A kid-focused notes post to kick off this week. I’ll save the sad, angry, frustrated hoops thoughts for tomorrow.
Foot Girl
L continues her healing process after surgery. Actually, things are going great. She went back to school last Monday and other than leaving early one afternoon because her splint was causing her pain, survived the week. She tried the knee scooter one day, but it was also rubbing against the splint so she decided to crutch around instead. She stopped taking her potent pain meds early last week. I think she made it through the weekend without any Tylenol. So that side of things has gone well.
As for that splint pain, we think her swelling had basically disappeared, which was causing the splint to move and rub against her incision. Which is obviously pretty tender. That pain was getting worse than her surgical pain, so I took her in Friday to get it checked. I figured they would just put a new splint on. They indeed took the post-op splint off, giving us a good look at her foot. No irritation on the incision from the rubbing. Way less swelling and discoloration than I expected. I thought her foot would look like mine when I tore my ankle up and my entire leg was a horrific combination of purples, yellows, and greens for a couple weeks. She just had a tiny bit of yellow around the incision.
However, rather than re-splinting her, they went ahead and put a cast on. When the PA said that was the plan, L gave me an excited look thinking the entire process was going to be pushed forward. Sadly, that’s not the case. She’ll still go in next Monday to have this cast removed, the stitches taken out, and then get a new cast that will stay on for three more weeks. The important thing is with her pain under control and her foot looking pretty good, she seems to be healing as expected.
I had never seen a cast put on before. That is a fascinating process. And way simpler than I expected.
The new bummer is that L is very itchy under the cast. Every time she complains I remind her that at least she isn’t in a splint that is rubbing the incision.
Some friends picked her up Friday and they went out to dinner, then all came back to our house after. The girls decided they wanted ice cream so L drove them, her first time driving since surgery. I was a little nervous about that, but with five passengers at least she had support if she fell or needed help getting in-and-out. I’m not sure I ever clearly identified it, but the surgery was on her left foot so actual driving isn’t an issue.
Retreat Girl
C was on her senior retreat last week. Each senior class is divided into five different groups that go to a retreat center for three days over the course of the year. They leave after school Tuesday and return Friday evening. CHS students aren’t required to go, but are highly encouraged to attend. Afterward, there are always kids who say they really didn’t want to go but ended up enjoying it.
There is obviously a religious component. But it is as much about figuring out who you are and how you interact with others as you prepare to go off to college. The organizers try to mix up friend groups across the retreats, and then put people in small groups with people they don’t know very well. There are lots of long talks where people reveal things they have never talked about at school. I think it gets pretty intense and emotional. It definitely creates some bonds that, if not quite friendships, at least get kids interacting with classmates they had no previous relationships with.
This retreat also had way more boys, since football and soccer players can’t go in the fall. S C was one of 14 girls on this trip. One of those girls was an old buddy from St P’s that C hadn’t really had much of a relationship with in high school. Apparently they got along well, which is cool since that girl and her family are staying near us over spring break. It was cool to see all the Instagram posts from the kids once they got home.
Anyway, C seemed to have a great time. She’s been through some stuff the last four years, a lot of it I’ve never shared here and likely never will. She opened up about some of that to her small group, which I think is a good thing. When she was relating her health history, mostly about her weird-ass back that is missing parts, one of her small group members looked at her and said, “Damn! You’re an alien!” which made everyone laugh. She also really bonded with several of the teachers who were there as group leaders and guides. She tends to be very quiet at school, and I think it was an ego boost to have teachers tell her how much they enjoyed really getting to know her.
Of course one of the bonuses of retreat is that the kids come home grateful for what their parents have done for them. Our kids are usually pretty thankful and express that to us. It does make you think you did something right as a parent when they reiterate that rather than come home with a list of things we did wrong as we were raising them.
We had several long talks Friday and Saturday. I told her I was no where near mature enough to share with others as she did, nor as empathetic as she is when I was her age. To be fair, I also hadn’t been through as much as she has. And she’s been through A LOT less than some of the kids she spent the week with. She has multiple friends who have already had parents die, and there were at least three kids in the big group of 45 that have had a siblings die. Which is utterly tragic.
When I was a senior my parents had been divorced for eight years, but that didn’t really bother me. We went through a few years where my mom had almost no money and we came close to moving back in with her parents. But I didn’t realize that until years later. And my stepdad had just survived his first round of cancer, but I was an idiot and thought there was no chance he would die even when the first doctor he went to gave him six months to live. Throw social media nonsense in, and today’s kids have been through exponentially more than I ever went through as a high schooler.
Interviewing Girl
I mentioned last week that M was working hard on finding an internship for the summer but not having much luck. This past week she had four interviews, two of them second rounders.
Thursday she got her first offer. It’s with a home construction group in Cincinnati as a marketing intern. She called us as soon as she found out and was very excited. I believe they gave her seven days to make a decision.
Friday she had a second interview for a position in Dayton, which she isn’t crazy about but apparently she has impressed the people there. Then she had an interview with an ad agency here in Indy. She hasn’t told us if she would hold out for the Indy job if she thought she might get it. I’m also not sure if it pays, where the one in Cincy does. I guess she has a couple days to figure all that out.
So good news, although it might mean that she just spends a couple weeks here before she heads back to Cincy for most of the summer. And we have to find her a place to live for a couple months.
I also don’t believe that I’ve shared a change in her plans for this time next year. Originally she was going to spend the spring ’26 semester in Verona, Italy. Then she heard something like nine other girls in her sorority were going to do that same program. She really didn’t want to go to another country and have to spend time with that many girls from her house. After talking to the study abroad folks about her options, they recommended programs in Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. It’s not official yet as the paperwork is still working through the system, but she will most likely do the Lisbon program. Just one of her good friends will be going, too.
So our spring break in a year may well be a trip to see her. Which would be incredible. I’m already re-discovering the various YouTube travel advice channels I was obsessed with before our trip to Italy two years ago.
