Am typing this without glasses, at 4 am in Dublin. Waiting for the Advil PM to do the job the Unisom clearly wasn't up to. A sleepgel that doesn't deliver on the zzzzzs is a cruel placebo indeed. So there will be typos. Not quite as majestic a statement as there will be blood, but there might be some of that as well if I don't get some bloody sleep. But until sleep clobbers me over the head with a felt covered hammer, i will write, without being able to see particularly clearly. Which may be fitting.
Am wandering into dangerous territory, but was already there and my bleeding heart didn't know it. In my eternal quest for limp, hearing impaired animals to rescue, in between bouts of falling in love with damaged job-averse boy-men, I've always has a soft spot for wounded children. I have an infallible eye of which I'm dubiously proud. I can walk into any store and immediately spot the most expensive shoe, purse or blouse. I also can walk into a room full of people and attract (and be attracted to) the most inappropriate man, woman or child in the room. And before long we will have become so intermeshed and I will be so incapable of extricating myself that I will have to change my phone number or move to another state to be free. I'm really not proud of this quality, so forgive me if I sound like I'm bragging.It's a disease and facing it is the first step. So, consider this an over-share, those of you who live by the grace of twelve steps. And for those of you in the program, you'll sense a perverse satisfaction in revealing just how macabre I can be about my own disease- like a sober man who can longingly, lovingly recall his last sip of scotch in almost pornographic detail.
And like any addict, recovering or not so much, we addicts continually throw ourselves into the environment that most enables us to indulge our addictions. Like when I decided, during a particularly nagging bout of unemployment, to assist my mother in her Spanish Harlem Kindergarten class. To be perfectly penitent, I walked or jogged from Chelsea to Spanish Harlem. I strode right into her classroom and fell instantly in love with Oscar. Now, due to overcrowding, I had a delectable choice of thirty or so gorgeous five year olds to fall for- ninety percent of them safely could have been considered at risk youth. But no- not me. I fell for the one child in the room who's mother had died of AIDS, who's father had it as well, and whom most likely had a dimming immune system himself.
He was crusty with dirt, had a cold and was breathing through his mouth. When a five year old's hair smells dirty, that is a child who needed a bath two weeks ago. I sat beside him, my eyes and heart brimming. I would have pulled him into my lap if it was appropriate. He eyed me through a haze of mucus and unwellness, and he was not in the least reciprocating my feelings. I was practically not even there. To him. Which of course only made me love him more. I went every day to that school and every day I sat beside Oscar, who was haunting my dreams. And every day I had to remind him who I was. That's how much of an impression I made on him. And him on me? This happened 20 years ago. I'm just now getting up the gumption to excorcize the memory.
One day my mother had everyone draw pictures. Oscar took one stubby little crayon after another and basically abused a piece of construction paper, mouth open, dirty hands smearing the colors into his shirt, pants, face, desk, chair, me. When he had done this for some time, I praised his art to the heavens. I went on and on about his eye, his composition, his brave choice of colors and his unerring fearlessness to reveal what few other five year olds would dare to unleash on a piece of paper. Oscar stared at me, unblinking, hearing my praise as he was basically unable to escape me then he picked up a black crayon and covered his art with such determination as to leave me completely speechless. Despite my pleas, Oscar erased his feeble art. I left the classroom in tears. My mother gently suggested I never come back to her class. And I never did. I didn't have the guts for Kindergarten.
Cut to 20 years later. I'm personal assistant to a children's book author. She gets a request to visit a foster school campus- where foster kids live and study- in Los Angeles county. Since my manfriend and I at this point are discussing doing foster to adopt, I ask if I can accompany my boss to the school. I think it might be edifying to meet children in the system. It proved to be as edifying as hiring a druggie drunk with sex addiction issues to be Charlie Sheen's sober buddy on a field trip to the Playboy Mansion.
The school and campus are lovely. Pretty trees bloom. The sun shines. Adorable, colorful kid art festoon the hallways. Teachers smile. Even the library is suspiciously normal- cheerful, full of books and the smell of printed paper. Then the children enter. I'm done for. One after another shuffle in- we've been prepared. They are medicated or should be. They are victims of parental neglect, abuse, abandonment. Some are victims of worse.
Some have been fostered and/or adopted and then returned to the system, for murky tragic reasons like having fetal alcohol syndrome and/or for having serious developmental delays that makes the fantasy of them becoming bright, amazing, adaptive, resilient adopted children just that. A fantasy.
So the children's book author reads her stories to the kids, who sit there, hunched, angry, withdrawn and defeated. I stand behind the author and watch the children watch her. They are all far too old to have these picture books read to them. It's soon clear this is the closest many of them have ever gotten or will ever get to having a bed time story read to them. Some never give in, but others melt. They comment on the illustrations as if the drawn moose was an actual creature making the choices the author wrote about.
The kids like the author and I like the kids. They crowd her for her autograph and tell her silly things about themselves, just like regular kids. But it's different and it's sad. They clearly have no one in their lives- they have employees and they have each other. Paid people impersonate their guardians. And other unwanted children are their de facto siblings. The author couldn't wait to go home.
I couldn't wait to go back.
While the author took questions from the kids, and the ones who did speak offered up odd opinions about whether a moose might actually need to wear a cardigan, one girl quietly raised her hand. She was overweight, African-American and while her fingernails were gorgeously done, her forearms arms were covered in neatly arranged scars. She announced she was a poet. She recited a poem about having had a dream where she found her best friend. She didn't know where her best friend was but she knew she had one. She didn't know what her best friend looked like or what her best friend's name was. Then she looked in the mirror. And there was her best friend.
The librarian, the author and me all welled up at that moment. It was tragic, gorgeous and brief. The author stood up to go, full of emotion she didn't want to have. And a warm feeling came over me. Quite similar to having an egg broken over my head.
I had found my Precious.
Before anyone could stop me I was emailing the librarian. A week or so later I was back. I started a creative writing program with 2 groups of kids- one group of eighth graders and another group of high schoolers. I'm not writing this to be perceived as noble. I'm as noble as Roseanne Barr in a Hometown Buffet.
The Advil PM is dimming my lights.
More on Precious later.
No comments:
Post a Comment