Birdyhead

All the changes at once

This week is Theron's last at Lumbini. He's been there since spring of 2005 and they took him in when we had no where to go. They accepted that he had some problems to work out and with love and discipline he didn't have the problems again. He made good friends, he learned to read like a fourth grader, he does math, he has confidence. Theron says he's looking forward to his new school. We're a little worried, but at least in the beginning, until we can work things out, I am going to pick him up from school as soon as he is done, to make sure he doesn't feel lost.
Theron is also playing soccer now. They're still in practice, the first game isn't for a couple of weeks. I was excited about this and Ashley was apprehensive. I thought, why, what could go wrong? That's because I've never been a little boy and I didn't know what their lives are like. I think girls aren't terribly cruel to each other until they're maybe tweens. From what I'm told boys start establishing a pecking order earlier. Not long after Theron and Ash arrived at the field an older boy tried to pick a fight with him. With his dad, one of the coaches, right there. Then, as they were walking off the field, Theron had his ball in his arms and another boy hit it so he dropped it. Theron cried. Again, the parents were there and this happens anyway. My friend Steven said when he was in school there was a fight after school everyday, but it never got too far. There was an understanding that when someone started crying, it was over. If you were up against a really big kid you would start crying before it even started to concede defeat. Anyway, I asked Ashley why that kid would have hit Theron's ball and Ashley said to be mean. And I said, but Why? He doesn't even know him, and Ashley repeated, He did it to be mean. I don't want this to be a scary thing for all of us. Now I'm worried about school in a way I wasn't before because he has been so sheltered at Lumbini. I guess this is life, too. We can't protect him from everything, though we'll try to as much as we can.
Anyway, we went to Aunt Nita's for swimming. It's funny with all the sun lately that on this particular day it actually rained. Maybe because I'd spent the morning washing my car and watering the lawn. But no matter, it wasn't cold until the rain started. We ate cheeseburgers. We tried to get Nita to tell us stories about when Grandpa Flip was a little boy but she said he was mostly good. She did tell us about the time he gathered up all the discarded Christmas trees on the block and made a forest in the backyard.

Theron went shopping with me this weekend and while he was sitting in the cart at Trader Joe's he read one of the signs out loud. Two tattooed hipster girls told him what a good reader he is. He said, "That's because I'm 6!" and one said, No, I think it's more than that, I think you're just a really good reader. And Theron was actually speechless. I said, Thank you for that.