I began today to clean up the basement. We have more junk and clothes and toys and crap down there than we will ever use. The nice thing is that we can have a pretty terrific yard sale in a couple of weeks. The Lego’s alone have the potential to bring in a enough to pay for a weekend getaway. I figure if we haven’t used it in the four years we’ve lived here then out it goes!

As I was sifting through the toys, books and puzzles our grandchildren used when they were living here I came across some books that my grandson’s third grade teacher had given him. Kash loved his teacher that year: Mrs. Tavitian. She was kind and had patience that was so far beyond any I’d experienced, ever, I can’t begin to describe it. After 22 years of teaching, I’m not sure I would have been so patient.  Kash was more than a handful–constantly in motion and also one of the smartest kids in the class! A fact that would frustrate Mrs. Tavitian, the school’s principal and me, pretty much every day.

I met with Mrs. Tavitian probably once a week for the first several weeks of the school year. We worked together on action plans that could support Kash both at school and home; consistency, we both knew, was the name of the game and the key to Kash’s success. Mrs. Tavitian balanced the needs of the other thirteen students in her class with keeping Kash in check in a way that no student felt slighted and Kash didn’t feel called out in front of his classmates. She told me she never could have been so patient and given Kash the level of attention she did if the class had been any bigger.

When it came time for our grandkids to move back to Arizona it was still summer break. I didn’t want Mrs. Tavitian to find that Kash was not in school in September when he didn’t show up, so I called to tell her. We’d decided to have a little party for the kids’ friends and our family to say good-bye to them and I invited Mrs. Tavitian to come. Kash, in a way only he could, told her what a great teacher she was and that he’d miss her. She gave him an envelope with her address and stamp on it and asked him to let her know how he is doing in school. They hugged. She cried. And said good-bye.

Thank you Mrs. Tavitian!

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