A Real Man's Weapon

My daughter has been wanting to go down to the creek for over a week now.   She can't go by herself because it is a world of hazard for a blind child between the door out our back down a steep hill, over fencing with rebar that has bent over after years of trying to hold back silt which is now holding back the hill itself.  There are brier blackberry bushes and all manner of weeds and vines.  Once you find a spot to traverse the original silt fencing from when the neighborhood was made and have gotten into the woods proper it gets no safer. 

The creek she could hear, but there are saplings and low tree branches with sharp pointy things that could poke her in the eyes.  The ground covering is highly irregular with roots, fallen branches, and rocks.   If she managed to somehow safely make it to the creek she wouldn't know how to get down to it.   For a sighted person it's difficult enough to find a way to get down the embankment to the water, requiring you to evaluate along the water's edge until there is a low-treachery level where you can get down without slipping that has handholds you can grasp safely. 

Then once you're at the creek level what is a rocky outcropping of pebbles and what drops off into a foot or two of water?  Where are there large rocks you can step on or if you can't see them you can fall on them and hit your head, knocking you out face down in the water?  Ir's 100% hazard for a blind child and a cane does no good in that level of complex terrain. 

But she wanted to go and today my husband and she went down with him helping her get through the gauntlet of hazards safely.   And she had the absolute best time.  She told me all about it, saying at one point, "And I got to hack down a vine with the machete!  Ah, a real man's weapon."  

I tried really hard not to laugh but I failed.  I said I thought it was how she said it that was so cute.  She didn't bristle.  She was still happy from just getting to the creek she knows is so close yet so far away to her personally.

The Big Boy Update:  We found out today that the one middle school my son wanted to go to was now full and would be taking no additional applicants for next year.  My son was okay with it, saying that it had been a hard decision because while he wanted to go to that middle school, he also wanted to stay for the final year at his current school.   We have more information about next year and there is possibly a better chance for him to get in.   We don't know where he or we failed on the application.   I thought he did fairly well on everything although there is one part he might have been able to do better in that we can improve on for next year.   We did tell him there were a lot of siblings applying and that they were all getting priority over him.  I don't want him to think he failed at anything.  I think he's fine with it, but as a mother, I always worry.    

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is getting lazy at the end of the school year, not doing homework because she's forgetting but because she's fast she's able to do it quickly in the morning once she gets to school before class starts.  Tonight she remembered again that she had work to do.  She is rushing to get it done before it's too late.