Dear reader,
A story for you today from my work as a restorative practices specialist in my county’s public schools, written before baby boy came on the scene. More from Valorland soon.
Grateful as always for your attention,
Andrew
It was at the end of my visit, out of nowhere, when he brought me to my knees. I should’ve expected it. I’ve been laid low at this middle school before, on my drop-ins as a restorative practices specialist. The other time it happened was also at the end of my visit, also out of nowhere.
An hour a week at this middle school is about all I can take. Not because it’s a negative experience, per se, although it is difficult to witness what’s happening in the building and somehow stay positive.
By which I mean to say:
It’s difficult to see adults in a school talk down to kids, or worse, just snap, start shouting at them, go full power-over mode. And no shade to those adults—because it’s difficult to stay cool when the kids don’t listen, don’t respect, just don’t care.
It’s difficult to see kids do what they do when they don’t feel seen, safe, heard, cherished. By the adults. By each other. It’s difficult to hear about kids attacking each other, attacking their teachers, administrators. Shoving full grown men, slapping them in the face. Very difficult.
And it’s difficult to understand what all this behavior indicates: not the essential badness of the kid (or of the adult for that matter), but rather, the essential difficulty of what they’ve had to endure, what they’ve learned they need to protect themselves from, what they’re surviving somehow, back at home, in these hallways, in this society, in their own minds and hearts.
It’s just, a lot. In school. High voltage humanity. One hour’s about my limit. I am weak. A single school day is, what, six hours? How anyone is able to hang in there for that entire time is a mystery to me. What isn’t a mystery is the burnout. The turnover. The detentions and suspensions and expulsions. What else could we expect, given the capital D, Difficulties?
But God there’s beauty, too. It moves like a jaguar in the night, in my schools. I can’t see it till it’s too late, till it has me in its jaws and I am slain in the best way.
So it’s at the end of this particular visit, and I’m in the cafeteria, saying thank you and goodbye to my colleague, trying to mask the helplessness I’m feeling in the face of the Difficulties, when suddenly this kid just kind of pops into the moment, right in front of me, like a jack-in-the-box out of nowhere. He is, “disabled” just isn’t the right word. “Special needs” also isn’t it. “Radiant” feels closer. “Pure light” might be the only label that holds.
“Hello!” he says, with what I can only describe as pure joy. “I’m ___,” then he reaches out to shake my hand. The simple decency of this gesture takes me by surprise. I cannot make out his name because it’s so loud in the cafeteria, and because I am unfamiliar with his accent, his mother tongue, but also because he may have a speech impediment. His eyes remain somewhat unfocused, seeing me, but not quite making eye contact. Several of his teeth have large gaps between them.
He is the sun. I have to look away, he shines so bright.
And then he’s gone, just as suddenly, now sitting down at one of the lunch tables, another kid in the crowd eating his cafeteria hamburger.
It takes a few minutes for it catch up to me, like a boxer who takes a knockout hit but doesn’t fall down right away. I go to the bathroom on my way out, to pee, not to weep, but as soon as I get the water going to wash my hands it comes for me, hard. I step out of its way, to let it move through me, because it actually feels good. Appropriate. Called for. I try to keep it quiet, the sobbing. Don’t want to alarm anyone in the front office.
Everything okay in there?
Yeah, it’s just me, Andrew, the public health guy, restorative practices, all good!
I catch my face in the mirror. Full-on ugly-crying. Beautiful stuff. There’s grief in it, yes, but I realize as it gushes through me that the grief is only where it begins—imagining how the Difficulties have had their way with this kid. Where it goes from there, though, what it becomes, what makes it so goddamn gut-punch good, is that the grief is not where it ends. I saw where it ends, where it’s going, where we’re going, when I saw him. His utterly unguarded, guileless, joyful desire to be known. The perfect and terrifying vulnerability of that, of him, like a knight walking unarmored through a battlefield, demanding an armistice. A call to awaken. I weep in wonder that he should be alive now, in these times, before we’ve properly earned the right to behold him, this ambassador of a future in which we have become trustworthy of vulnerability like his. And yet, he did not wait for that future. He came now, in the thick of it, this endless battle, the literal and metaphorical food fight that was legit happening in that cafeteria while he shook my hand, telling me his name, wanting to touch, to be seen and known, and isn’t that all any of us is really asking for, I thought—no, I didn’t think it, I sobbed it—and what would happen, I prayed in that bathroom, where will we go, what will we achieve, when the rest of us are brave enough to make it that simple.
Thank you for telling me a story, Andrew. And for recognizing "the sun" when you were introduced. Gorgeous writing. And maybe, righting.
Thank you for feeling and seeing, and sharing that with us.