When He Says I Always Say That, He's Right.

Some nights shatter your heart, seemingly only to afford you the opportunity to reassemble its pieces and appreciate the new shape of your insides.  Maybe this time you managed to fit one jagged edge into another and together they somehow look like the smile of a little boy who feels special, who knows at that moment, he is the most important little boy in the world.

There are few hours more precious in my week than those I spend at the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row. Every Thursday, I head there to meet my student. Every week, his two year old twin sisters greet me, running and jumping on me, climbing up my sides until I sit down, then seeing who can get into my lap the fastest. It’s pure joy. The smaller and more talkative of the two asks me questions. She wants to know if I’m a mom. She wants to know, if I was a mom, if I would have a home. Two years old and completely aware of the reality that she is not like other kids, that she does not have a home. My student is 8 years old. He’s in third grade and is one of the smartest kids I’ve met. He beatboxes while he does math. He loves challenging himself. He wants me to teach him things to help him stay at the head of the class. He wants to be the best. He wants to know how to do long division before anyone else does, so we do long division. He asks me to teach him how to draw stars without picking up the pen, so we draw stars. Tonight when we met up, he danced in the hallway. My heart filled and we walked to the room where we work. He managed to contain his little boy energy to a small enough space that allowed him to fit in his chair, and he sat down, pulling out his homework. We realized he didn’t have a pencil. I had a giant bag of pens but he really needed a pencil, so he jumped out of his chair and bounded out the door to get one.

A different child came back. He was wearing the same clothes, the same haircut, and had all of the same features except his eyes were sad. His eyes were sad, and his shoulders were sunken. I asked him what was the matter and he told me he had made his mother mad, that when he asked the lady at the desk for a pencil, his mother heard him and started yelling at him, that she said he was going to be in big trouble when we were done. I told him I was sorry. He didn’t say anything, just took his homework and his pencil and began his spelling worksheet. I stood behind him so he couldn’t see me crying. I tried everything I could think of, but basically counted the minutes until we would be done with spelling homework so we could play our favorite math game. See, nothing really lights him up like facing the wall while I write math problems on the white board before calling out “On your mark. Get Set. Go!” and starting my stopwatch as he rushes to the board to see how many he can do in a minute. When we do math he feels successful. Tonight, I just wanted his shoulders to come back up, his eyes to stop looking so sad, I wanted him to dance in the hallway again.

Our math game didn’t work.

He did 9 of the 10 problems in a minute, and he still carried the weight of his mother’s words.

So, I handed him a dry erase marker in green, his “#1 most favorite” color and I said

“This is what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna make a list.”

“Of what?”

I took out a blue dry erase marker and wrote on the board:

“Steven* is…

1.     Awesome”

“Now it’s your turn.” I told him. “We’re going to make a list of wonderful things about you.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. Then he looked at his #1 favorite color green marker, went to the board and began to write. I cheered him on, never telling him what to say. He drew stars next to some things. When he got to #9 “Is a great brother.” I drew some stars. He’s gonna be a big brother again in a few days. When he reached ten things on his list, it was already past time for me to go.

“I have an idea.” I said.

“You always say that.”

“That’s because it’s true. Like all the things on your list.”

“What is it?”

“Well, we have all of this paper. How about if you copy your list onto a piece of paper? You can fold it up and put it in your pocket and then when you feel sad or you think of something to add to it, you can take it out!”

“Ooh, that sounds good.”

“Here. Here’s some paper. Do you want to use your pencil or do you want to use one of the pens in this big ol’ bag?”

“Do you have a green one?”

“I sure do.”

I handed him a green pen and he copied his list from the white board onto a piece paper he can carry with him. 

“Do you think that you can add 5 more before I see you again?”

“Yeah, I think so.

“Cool,” I said, as I packed up my things.

“Wait! Wait! I have something I can add right now! Can I have my green pen back, please?”

I handed him the green pen. He uncapped it and scrawled:

11. Good at math.

 

*Steven is not his real name. 

#3 says smart. He has trouble with s’s.