Saturday, June 1, 2019

Saturday, June 1, 2019

Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2008. Mattie started his cancer treatment that month! While home between infusions, Mattie's preschool teacher, Margaret, came to visit. It is hard to believe that both Mattie and Margaret are no longer with us. Today is the fifth anniversary of Margaret's death and I will never forget how Mattie grew, developed, and made his first friends in Margaret's classroom. In the process, I gained a wonderful friend. 


Quote of the day: It's one of the ironies of human nature that the most sensitive people are generally insensitive to the feelings of others. ~ Ann Landers


Ann Landers' quote caught my attention tonight. Why? I guess because I do consider myself sensitive to other people's feelings, yet under certain circumstances, I probably can be insensitive. I will give you an example. Today, Peter and I took Sunny with us to Home Depot. I needed to purchase a few plants for our garden to replace some that had died. While in the garden section of Home Depot, a woman came up to me and started giving me a hard time about Sunny. She said... 'don't you know your dog's feet are hot, touching the pavement.' Certainly I could have responded with either no response or with something snappy. But instead, I said to her..... 'Sunny lives in the District of Columbia and is VERY used to walking on pavement even in the summer months.' With that I walked away. She had no response. If I thought about being sensitive, I could have thanked her for her concern and made conversation with her. But frankly, my response was the best I could do at the moment. 

After that wonderful interaction, then a man came up to me and said..... 'what a beautiful dog. Can I pet him?' This fellow and I got to talking and I learned that his border collie died and he misses that dog. But he does have another one at home. He told me that his dog is like his child, and he doesn't leave home that often without his dog. Needless to say, we got along splendidly because our pets are a vital part of our family. I do think it is interesting that these two very different conversations happened within minutes of each other, which just confirms to me that how a question is asked, and the tone that is used in the inquiry can elicit very different responses from the same person. 

Tonight's Walk & Family Festival photos highlight the Lego activities at the event. In 2011, I got connected with the WamaTLCs (The Washington Area Lego Train Club). Particularly a wonderful couple, Rich and Linda Schamus. Rich and his wife have been working with us for years! They do not charge us a thing and I assure you their set up is time consuming and labor intensive. But their train and city displays are incredible. They also bring thousands of Lego bricks to the Walk for kids of all ages to play and build. 

See what I mean.... kids of all ages gravitate to build under the Lego tent. We have Legos at our Walks in honor of Mattie, the King of the Legos. During Mattie's cancer treatment, we owned every Lego kit on the market that year. Legos in essence were therapeutic for us as a family and these creations enabled Mattie's nurses to connect with him. Many times Mattie did not want people in his room. But if someone was coming to talk about his Lego structures, then some how that broke the ice and conversation ensued. 

These are colleagues of Peter's! They have been supporting us for years. The three year old is Charlotte, she is our God Daughter. She even attended our Walk as a newborn!

These are our wonderful volunteers, who signed up to work under the Lego tent. Little kids and tiny Lego pieces always concern me which is why I feel it is important to have supervision on hand and I know the little kids like interacting with the teenagers. 

The fellow on the right is Kazu. Mattie and Kazu were close friends in kindergarten. In fact, they met each other in summer camp of 2007, a couple of months before school officially started. I enrolled Mattie in camp in hopes of him making friends before kindergarten. I like to take credit for their friendship. On the first day of camp, I literally walked into the classroom with Mattie. All the other kids seemed to know each other and Mattie felt anxious. I noticed another little boy by himself. I literally walked up to him, him being Kazu. I introduced Mattie to Kazu and I suggested they get to know each other and stick together. Believe it or not, that actually worked! So much so that Kazu's mom, Junko, and I have become close friends and Junko's whole family are big Mattie Miracle supporters.