Lessons can be tough

     This past week our youngest has had to learn some pretty hard lessons. Last weekend the tablet that he received for his birthday ended up with a broken screen. This was the direct result of him not taking proper care of it. He had left it lying on the floor in the basement, and then he and his sister were chasing each other around throwing pillows at each other. Sounds like lots of fun except for somewhere during the running someone had stepped on the tablet. This lead to a discussion about how everyone needed to do a better job of looking after their belongings. That conversation was followed by him being informed that we would not be replacing the tablet as it was only six weeks old. At this point he was doing a lot better than I thought he would at keeping it together.
     The next lesson was a much tougher one. What could be tougher for a kid than losing his electronics? Losing a pet. On Monday, we discovered that our pet tiger salamander, Baker's pet, had died. To fully understand how hard this lesson was I will give you a little background on "Dudley".
     Last spring we were on a mission to clean up our yard, at the time we were living in an acreage subdivision. Underneath an evergreen beside the garage lay what used to be our overhead garage door. The door was removed when we turned our garage in to a gym. While we were loading the pieces in to the trailer Baker and his sisters found this tiny little salamander nestled in the pine needles. They immediately picked the little guy up and brought their new prize to my attention. At this point I was in "trying to get stuff done" mode and said "that's nice put him down and get back to work". Amazingly enough that is exactly what they did. After the load of garage door parts went to the dump we redirected our attention to all of the pine needles that had piled up over the last few years. Raking the needles back to dirt and loading the piles on to the trailer. In the midst of the raking frenzy, in complete astonishment, I found this same little salamander wedged between the prongs of the plastic rake. Baker seeing this dropped everything and ran over to pull him out. At this point there was no saying "no" to "Can we keep him?".

     On Monday a very nervous girl came in to the living room to talk to me. She said that she had gone in to give Dudley some fresh water and that he wasn't moving. She said that she was afraid to tell Baker because she didn't want to get blamed for it. I told her that it wasn't the time to worry about blame, that the fact that Dudley was dead was way more important then what had happened or who's "fault" it was. Adrianna went to find Baker and I went to tell Dawn what had happened. I heard Baker go in to the office. When I went to see how he was doing, he was just standing in front of the terrarium. You could almost see the energy leaving him as he became consumed by sadness. 
     At this point you yearn to have the ability to help, as you are overwhelmed with feelings of empathy.
     For the next few days we had a very quiet little man. He has been dealing with it a little better each day, but it will be a long time before the events of last Monday are forgotten. 
     Sooner or later the electronics will get replaced. The next one may, with any kind of luck, be treated a little better. The death of a pet, although very tragic and somewhat traumatic, emphasises how precious life can be. My take away from this weeks events: sometimes showing someone else compassion is more important than making sure they learn from their misfortune.