Leiya

Last week I wrote about Takumi and his jr. high mishap and I thought to play fairly I should relate Leiya's too. Leiya gave me permission to reveal secrets in her past.

My daughter has never been a girly girl. She doesn't like frilly things and she's never been considered delicate and petite. Except where her brother is concerned I always considered Leiya to be slow to anger and fairly level headed, but my illusions were dashed when one morning we got a phone call from her jr. high (same one Takumi had made a name at four years earlier. That school was so glad when both my kids graduated!)

"Could you please come immediately to the school. We think Leiya has broken her hand."

Ahh, well, these things happen and as I ran out the door I was thinking,

"Did she fall off her bicycle on her way to school? Did she get hurt in morning bamboo sword practice (her club)?"

At the nurse's office there was the health teacher and the home room teacher and numerous friends all clustered around a bed on which Leiya lay looking decidedly green! I'd never seen a green person before! Definitely green!

One look at the hand and I had to agree. The hand had a huge lump in it and looked very broken. So off we went to the doctor that is recommended by the school.

As we waited for the doctor I got the details.

"Did you fall? Did you get struck with a bamboo sword? What happened?" (My poor injured little girl!)

"No. I got mad at my friend so I punched the door and I heard a snap and my hand had this big lump and I almost fainted and my friend helped me up to the nurse's room."

"WHAT! You punched a door! How stupid is that!" My poor injured girl was now just a dumb, hot-headed thug!

I didn't feel much sympathy for her after that! The only good thing was that she had punched a door and not her friend!

The hand was set and put in a cast and Leiya had an inconvenient 6 weeks because she couldn't hold a pencil (not good for her studies) nor a bamboo sword (her team mates and coach were very upset with her). But it wasn't until 6 weeks later when the cast came off that I could have turned into a hot-headed thug myself!

The hand still had a lump in it! Wait a minute, I said to the doctor, is this it? You mean, you set the bone still crooked? Talk about fury! The doctor seemed to think he was finished with us so I went home to rant and rave and fume and took Leiya to another specialist who said yes, the bone had been set wrong and unless we wanted to take her to a major hospital and have surgery, she'd have to live with it.

Tetsu seemed to think that we learned not ever to go back to the first doctor (the same one who hadn't taken head x-rays when Takumi landed on his head!) but beyond that there was no reason to cause a ruckus. Leiya was just pleased that her hand was out of the cast and she definitely did not want to have the hand re-broken and operated on! It took me a long time to get past the fact that my daughter's hand was lumpy and she now held a pencil at an odd angle.

However... Leiya's hand has smoothed out a bit as the years go by and she has learned how to hold her temper as well as hold a pencil however oddly. And I guess the jr. high incident hasn't interfered with her artistic abilities because she will be going on to study art in college.