When Children Die

17 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Stuff I Want to Tell You About

≈ 3 Comments

I don’t go to church to find solace because organized religion feels wrong to me.  It’s not that I don’t believe in a higher power, I do.  And maybe on a different day in a different blog I’ll tell you all about that.  That day is not today.

Today I seek solace in my own head; to put words to the reason I haven’t stopped crying since I heard about the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  The unthinkableness of the crime notwithstanding, I can’t stop thinking about it.  It woke me up in the night, or more accurately, it kept me awake once I awoke due to having a bladder the size of a quail egg.  Thank you Natalie.

I cry because not every one of us-  Every. Single. One. – feels there is a place for finding hope, a person to ask for help, a way to breathe through the desperation, a way.  With 300 million people in this country, 7 billion in the world, why this deranged lunatic didn’t have one he could call.  Why he slipped through the fabric of our entire society.

Unlike numerous friends and family members who don’t care to hear one word about Adam Lanza, I do.  Not being able to see him as a human being makes him the convenient “other”.  And that feels like the easy way out.  I do not want to know the details of what happened inside that school.  I want to know what happened inside that man’s head.  How does a life come to that?

I’m not saying any one person, or a hundred, could have prevented this crime.  I’m not saying Adam Lanza is any kind of poster child for any ill-conceived political platform.  He isn’t.  To be very clear:  had he lived, I would want him to die for what he did. But his actions, and this situation, have made me question myself and this world in ways I haven’t before.

Given the way that I am feeling, absolutely heartbroken, I am wondering; if I knew a person I thought capable of what happened in Newtown, Connecticut, would I sprint in the other direction?  Or would I reach out instead?  Would I be quick to label that other a ‘freak’ and hope to hell when s/he broke, the pieces didn’t hit me?  Would I tell myself that staying under that person’s radar is the best and safest thing?  Because being 6 or 7 years old seems like the safest thing, too.  But it isn’t.  Not anymore.

What I have heard on the news reports about the heroes inside that school and the ways they behaved during the rampage…they did what –godhelpme- I hope I would do if someone stormed into my classroom with a gun.  They showed courage, valor, honor, sacrifice, love.

What I am wondering is whether I could do the same...before the break.  Do I, does anyone have any power whatsoever to prevent Sandy Hook?  I guess I’m writing to say I hope to hell so, because without hoping, I’m left with utter powerlessness and frankly, despair.

And that is why I can’t stop crying.

Thirteen

18 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by in Meet the Students

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I believe that people do the best they can with what they have, wherever they are in their lives.

This includes the surly, sullen or, in the next minute, joyful, endearing —  always infinitely fascinating Middle.  School.  Child.

I know they know the right things to do and yet — the opposite (da duh dom) lures them like they’ve been hooked with fishing line.  There’s that.  And there’s this bizarre thing with their lack of working short term memory.  You think your great grampa had a hard time of it?  He had nothing on a teenage brain!

Eighth grade: arguably the most challenging year of our lives.  A time when most people think we stop giving our best, probably because those same people, for so long, have been encouraging us to stay on the straight and narrow — and, for crying out loud sit up straight, watch out for your sister, do your homework, stay away from drugs, get to work planning your FUTURE and for the love of god stop looking at me in that tone of voice— and start living life with the brakes on, heels dug in, smirk on our face.

Don’t believe me?  Feeling nostalgic?  Take a ride down to your local teen center or pizza shop, where the beasts hang out in droves.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

I won’t even say I told you so.

At this prickly age, for a thousand reasons, our best looks like a hodgepodge quilt stitched with unease, trepidation, turmoil and skepticism – with elation and despair flowing throughout.  It is around this time we try on a bunch of different personalities, see which ones feel right, see how far we can go and how much we can get away with, and whether we can live with ourselves if we do.

Middle school is a time for building thick, stony walls around ourselves, and hiding the tools for which they can easily be knocked down. We wish, so fervently, for those tools to be found, but we will not tell you where they are.

Look at any random teenager.  What you see is not the truth.  What you think you see is not the truth, either.  Only what you know is the truth.  And if you don’t know teenagers, don’t try to understand them by attaching what you think you know.  I mean it.  Just stand clear, we don’t want anyone getting hurt.

The most difficult thing for me about working with – and parenting -middle schoolers is that they have one personality as a group, and completely different personalities as individuals.  The group is often snarky, unkind, negative and completely dismissive of how their actions effect others.  I say dismissive, not unaware, because make NO mistake, they are aware.  In that big group, they simply don’t care.  Because in a group, they don’t have to care.  No one person is responsible for any hurt caused.  This is the way most people experience a middle school child.

Which is sad.

Because individual middle school kids can be the sweetest, most thoughtful, caring, earnest people, capable of any meeting challenge they decide to invest in, and most would never knowingly or willingly hurt another.  Don’t believe me?  Meet and spend time with any one of my students.  Or, meet my son, Garrett.

One of a kind.

He is patient, kind, thoughtful, endearing, funny and charismatic.  Also talented in many areas; among them athletics, math and music.  Get to know my son and you will never be bored, disappointed or underwhelmed.  He is pure gold.  He also forgets to change his underwear.

It’s a tough gig being 13.  It would do us all good to remember what those years were like for us, and then add to it the components of computers, mass media and an ever-evolving realm of expectations in school, in political correctness and in social graces that just didn’t exist 20 years ago.  Is it any wonder, I wonder, that these guys put the brakes on, dig in their heels and seem to blow off everything adults throw their way?  No, I think not.

They are completely aware – of three dozen things all at once, every split second of every single day. They hear every word we say.  They emulate everything we do.  It appears they aren’t listening, but have you ever noticed that if you lower your voice to talk about something private, like what you’re getting them for Christmas, or whether we should go out to dinner, they suddenly have the sharpest hearing on earth?  Yeah, me too.

They interpret every sigh, every silence, every pinched lip, every stoic stare.  Also every smile, every hug, every kind word, every genuine ounce of praise.  And what they take away from all of their encounters is, basically, this:  how did that person make me feel?  If the answer is loved, cared for, heard…well, you’re good.  Keep it up.  If the answer is demeaned, ashamed, stupid…well, I’m not here to lecture, so, goodluck with that.

I have discovered that a kid at thirteen is giving their best, which, with a hundred other things running through their minds all at once…is pretty amazing.  At no other time in our lives do we have so much coming at us, so fast and from so many directions.

Don’t believe me?  Come visit me at work.  Hang out with one kid for one whole day.  I guarantee you’ll have an accurate view of life in the 8th grade, and hopefully, a better appreciation, too.  You’ll suddenly remember what that time was like for you – and how grateful you are for the hormonal lack of memory that caused you to forget most of it in the first place.  Such is thirteen.

Double Down

10 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by in Sans Therapist

≈ 3 Comments

Life is a big, competitive, noisy, hilarious, heartbreaking poker game — a game of challenge mixed with chance, strategy rolled up with luck.  A game of skill that can knock you on your ass- and one that’s nearly impossible to perfect .

It doesn’t escape my attention lately that I live my life the way I play poker, which is to say, like I’m going to pull the wildcard out of the deck Every. Single. Time.  Because the thing is – luck is all about perspective. It’s intangible and plucky, and seemingly elusive, but it isn’t.  It’s here for every one of us at any time we choose to see things in a different way.

Didn’t get that ace I was looking for?  Fine – I’ll go for the straight.  Not hitting the flush draw?  It’s cool, I’ve got a high pair I can work with.  Didn’t win the hand?  That’s alright, I got out at the exact right time, and I learned a little something for the next go ’round. 

I can’t lose.

I was lucky.  I had a father who told me there were no limitations to what I could accomplish, and I believed him.  I’m a worker and a go-getter and there’s not a whole lot of things I’ve wanted to do that I haven’t figure out a way to make real.

But there’s a huge difference between always wanting something more for the sake of wanting…and wanting what will bring more joy, an understanding, growth.  I’m one of those people always wondering where the grass is greener, thinking whatever it is I don’t have must be somehow better than what I do.  Where that comes from in me, I have no idea, but it’s always been there.

I haven’t been home long enough to be doing or feeling any of these things.  Lately I feel so content I don’t even have heartburn, or heart palpitations, or eye twitches that were ever-present a year ago.  It isn’t fear of the unknown that makes me restless – that’s just living life.  It’s fear of being on the wrong path, wondering whether I’m where I’m “supposed to” be, doing what I’m “supposed to” be doing.

How could the comfort and contentedness I feel here on the inside of my life not be right?   Why is it that we’re taught (with every television commericial, every ad campaign) that what we have is not enough, whatever it is?  That who we are is not enough, somehow.  That something outside ourselves is better, and should be longed for and sought constantly.  I’ve learned: this longing is no way to live if the searching takes you further and further from yourself.

It took me 40 years, but there it is.

I am capable of absolutely anything.  We all are.  I just want to make sure the things I give my full attention to the right things – for me, for my family.  And you know what?  I worked hard to have everything I ever wanted.  I’m going to enjoy it without wondering about what’s next.  Gonna play the hand I’m dealt.  Gonna stop going for the wildcard.

Gonna double down.