The End of An Era: Orchard House Rented Out

Yesterday I signed a lease and rented Orchard House out. It is the end of an era. There will be no  more interns staying at our guest house, and Bow and I need the income from the rental to keep going.

Orchard House was originally purchased to give interns a place to stay while they volunteered with Project Bow. At one time, Bow would commute from our current home to Orchard House several days a week, to have floortime sessions in a different learning environment. We had a playroom with a swing, a different set of toys, and there was even a real child's toilet that flushed, very low to the ground, like the ones they sometimes have in preschools, for him to use. We had a little school house set up in an outbuilding, with a real chalkboard and school desks. Hopefully, the children of our tenants will now enjoy those facilities.

Bow's visits to Orchard House ended in the Spring of 2007 when he and I became confined to the pens here. But for several years after that, interns would stay at Orchard House and make the drive over to this house to work with Bow.

Does Bow need floortime sessions anymore to learn language? No. He already has picked up two languages and literacy. He does not seem interested in learning any other subjects in a formal way, and I'm not going to force him to try. He pays attention to day to day events. When I read a book, he looks at it. If I read it out loud, he will listen. When I watch a video, he watches along. He will sometimes make sweeping pronouncements as a comment on something we watched: "I heard. It is not good for a son not to let a father win." At other times, his concerns are entirely practical. "The hour is three," he will tell me. I have no watch on, but when I go to check, sure enough, it is 3:03. This is important, because between three and three-thirty, I go to the kitchen to put dinner in the oven, and Bow gets a snack when I get back, if he's been good. But he doesn't always tell me that he wants the snack or that I should put dinner in the oven. Sometimes he just tells me what time it is.

It would be good to get some sort of independent confirmation that this is happening, so that I can say that I have proved it. But sometimes proof is not the most important thing. Sometimes just letting it be is okay, too.