If I never have a child who shares my name, these, the
children who share my heart, are mine. They are mine because I see them. I see
their faces, their eyes, their souls. I see who they are when they hide behind
bad-boy exteriors, tough-girl grins, brave faces, silliness, or silence. Some
keep silent, afraid to let their mixed-up insides spill to the outside. Some
play it cool so you’ll think they’re something they’re not, because they too
are afraid. When they don’t believe they
can be good again, I do, because I see what even they have forgotten about
themselves.
They are six or eight or ten years younger than me. They are
my students, but they are my children too. These are the children who face hell
every day, the ones no one remembers except to criticize and condemn them with
phrases like “kids these days.” These kids hear it so often and spoken with so
much disgust that soon they believe it too. But I don’t. I look into their
eyes and see who they are, and more, who they can be.
At nine years old, he alone took care of his dying mother.
His older brother, who had already married and moved away, never came back to
help. After his adoption, he saw things about his homeland on the news, images of frightening destruction, and no one would or maybe no one could tell him
why. He came here, as scared and alone as any boy. For a long time, he never
smiled, he never asked questions. He didn’t know how to trust anymore. Slowly,
slowly, as he learned about electrons jumping back and forth and laughed at my
silly pictures of cells and trucks and dogs, he began to trust. Slowly, he
started to learn that he didn’t have to fight alone. He started to smile back,
and after a while, he started to smile first. Then his mom, who didn’t
understand his fears, took him away again, and he had to start all over learning
to trust.
One day she told me her story. “I was born addicted to
heroin,” she said. “I have my birth mother to thank for that. And I grew up and
there was a chemical imbalance in my brain and I got depressed and seven months
ago I found my way to heroin and got addicted again. I was born a stillborn,
but then my heart started beating at exactly 6:06. I used to think it was some
big mistake. That I was never supposed to live and by some awful mistake my
heart started working and my lungs too. But then, my therapist and other people
more optimistic than me said I was never supposed to die and that’s why I
lived.”
We read “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg and she told me the story
of that city was her story too. “To me, this city is not only my home, but the
place where I faced my worst nightmares and found that I was able to get
through the night.” I told her to write. Don’t put me between your heart and
the page. Just write, I told her. She wrote. She said, “If this world were
faultless and absolutely perfect, no person would experience courage, strength,
and success.” She smiled when she wrote that, for once feeling a little pride
in herself. I smiled at her too, hoping she would remember this feeling, my heart
pleading for her take this pride and bring it on her road to triumph.
The voices of my children drift down from my ears and into
my heart. I hear them. I hear them crying out, afraid to be alone. “Can I have
a pocket you?” she said. “Then whenever I am lost, I can pull you out and set
you on the table and l can say ‘Amanda, help!’” Their voices sound familiar,
ring of my own voice and the moments I find myself helpless, crying out for
somebody bigger, stronger, wiser to take my hand too. Then I remember their
words, their courage. I tighten my bootstraps and walk on.
