My 12-year-old son, Justin, spent the summer mowing lawns for elderly neighbors for free. He started after seeing one elderly woman, Dorothy, struggling to care for her yard.<\/p>\n
Soon, he was helping her with small tasks too\u2014bringing in her trash can, moving flowerpots, and picking up groceries.<\/p>\n
Then one day, two police cars stopped outside our house. The officers asked for Justin by name.<\/p>\n
They explained that Dorothy had been found wandering several blocks from home, confused and unable to remember where she lived. When they searched her house, they found notes everywhere with Justin\u2019s name on them.<\/p>\n
I was shocked.<\/p>\n
Justin explained that Dorothy had been forgetting things and that he had quietly been helping her. Her niece eventually arrived and realized that Dorothy\u2019s memory problems were much more serious than the family had known.<\/p>\n
Dorothy had to move somewhere where she could receive proper care. Justin was heartbroken, especially when he worried she might forget him.<\/p>\n
So he took some of Dorothy\u2019s favorite plants from her old yard and planted them outside her new home.<\/p>\n
When Dorothy saw him, she didn\u2019t remember everything\u2014but she remembered \u201cthe lawn boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justin realized he couldn’t fix everything, but he could still care.<\/p>\n
And the next Saturday, he showed up with a watering can.<\/p>\n
\u201cDorothy\u2019s flowers aren\u2019t going to water themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My 12-year-old son, Justin, spent the summer mowing lawns for elderly neighbors for free. He started after seeing one elderly woman, Dorothy, struggling to care for her yard. Soon, he was helping her with small tasks too\u2014bringing in her trash can, moving flowerpots, and picking up groceries. Then one day, two police cars stopped outside …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10893,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891\/revisions\/10893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}