But just before dinner I’d be back again, looking nonchalant, hoping that the clerks had changed shifts in the interim.

Years later I swore off sweets and desserts, but instead developed a nightly peanut butter and jelly sandwich habit.

And last winter I could not go to sleep without a dish of maple syrup yogurt for a night cap.

My newest obsession is Honey Crisp apples. I’m not going to tell you how good they are, because I don’t want you buying up the local stock.

However, I will reveal that they can only be purchased from farmers markets. Yesterday I got a bad hankering for one. Searching for a farmers market on a Tuesday, I saw one listed in Copley Square. Taking a huge detour on my bike trip from Kendall Square to Longwood, I stopped and got a bag of them. I was five minutes late to where I was going but had a tidy little stash of juicy sweet orbs tucked into my backpack and I felt smug and satsfied.

I’ve been avoiding many problems this fall, brushing them to the back of the queue, pretending they’re not there, or will go away if ignored. You know the drill.

Anyway, one of the problems I’ve been avoiding is telling my daughter’s teacher about a vacation in mid-October which will necessitate my daughter being out of school for a day. Those of you who are parents know that a vacation day such as this is an unexcused absence, and no laughing matter in the arena of elementary school.

Another problem is a ‘teacher professional day’ that is also happening sometime in mid-October. I detest ‘professional days’. The school closes down arbitrarily, and working parents are supposed to I-do-not-know what… beg babysitters? Bring ones child to work? Who knows. Anyway, I’d been avoiding thinking about it but this week I finally looked it up in the calendar.

It was incomprehensible. I checked and double checked. The vacation day and the professional day are the same day.

My daughter has several cognitive and gross motor delays and she’s received remedial services over the past several years. Earlier this month, she went through her 3-year comprehensive review.

The school psychologist and I talked on the phone last week and although she had many lovely things to say about Rada — her personality, her enthusiasm, her verbal intelligence, etc. — the psychologist also brought up what appear to be several pronounced limitations around visio-spacial ability, hand-eye coordination, and extremely weak upper-body muscle tone. Apparently some of these can be ameliorated with continuing OT and PT, but with all the kindness and compassion that she could muster, the psychologist saw clear limitations to Rada’s ability to participate in serious athletics. Hearing this felt like a gate clanging shut for Rada’s future. I listened with tears in my eyes, and kept telling myself that this fabulous daughter had many other talents, passions and skills. A life without athletics would still be a full one.

But the next day on the soccer field as I was sitting watching Rada play, I realized that the gate was in no way shut… in fact it was very much ajar.

Although fully 4 inches shorter than the rest of her team, Rada streaks down the field, opportunistically steals balls from the opposing team, throws lob kicks that completely reverse the ball’s direction, and then stands there only slightly-out-of-breath ready for the next challenge, while team members and fans scream, “Way to go Rada!”

Visio-spatial challenges? Hand-eye coordination?

Whatever.

Following the directions on their website, this is how I got to KidsPlayground from Somerville last weekend:

I fondly remember my pet worm Henry. I found him one afternoon in the school yard. A suitable habitat was constructed for Henry, filled with earth and leaves. I’m not exactly sure how long he stayed with me before being released to the wild or coming to a less auspicious end.

Recently, Rada took ‘Ben’ under her wing. Ben is a lovely dull brown earth worm who appears to have been residing in the back yard. Rada and I found a plastic container, punched holes for air, filled it with earth and leaves and brought it into the house with Ben inside. Rada spent the rest of the afternoon, talking to and training Ben.

“Come, Ben. Come here! No, Ben! Bad worm. Ben, listen to me… don’t do that… come here. Good worm! Hey, Mom: I trained him to come when I called!”

This morning however, Rada informed me that Ben’s ‘cage’ smelled awful. ‘He must have pooped’. So we decided to re-release Ben back to his natural surroundings. Hopefully Ben is doing fine and has moved on to other habitats, though Rada was sure she saw him among the hostas this afternoon when we came home.

R: Mom, I think I have a noodle in my nose.
M: How did that happen?
R: Well, I was smelling the noodle and I sniffed it right into my nose.
M: Hm…
R: Wait a minute. Its not a noodle; its just snot.
M: Oh, good.