A couple of weeks ago, Yirmi had an evaluation for school placement purposes.

A few days later, I had a three hour meeting with staff at his school, who were shocked to hear that we had already not only scheduled the evaluation, but completed it.

Literally, their mouths dropped open. One of them clarified, “I was here 7 or 8 weeks ago and it wasn’t even scheduled yet.”

“Right”, I told her, “I tried to contact the social worker the next week and after two weeks reached her. She scheduled me for an intake appointment right away, and then the evaluation was scheduled within 5 weeks of then.”

They all shook their heads disbelievingly, telling me it usually takes many months to complete this process, and credited the social worker for her assistance in moving this process along.

After I went home, I thought about their reaction and felt it would be appropriate to express my appreciation to the social worker for her help. Just because it’s her job doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t let her know her efforts were appreciated!

I would call her and warmly thank you. No, I would send her an email. No, I could give her a little token of appreciation, like a chocolate bar with a note.

But I didn’t do anything. Because any idea I had felt too insignificant and any idea that was bigger felt too hard. What would I send, and how would I wrap it and I wouldn’t want it to be too fancy but I didn’t want to send something embarrassingly small. And then I’d have  to make a trip to the store for a nice bar of chocolate and a thank you card and cellophane and ribbon to wrap it all up.

Finally, I told myself that it would be better to do something than completely lose the opportunity, since I was clearly on the path to doing nothing.

So I took a plastic plate, put an apple, pear, clementine and a small bag of dates on it (that’s what I had in the house). I wrote a little note: “Dear Social Worker – Thank you for your dedicated help to us, we really appreciated it. Signed, Avivah, mother of Yirmi”.

I put a plastic bag over it, tied the top in a knot and popped in to her office. She was with a client, so I just handed it to her with a smile and said,”Thanks for your help, this is a little something for you.” She gave me a big surprised smile and I left right away, not wanting to interrupt her any more than I had.

A few days later, I got the following email:

Subject line: תודה על הכרת הטוב  (Translation – Thank you for your appreciation)

הי אביבה.

Her note left me with a warm feeling  and gratitude that rather than getting stuck in my head and wanting to express my appreciation perfectly, I did what I could.

As the saying goes, “Done is better than perfect.”

Avivah

PS – Several hours after posting this, I had a meeting with seven different professionals regarding Rafael’s current placement in his daycare inclusion program. Imagine my surprise to see this same social worker sitting in the room when I arrived!  It’s a small world and one never knows when the effects of your positive or negative interactions with others will come back to you.