Jordan sashays into the kitchen, swaggering from hip to hip as she often does. In fairness, her gait is partially out of her control. It’s the product of the way her body shifts her weight to compensate for the trouble with her legs. But she takes some joy in the sassy walk. She works it.

– Dad, guess what I found at Walmart?

She is fascinated by America’s leading discounter. Somehow she stumbled on to the Walmart.com link, and to my misfortune her parental control filter seems to think Walmart is tame–safe from any harmful content. Now, you might think that an ecommerce site like Walmart would hold little interest for a juvenile web surfer who can’t read.

You would be wrong.

For the last several days she has flipped through its pages ogling at the different things she would like to buy for her friends and family. She’s been keeping a list and using her new digital camera to take pictures of the web pages she likes (we’re trying to teach her how to bookmark and use screenshots, but she prefers this manual method).

– They have the most AMAZING stuff. We have to go there.

No disrespect to the good folks at Walmart, but I would rather stand in line at the DMV while being treated for rabies with injections to the stomach than visit a Walmart store. I can’t say this to Jordan, of course, so instead I hedge.

– Daddy’s not really much of a shopper.

She thinks of this for a moment, grabs a few snacks from the cupboard and then advises me again.

– You really should see it, Dad. I just love Walmart.

She blows me a kiss and scrambles back to her computer. I sigh and consider cocktails with breakfast.

She’s not happy. She was all set to make her very first trip alone. We booked her first class on a flight to Portland to spend the holidays with her aunts and uncles. At 4:45am this morning, all systems were go. Alaska Airlines confirmed she was clear to board. We drove all the way to LAX to learn it was a no go. The flight was still scheduled, but due to weather, unaccompanied minors were not allowed.



She was devastated. We’ve spent the morning lifting her spirits and promising to rebook her flight early in the year, when the weather is better. I told her the bright side: she gets to have Santa visit her own house.

Blue light reflected from the stage and bounced onto her snowy skin. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly as the pas de deux began. Clara and the Nutcracker locked their arms and glided gracefully across the stage. Jordan sighed and leaned her head against my shoulder. She grabbed my hand and interlocked our fingers. Act two was nearing the end and the music swelled with cymbal-adorned crescendos. The Nutcracker spun Clara, lifted her high to the sky, and embraced her while snow fairies waltzed upstage. I turned to Jordan, whose face was alight with inspiration, and I asked her, “wasn’t that lovely?”

Her eyes widened. “That was awesome.”

When the couple returned to the stage to take their bows, Jordan sprung to her feet shouting “Brava!” She also shouted “Bravo!” I told her it was customary to just shout for the prima ballerina. She told me she liked to compliment them both, and so she shouted again, “Brava-Bravo” as if it were a compound phrase meant to leap from the tongue in tandem. It was a beautiful thing. We had an afternoon we both will remember for many years to come.

Though I enjoy the ballet, I’ve never been partial to The Nutcracker. I find it has a bit too much syrup. But I realized a couple of months ago that I had never taken Jordan to the ballet and The Nutcracker seemed a logical way to introduce her and have a good father/daughter day out. As luck would have it, The Kirov Ballet came to town, which gave me the added pleasure of taking Jordan to the place where her mother and I met — the very building that housed the steps where we stole our first kiss. Jordan was thrilled by all of this.

We made a full day of it. We lunched at The Music Center before the show, then caught the matinee. When it was over, Jordan was ready for more, so we strolled over to MOCA and took in the Bourgeois and Kippenberger exhibitions. She wasn’t so sure about the art, but we had a fine time walking the galleries.

As we drove home, Jordan was very quiet. At first I thought she was tired, but then I realized that she was deep in thought. I asked her what she was thinking.

– I would really like to do ballet.
– Well, let’s get your legs stronger first.

She was quiet again. In the silence, I thought about the way she reacted to the performance. She was engulfed by its lavish spectacle, inspired by its whimsy, absorbed by the proficiency of its dancers. Like many little girls that day, she was hooked on the ballet. And like many other little girls her mind had turned to doing it herself. I imagined she dreamed of herself as Clara. She loves to dance.

And then I questioned my own logic. I told her that her legs would have to get stronger before we could enroll her in ballet class again. I suddenly felt myself a complete dimwit. Maybe what Jordan needed was a contrarian point of view. Maybe ballet class is the very best thing for her. Perhaps it is the challenge she needs to heal. She never shies from a challenge. The chemotherapy has damaged the nerves in her legs so much that her feet turn in sharply. The ballet dancer learns the art of turnout. Maybe a disciplined focus on turning her feet out will help her avoid surgery. Maybe. Jordan is a soul with limitless possibilities. For this I am thankful.

I looked over at her, riding quietly in the car, staring out the window, and I told her that I loved her. She broke her stare and smiled back at me. No words or anything mushy, just a brilliant smile. A few minutes later we were playing a game–assigning names to passersby on the street. As our creativity grew ever more wild, she giggled and left her contemplation behind. When we arrived home she wasted no time changing into her favorite pajamas. She told her mom all about the day and then surprised me with a giant hug. We held each other for a little longer than usual before she skipped away. From the next room she called, “thank you, Daddy. Love you madly.”

Jordan’s school is a wonderful place. It took some trial and error to find the right one, but now that we’ve found it we feel very fortunate. She is having fun. She’s safe. And she’s learning. Her teachers and aids work hard to give her the extra attention she needs while providing discipline and taking pains to help her blend in with the rest of her classmates.

That’s a good segue to introduce a new feature on Jordan’s Journey. You might notice that on every post there’s now a brief section labeled “Possibly Related Classroom Projects.” These links are provided by DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit that helps teachers all across the country find desperately needed resources for planned classroom projects. You’d be surprised at how little the needs can be and how easy it is to contribute what you can. When I browsed the projects, I was most struck by the creativity of the teachers themselves. We hope you’ll take time to learn more about some of these projects, as we highlight those that might be similar to the step you’re reading about in Jordan’s Journey. This new feature is just a sliver of what we have planned for The Journey website in 2009. I’ll share more soon. Until then, thank you for traveling along with us and for lending any support you can to classrooms across the country.

Her seductive personality, which often lapses into soulful discourse on the merits of biscuits and tea, belies a gritty underbelly on her character. Psychologically speaking, she might shiv you to win a challenge. She has a ruthless side that sparks when placed in competition. It is the essence of what propelled her up that rock face in Orlando, the substance of the never-ending war of words with her brother, and the very foundation of her survivorship. Jordan is a competitor.

We fist discovered this quality about her when she was still a toddler. The kids once shared a room at our condo on Lake Avenue. The condo had previously been owned by three college bachelors and the one who occupied the kids room evidently worked out quite a bit. He installed a pullup bar in the doorway. The kids loved for me to lift them up and let them hang from that bar. One day, when Jordan was about three or four, Luc had me count while he dangled in the doorway. I made it to 15 before he signaled that I needed to help him down. I looked over at Jordan and saw nothing but fire in her eyes. She asked me to lift her up and do exactly as I did for her brother. When I reached 18 she was still hanging on. Her face was steely, her grimmace determined … and she had no intention of letting go. At 22, I put my hands around her waist and asked her to let go. As I set her down, I looked over at Luc, who replied, “yeah, that’s a lot.”

Lately, I’ve seen this side of her burst through at the oddest of times. Our family is on a mission to eat more veggies. Actually, Jeanette and I are on a mission to eat more veggies. We’re dragging the kids with us. It hasn’t been going well, but then I had a spark of an idea. At the dinner table last night, I said, “you know what? Let’s start having a salad competition. We’ll take turns inventing salads to see who can do it better than the others.”

It was a throw-away comment, something to make vegetables sound remotely interesting. Everyone liked the idea, but with Jordan it took on a perverse life. The next morning she was concocting a wish-list of ingredients. Every 15 minutes she’d ask if it was time for her to make her salad. When Jeanette returned from the store with all the ingredients, Jordan became downright domineering. Luc wanted to sample one of the edamame she requested and a beast erupted.

–Lucas! Don’t eat my special ingredients! You can only have one.

Luc went first, making a pepper and heirloom tomato salad that was quite good. Jordan gave him his propers, but not before reminding him that she planned to win this evening.