From the kind heart of S.Rube... on her Special Day

We can all take a lesson from my daughter today. She has me in tears on the way home from school after telling me about her "Special Day".

In her Grade One class, the kids take turns at having a Special Day. On their Day, that child gets to read out the other kids' names, do the weather, point out their spelling words aloud from the white board, hold the door open for their classmates and choose a friend in the class to walk the attendance down to the office with.

Last month sometime, S.Rube got chosen to go to the office by a friend in the class and was telling me how excited and happy she was about it. It lead me to ask her if there was anyone in the class who had never been chosen before, and she answered that, "Yes, there is one person who has never been picked." I asked who it was and S.Rube told me. (Let's call her Loralee). She told me that Loralee has no friends in the class and that nobody really ever talks to her or plays with her. We spent a few minutes talking about how sad that must be for Loralee, in the hopes that empathy for the situation might arise.

Today, I asked S.Rube how her Special Day was while we drove home. She responded that it was really good. And then she said, "And you know what, mom? You know how we talked about Loralee before and you said that I should take the time to be nice to her? Well, I picked her. I picked her to go to the office with me."

Damn, I'm crying again as I write this, which was my reaction in the car too, as the magnitude of what S.Rube had just said settled in. She picked Loralee. Out of every friend she has in that class, she picked Loralee.
And, in making Loralee's little heart soar and adding a smile to her face today, S.Rube knows undoubtedly that her own heart, too, has grown much bigger.