I'm not often at a loss for words--after all, I've somehow been able to come up with something to say here almost every day, for three years now. I thought that when I reflected on L.'s graduation this past Thursday that I'd have lots to say. The words would come flooding out, providing me with the closure--in neat and perfect ways--to the past six years. Instead, though, I've found myself struggling to find the right words.
On the day of L.'s graduation I taught my classes, went to a committee meeting, picked up L. from Scott's office, and took him to the ceremony site, the North Carolina Museum of History. I was an hour early so I sat on a bench across from the auditorium, pulled out my laptop, and tried to write. Nothing came out. I watched the handful of busy moms who have been running all fifth grade activities for two years now, rushing to and fro, coordinating Capri Sun pouches and plastic cutlery. I didn't ask if I could help. Maybe I should have; maybe it was rude of me to sit there with my computer, but I saw my disengagement from the set-up process as symbolically representative of how on the margins we have all felt at L.'s school, over the past few years--this year in particular. I could only think about all the rumblings and comments we heard this past year, through the rumor mill and via teachers about what so-and-so said about L., what they think about him. There was the mom who requested of the school counselor that her son no longer have "lunch buddy" time with L. because he was a "bad influence" and the parent who told her son L. was "wild" and "weird" and there were the art moms, who led art class each week, who maybe hadn't said anything to L. at all but my wounded pride sensed a judgment emanating from them in almost tangible waves. What did they know? What had they seen? What judgments had they passed? How had they labeled my child? Boxed him in? I was jealous often, too, of how they touted their children's successes at the walk-up line--held them up, those super-achiever kids. A widening gulf had spread between them and us, cracked wide and yawning dark. Yet, I held some power over them, power I didn't want, but shamefully took comfort in: I knew about the things--some of them truly unkind and horrible--their kids had said, the unkind ways some of them had acted.
It's embarrassing to admit I took comfort in that power, but important that I admit it, too.
The graduation slideshow, featuring those small, childish yet recognizable kindergarten versions of our children's faces served to only remind me, in concrete ways, how far away from that starting point we'd travelled and no one, it seemed, had really seen us go. I threw a bit of a self-absorbed pity-party for myself, I admit, sitting there in the audience, trying not to see the other kids who marched across the stage in terms of what they had or hadn't done or said to L. over this past year in particular. I built up a wall around myself, and narrowed the focus of my vision to exclude all others, so I could only see my child--my son, who may not have had a long list of successes yet following him across the stage, but who has still come so far. You have to really turn your head and squint and read between the lines to see the distance he has travelled these six years but we see it. It's there, and it's real.
I didn't shed a tear at graduation. I walled myself off. After the ceremony, while other fifth graders and their parents were embracing and crying, L. wandered to the other end of the museum's first floor to the exhibit area. We took a picture or two with his best school friend, and I watched while he hugged and said goodbye to his beloved 4th grade teacher, that incredible young woman who helped L. recover so much that had been lost that year.
All the while I was feeling so dried up inside I wondered if this would be it, would this be how the six years would end, sort of numbly and with relief-tinged-with-bitterness being the only emotions I would feel?
I'm still not sure when the words will come, when I'll step back far enough, and separate myself enough from the tangle of emotions and the baggage I carry with me and the petty mean grudges I'm trying to let go of--the ones I tell myself I'm carrying for L. even though he isn't petty or mean enough to carry them himself. The day after graduation I picked up L. early, on his last day ever of elementary school, and we said goodbye to his resource teacher, something I had been avoiding doing for days, without really knowing why. I stood there, in that room that I both loved-and-hated, the place of so many IEP meetings and emergency conferences and broken spirits (and tempers), and I finally felt the emotions emerge. Even so, I still couldn't or didn't say what I really wanted to, which was this:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for loving my son. Thank you for understanding him. Thank you for celebrating him.
Above all, thank you for taking care of him.
We'll miss you.
Oh we will, so very much.
I see that now.