Graduation Celebrations (June 15)
What a moment to be alive. In our house we are celebrating this national uprising, the national shift in consciousness around racial injustice and policing. Our kids are making signs and asking deep questions, and Burke and I are feeling at times worried about the power of white supremacy to push back, and at times so hopeful about how big the changes might be that come of this moment of collective power pushing for racial justice. May we all continue to/begin to follow the lead of the brilliant and powerful Black leaders who are pointing the way toward a society with more freedom and more justice.
Lucas’s PRESCHOOL graduation pic!
And… I come to our blog to tell you about our small celebrations. Ida is “graduating” from preschool next week, and Lucas is graduating from elementary school. It is true. Lucas has been in Seattle public schools for a whopping EIGHT years – two years of preschool at Lowell Elementary, and six years of elementary school at Orca. Over the past few months I’ve seen more closely than ever all the physical challenges Lucas faces to access his curriculum. Which makes it all the more incredible how well he is doing in school. This kid who cannot engage the world the way other kids do – cannot find things and pick them up and stack them, count them, study them, move them, taste them, throw them… he is nonetheless learning to multiply fractions and negative numbers, creating powerpoint presentations on the culture and traditions of Mexico, reading chapter books and working to understand the more subtle nuance, and now researching local wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centers.
And Ida. Ida is amazing. She is resisting us teaching her to read or write, yet sneakily figuring it out when we’re not looking. “How did you know that said ‘Fox?'” I asked her, trying to prove that she can read. “Oh, I just know,” she says. She is a prolific artist. She says on some days that when she grows up she will be a mom to thousands of children. Other days she says she’ll have children but leave them to her husband to care for while she is the president and an artist. This morning she told me that when she grows up she will be in her RV in the Redwoods when she meets her husband or wife, and they will then drive to Alaska (because she loves the cold and wants to see a blizzard) and they will have three or four children and her job will be painting RVs and camper vans pink and yellow. It is incredible (and, to be quarantine honest, sometimes exhausting) to keep up with her endless imagination.
So, we wanted to invite you to celebrate our amazing kids with us!
Options:
1) Create a short video for Lucas – with a joke, a song, a short story, a greeting of congratulations. Doesn’t have to be fancy. Burke will put them together for him. Here’s a folder to drop videos into. Ideal would be by this Friday, though we’ll probably also compile later videos into a Part 2 for him.
2) Send a card. Now that we’re home all day, Ida is a big fan of noticing when the mail comes. And she loves cards. You could address it just to Ida, or Lucas and Ida. (Lucas’s feelings won’t be hurt.) If you need our address let me know and I’ll email/text.
3) Send a small donation. Lucas is part of a group of kids raising money for local organizations working in issues of homelessness and wildlife rescue. (They are still in the process of picking the organizations – we’re hoping they’ll be sure to have organizations working for racial justice on the list.) They are collectively raising the money and then donating it. So, if you like, you can paypal/venmo money to me, and send Lucas an email telling him you’ve donated as a graduation gift. Lucas’s email is lucas AT estansbury dot com, and my paypal is www.paypal.me/kristaleehanson and venmo is @Krista-Hanson-6. If you’re mailing a card, you could also put cash in the envelope and a note that it’s a donation for Lucas’s fundraising project.
Thanks for celebrating this moment – our kids, this moment in history – with us. Here’s a picture from the one socially distanced protest we got the whole family out to last week. (It was beautiful and powerful and led by high school students. The audio track that goes with this involves a thousand high school students chanting, Ida trying to lead “Black Lives Matter” chants any time there was a break in the mass chanting, hundreds of cars and buses and trucks honking, and Lucas sticking with it until he couldn’t handle the noise any longer. )
