Health Assessment and Sixteen

Note:  This will likely be a downer post.

The Boy brought home a letter from school about the Washington State Healthy Youth Survey.  The survey is given on October 15 to all 6th, 8th, 10th and 12th graders in Seattle Public Schools.  

October 15 is Ada's sixteenth birthday.  She would have been in 10th grade and taking the test on the same day as the Boy.  I read about the topics, and thought about how she would have addressed them.  

Feelings about school and community: no answer, dead

Relationships with parents, friends and neighbors: no answer, dead

Eating habits, physical activity: none, dead

And so on.

She would have been sixteen.  I was talking to some friends once about raising a teenage daughter.  They all have children the Boy's age and younger, so they have yet to experience the professional level of sass that a teenage girl can emit.  One of the dad's said, "She is in band.  She has to be a good kid."

"She is a good kid but an awful person,"  I said.  They laughed.  I didn't.  Those with daughters will find out for themselves one day.  Of course, I love the Big E, but that doesn't make having a teenage daughter easier.

Later, one fathers approached me.  "My brother has an older daughter.  He said they call it 'Sweet Sixteen' for a reason."  

So this would have been Ada's sixteenth birthday.  She would have been in 10th grade, a sophomore. Based on the laws of averages, she would have come out of her slump and re-emerged as a civilized human being.  I'd be out of the weeds.

I would like to say that I have thought of her everyday since she died, but I haven't.  I have a ring in her memory, but I don't wear it everyday.  I don't have long, thin, fingers and wearing two rings feels bulky.  (The Big E has beautiful hands.  Her hands are the size of Jack's, but they are perfectly proportioned.)  But there are times when I think about Ada a lot, and October is one of those times.

One of my friends at a soccer game asked me how I got to be solved involved in PTA.  How did I become such a leader?  Did I have prior experience?  The real question isn't how, but why.  I didn't get involved because of the Big E and the Boy.  I got involved because of Ada.  Because there was a time in my life when I didn't know if I ever would become a mom.  Because my brother has schizophrenia, and I know that there are kids out there who have parents who aren't capable of taking care of them, for whatever reason.  Mix the two together, and I turned into a crazy volunteer.  In fairness, I met some of lovely people and some of my dearest friends.  For that I am grateful.

Each year, I think of Ada in different ways.  Sixteen years ago today would have been the last day she was alive.  The doctors think she died on the 13th.  I learned she died on the 14th, and she was delivered on the 15th.  I was thinking that this was the last day I was ever happy, but that's not true.  It was the last day that in my life before I knew what sorrow meant.  It was the last time I was innocent.