Being Gentle is the Key...

It was the first day of school for the kids, and the group therapy had a great energy to it. The kids were all excited to see me, giving me hugs and telling me about their summers. I asked one child what he did and he responded very sincerely, "Listened to light jazz...which is exactly what I wanted to do." He comes from a past history with a lot of violence and loves to imbibe the peace and quiet available to him in his life now, so his answer was cute but also nice to hear. We did pets as a topic because one boy is getting a dog, so I asked how animals should be treated. The same boy I just discussed raised his hand and said, "Being gentle is the key, being GENTLE." I didn't work with him much last year because I wasn't assigned the K-2 class (he's now in 3rd grade), so I feel delighted to have such a smart, wiser-than-his-years child in my therapy group. That night I went with Alice, Hope, and Klaus to the East Village to celebrate Klaus's birthday. Klaus is Alice's ex-boyfriend, and now we are all good friends' with him. We got him a deck of cards that gives ideas of things to do at work to have fun instead of work. We had a lot of fun reviewing the options. One was to use a pen to drum out a tune and have a colleague guess what the tune was. We thought that would be too hard, but when I did it Klaus got it immediately. We were at a restaurant, so Alice put a stop to the game after a few tunes, for etiquettes sake. Another idea was to switch a scarf or tie mid-way thru the day with a co-worker and see if anyone notices. The four of us had a great time together, getting a whole lot of laughs. Now I'm playing fetch with my cat every two minutes, saying, "Oh, what is this by my feet, little cat? Wow, it's your ball! What a smart, talented cat!" Then I toss it, and she (Cloud) meows with excitement, looks at me quickly, and I say, "Go, little cat, go! Fetch your ball!" and she does.