Transitions

This year Evie entered the 4th grade. When she and I went to Open House at her school, her teacher talked about how 4th grade is a transition year. It's when students really start to think independently - to use the skills they've learned in previous years to begin expanding their knowledge.

The teacher said something that really stuck with me: "Your children are no longer learning to read. Now they're reading to learn."

We're also experiencing transition on another level.

This is the first year since Jeff's injury that I haven't written to Evie's teacher at the beginning of the year explaining that she is the daughter of a quadriplegic - that five years ago, her dad's injury forced a massive change in our family life, and that Evie has done a great job of handling it all.

This is the first year that it's been entirely up to her to decide if and when she wants to tell her teacher or her class about her dad.

Some days she wants to, and other days she doesn't.

And we've had to learn to be okay with whatever she decides.

* * * * *
Two weekends ago, Jeff had to spend a couple days in the hospital.

The following week, Evie was chosen in her class to talk about something that had happened the previous weekend. So she stood up in front of her class and said, "Last Saturday my dad had to go to the hospital."

She said over half the class raised their hands with questions. She was only allowed to call on two students.

The first asked, "Is your dad paralyzed?" At this point, there are quite a few friends at school who know about this fact.

"Yes," Evie answered.

The next question was, "Why did your dad have to go to the hospital?"

Here's what Evie said: "He was having AD - autonomic dysreflexia - which means his blood pressure was really high. My mom was trying to get it to go back down, but nothing was working. So we had to call 911."

Several students simultaneously mumbled, "What's auto...rama...flexa?" But the bell rang, and that was the end of her time.

I looked at my daughter - who was eating her spaghetti while she was telling me this story - and realized that I was witnessing a transition moment.

"You said all of that to your whole class?" I asked.

"Uh huh," she answered casually.

"Great job," I said. Not so much because she shared the information, but because of what she shared.

I can remember when she first learned to say "autonomic dysreflexia" and how proud she was to correctly pronounce a complex phrase. But now she wasn't just saying it. She was saying what it meant. She was showing that she understands that when it happens, it's a big deal.

Because in truth, Jeff's injury IS a big deal in our life. This isn't necessarily true for every person or every family who lives with a spinal cord injury. But it is for us. It's still new enough and challenging enough to warrant the label of a big f-ing deal.

I think in many ways, we're still transitioning as a family. We've got a solid understanding of the injury itself and all the side effects that come with it, but we're still learning to make room for it. We're still figuring out how to deal with this big, crazy, cumbersome thing that's pushed its way into our life and taken up permanent residence with us.

And each day we learn a little more.