The other fourth graders are happily engaged in the work at hand, namely, farming at a local sustainable farm.  They interact easily with each other as they shovel compost into a few rusty wheelbarrows.  I’ve spent a good chunk of the morning congratulating myself for volunteering to chaperone my first school field trip. 

Dora pokes her shovel around at the edge of the pile, clearly bored out of her mind.  I can’t really blame her, I think, Dora likes what she likes. Whenever another child shows Dora attention, she moves closer to them, too close, sometimes grabbing their arm and leaning into them, smiling. Or she drops her shovel and invites the other child to go do something else, something more interesting. I watch the other girls turn away from my beautiful child one after another and my insides feel like someone pushed hard on an old bruise. Read More