Rachel on crutches

As it turns out, Rachel -- even injured -- is one amazing kid. She got the hang of crutches immediately, saying that she had seen a girl in a movie use them, and read in a book about someone using them, so she just taught herself from there.

"I know you and Mommy are worried about my leg," Rachel told Drew last week. "But, really, it's NO BIG DEAL!!"

She is definitely not milking this. She was upset because everyone, she says, keeps asking her about her leg, and all the kids at recess keeping following her and saying, "Can I hold your crutches? Can I hold your crutches?" I tried to explain to her that it's not every day that a 6-year-old is on crutches, so she'll have to get used to people being curious -- until they all get tired of remarking on it and move on to something else.

She didn't seem convinced.

On Saturday morning, as we were leaving Yom Kippur services held in a local high school, a young parent looked at her and said cheerfully, "No more flying off the roof! You were trying to be Mary Poppins, right?" She much preferred that to the standard, "What HAPPENEND to you??" and so that cheered her right up. Then that night, when we arrived at a break-the-fast that someone at the synagogue invited us to (she happens to live three blocks away, so we walked), the first person we ran into was a guy who had a boot, too! He was recovering from surgery, and he and Rachel exchanged stories, and she felt instantly at home.

It was actually a lovely break-the-fast -- we ended up talking to the guy in the boot and his high-school kids about the best middle schools in Arlington. Both went to H.B. Woodlawn, a school for artsy, smart kids that you can only get into through a lottery (and they only take about five kids a year from McKinley). The oldest kid, Gaby, said to me, "I can tell, after five minutes of talking to Rachel, that she would LOVE H.B. Woodlawn." I considered that quite a compliment!