Photo: Adi Rozen-Zvi
Where gold leaf
Lends good fortune
And the crowds
Come to pray,
Shines the hum
Of the many
Wishing for plenty
Today.
For the RDP Monday challenge: Copious
Copious Fortune
belief
A Shared Pedigree
Photo: Ofir Asif
In the lineage of eras
Where fossils yet live
Ancestry beyond measure
Offers paths to believe.
Time unfolds on itself
Memories seek a reprieve
As humble roots we all share
Still continue to give.
For The Daily Post
Share this:
Jujus
Photo: Samantha Mars
She dragged her book bag up the stairs.
Step, bang. Step, bang.
“It looks heavy,” I noted.
“Yeah,” she huffed and paused to frown in the direction of the patchwork of princesses on the backpack. I found myself wondering whether she was directing discontent at her idolized figures not using their royal powers to, at the very least, summon genie help to manage gravity.
“Want me to help carry the bag for you?” I offered.
She raised an eyebrow as if the mere thought of my definitely-not-princess hands handling her bag was beneath the Disney figures that dignified it.
The first-grader lugged the bag another step and stopped, perhaps to reconsider if there are times when commoners’ help is better than none at all. “Yeah,” she nodded.
I walked down to take the bag from her. The thing was heavy!
“What do you have in there?!” I asked. “Rocks?!”
“Aha,” she nodded sagely, skipped a few steps up ahead of me and swiveled her head to look back at me. “Come faster. I want to show you.”
I lifted the bag (and an eyebrow) in her direction and she giggled. “Sorry… Thanks.”
Once upstairs she indicated I was to clear space for whatever that was, then ceremoniously unzipped the top of her school bag and pulled out a succession of boulders. She placed each with care onto the desk. Several pounds of them.
I waited. The lot looked to me like run-of-the-mill New York stones: mostly dark gray schist dappled with a bit of quartz glint.
She leaned back in her chair and waited. Clearly a reaction was warranted.
“That’s a lot of rocks!” I managed.
“Not regular rocks,” she admonished. “These have magic.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” she proclaimed. “They have real magic. And gold, too. Inside.”
I tilted my head a bit to one side and nodded my interest.
She narrowed her eyes at me, weighing the merits of talking to grown ups about matters of magic and gold. “They can even make your wishes come true …”
“But … ” she regarded me before adding, a bit haughtily and perhaps to punish me for my lack of immediate awe, “you do have to believe in them, so they’ll only do the magic for me.”
For The Daily Post
Share this:
Fraud or Dare
Photo: Atara Katz
When your mind wants one truth
But all facts show another,
Will you see what is there
Or mold sooth as you’d rather?
When you seek to believe
What you wish
Not what’s real,
Will you claim truth a fraud
Or urge gyp
Be revealed?
For The Daily Post
Share this:
Happy Flying!
This is the sweetest story of an eight year old with a lost tooth and an obliging tooth fairy, but most of all, it is the story of a principal who understood, and did what he could.
And that, as we know, is a lovely whole lot!
Here is the story from Vancouver:
Principal Writes Letter to Tooth Fairy
A letter from a B.C. principal to the Tooth Fairy on behalf of an eight-year-old girl has gone viral after it was posted on the school’s Facebook page.
Avery Patchett is in Grade 3 at James Hill Elementary School in Langley and last week she lost her third tooth during class. Her teacher gave her a necklace to help her keep the tooth safe, but when she went outside at recess to play she tripped and fell, knocking the tooth into the dirt.
“When I tripped and lost it, I lost it forever,” she said. “I looked a couple of times and I still haven’t found it because the tooth looks like rocks.”
That is when her principal, Chris Wejr, stepped in to help.
Avery came to him crying about what had happened. “She was upset because she had lost her lost tooth and she was worried the Tooth Fairy wasn’t going to come,” said Wejr.
“I said ‘well, I’ve sent a letter to the Tooth Fairy before and it worked’ and I said ‘what do you think about us sitting down and writing up a formal letter with our logo on it and everything and giving that to the tooth fairy?’”
So they wrote a letter together and Avery took it home to give to the Tooth Fairy.
“She gave me five dollars,” she said.
Wejr had previously helped a student at his former school through a similar experience and said it is important to help kids in this way and to share these stories. When he posted the letter on the school’s Facebook page, it immediately generated a huge response.
“It shows that people want to hear the positives,” he said. “There’s so many incredible caring moments that happen in schools every day and they don’t get shared, so we try to share the positive moments that happen at school once in a while.”
Avery’s mom Debbie said she did not expect this at all from her child’s principal. “I just thought, ‘wow, it’s a really nice gesture’,” she said.
“He took something really small and made this a memory for her that will last forever, and it is a small gesture, but it means everything,” she added. “We hear so many horrible stories every day, it’s nice to hear this story, this small little story, this little gesture.”
Wejr said the lesson here is that sometimes adults need to stop and make sure they show kids they care and help them in moments of distress.
“Sometimes the small things can really have a large impact if we just take the time,” he said.
© Shaw Media, 2014
To see a video clip of the story, click here.
Share this:
Believe in Magic!
“Is the tooth-fairy real?”
The six-year-old shows me a new hole in her mouth. First wobbly baby tooth fell out over the past week, welcoming this Kindergartener to a new world, as well as placing her face to face with the frail veil between reality and fantasy, logic and magic.
“What do you think?” (again, my standard reply: she must have some hypothesis about this if she’s asking. I’m more interested in knowing what she’s thinking than telling her about mine)
Frown. Pause. A searching look–am I doing the ‘adult avoidance of answers dance’ or am I really interested? She decides I’m worth the effort.
“I think she’s not real,” the little girl curls one side of her mouth with the bitterness of the words.
“Wow, really? Why??” The surprise in my voice is real enough, even if the extra oomph to it is intentional as a way to mirror the depth of the child’s emotion about this.
“Because it is really not her. It is mommies and daddies. The tooth-fairy is just pretend. I saw my mommy put the dollar under my pillow,” she is trying to sound very matter of fact about it, but she is disappointed. Crushed, more like. A little miffed, too, for the charades, and for having noticed it. Certain kinds of knowing exact a high price.
“Oh, well, maybe the tooth-fairy just needed their help,” I note. Sometimes such announcements about magic-loss are actually challenges, fragile requests for help in restoring the possibility of wonder, Santa-Clause, and fairies.
Eyebrows raised–am I trying to trick her?–but there’s also a smallish rounding of wonder in her eyes. She’s curious now. Hopeful. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m thinking, all those children losing teeth. I bet sometimes there are just too many in one night for the tooth-fairy to get to, so maybe she asks the parents to help.”
“Oh.” A moment of silent thinking. She’s letting this in, perched on the fence between accepting what she wants to believe, and what would put doubts to rest but also put out magic.
I wait. There’s no rushing works of hearts.
“So …” she pipes up, “Maybe my mommy helped because there’s only one tooth-fairy and she was too busy?”
“Maybe, huh?”
“YEAH!” her face transforms. It is lit now. “Because the tooth-fairy, she only has little wings, and maybe she had to be very far, like in California … so she couldn’t have time to come everywhere at night!” Pause. Smile. Wonder in her eyes. “You think maybe next time … when my other tooth falls, see? (she demonstrates a minor-wiggle in the other top incisor), you think the tooth-fairy will maybe be in New York?”
Magic restored.
Na'ama Yehuda 
You must be logged in to post a comment.