Jasper

It was a really fun day. Jasper greeted everyone by putting animal cards on their backs for a guessing game. We gathered for a thanksgiving circle. Then the crew of “auntees and uncles” all worked together to make a fire for Jasper. We sang him off with a song. Jasper and I had gone on a hike the previous week to collect a fire-tending stick. He took this with him. Tristan (teen) went with Jasper and his tinder bundle out to the backyard to light his fire, then Tristan rejoined the group inside the house. Jasper stayed alone in the backyard, tending his own fire.ext in this area.

Meanwhile, in the house everyone else worked on making individual drawn symbols on rawhide discs, to be used later for the welcome back. I had made a knife, which I gave him. Suzanne gave him an empty photo album, and also a small wooden chicken to represent the coop and chickens that we have promised him (once we move to a place where we can have them).

Then there was the welcome back ceremony. Tristan and Montserrat (important teens in Jasper’s life) went out to supervise Jasper’s putting out of the fire and cleaning up the area. When he was done, they presented him with a shirt to recognize that we now saw him differently. It was a shirt that we made from a tree that Jasper had drawn a while back.

Jasper’s tree

We sang him a song that Jim and Joni (fellow band members with me) wrote:

We knew you as a baby
With fists and feet so tiny
We saw the snow white nappy
That wrapped your little hiney
You are the sweetest apple
Of yer Mom and Daddy’s eyes
Your smile can match the brightest
Of the bluest morning skies

Now that you are older
You always lend a hand
You’re ready, willin’ and able
For playin’ in the band
With a number countin’ noggin
You’re a whiz a dominoes
You’re upright, kind, and honest
From your head down to your toes

There will never be another like you
For snappin’ on the bones
Or roamin’ o’er the wildlands
Skipping from stone to stone
If ever you’re in trouble or funny circumstance
You’ll always have a spot on stage
With Jimmy Chickenpants
Yes, forever you’ll have a spot on stage
With Jiiiiiimmmmmmmmmy Chickeneeeeeeenpannnnnts!!!

One by one people voiced their words about what it meant to them to be connected to Jasper while tying on their rawhide disks with drawings that symbolized their connection to Jasper. Once they were tied on, Jasper was like the center of a bike wheel with multicolored spokes radiating outward.

After everyone departed we went for a kids playday at the beach, a walk to the monarch grove, and some boogie boarding. We ending the day before bed reading the emails and letters that family and friends had sent to him.

This was one of the best of days for me as a parent.