Emo-Vomit and Blessings

I spent a good bit of time emo-vomiting to my best-friend-since-seventh-grade yesterday, and yes, I was on work time.  Okay, okay, I'll count it as my lunch hour or take vacation time.  Whatever.

"Emo-vomit" is a term I learned when my boys were little:  it's like throwing up or crying, only with words.  You know it's coming, and you know you'll feel better afterwards...so you get fed up with whatever's going on, find the best victim, and tell every sordid, pathetic, detail of the story--and sometimes details that don't even matter--and let 'er rip. And a ripper it was yesterday--I was feeling all kinds of sorry for myself and the pitiful slice of life that I'd been given these past few weeks.

A few minutes after I got finished with the email, I took my wallet out of my purse and out fell a little turquoise cross, and I immediately felt a flush of warmth in my heart.  I carry the cross with me in my wallet in the zipper part with a couple of other things, one being the key to my desk at work.  I'd opened that compartment to get that key out when I'd first gotten to work, and hadn't zipped it up...and when I picked up my wallet, that's what fell out.  Not the extra key to Colby's car, which I carry with me because he has a habit of locking himself out.  Not the key to my office in Denton which I take out once a week.  Not the wheat penny that's in there because, well, I think wheat pennies are cool, and not the very delicate cross that I carry that is an example of what Tim does for a living (they usually make parts for airplanes and bombs).  But a tiny, turquoise and silver cross that was given to me sometime after 7th grade and before I graduated from high school.

The significant thing about this cross is that it was made by my best-friend-since seventh-grade's dad.  I don't remember the occasion for which I received it, but I do remember that it warmed my heart that he'd made it just for me.  He was the really sweet kind of dad, and I was just a little envious of that because my own was the really stern kind of dad.  So, the cross has always been in the keepsake part of my jewelry box, and sometime in the last year or so, it found its way into my wallet, largely due to the fact that its creator's daughter has contributed significantly to my being able to function the past couple of years.

So, after my emo barfing spell, I felt better, but was continuing to feel somewhat sorry for myself when the cross fell out.  I picked it up and closed my hand around it as if it were--well, not a lifeline, my problems aren't that dramatic--but a reminder of  the people who love and care for me.  Some of my friends would say that God intentionally made that cross fall out, but I don't quite buy that; instead, I believe that He uses us humans as a direct connection to His lap, so that we can feel as though we've crawled up into a place of warmth and safety.  And because we are used that way, we find reminders all over the place, often when and where we least expect it.  But it doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong; what does matter is that we have each other to lean on and to hold us up when we can't quite do it ourselves.

And that makes life good :)

Thursdays with Ben

I could hardly be called a cougar, but I've fallen for a 23 year old young man.  Ben grew up in our church and is only a few months younger than Ryan.  Always dressed like he came straight from GQ headquarters, he sat with his parents in the same section of the church as we did.  Ben's mom and I became church friends, and when she divorced several years after I did, I felt a certain kinship with her-we were two women in a club that no one wants to be in and we certainly don't want our kids to have to be in it.  But they are.

Ben was, as my mom would say, a "ring tailed tooter".  He didn't get into "bad" trouble, but sometimes crossed that line of smart-aleckness that we adults get tired of.  So when he and Ryan were together, which they were quite a bit in junior high and early high school, they were a pair to be reckoned with.  Both of them could cross that line and then in the next minute grin and wrap their arms around whomever they had offended and that was the end of that.  My sister had had a group of youth at her house for a youth retreat, and after they left, she looked at a brand  new heart-shaped candle and there carved in the top were the letters B-E-N.  But she just couldn't stay mad at him for long.  At another church function, one of our ministers was chewing him out for something and had to turn away to keep from laughing.  He's just that kind of kid.

Ben took his parents' divorce hard.  He started having trouble in school, failed some classes, butted heads with his mom, and ultimately decided, at 16, to go live with his dad in Kentucky.  Every time he came home and came to church, he was hugged almost to the point of being smothered.  But he found himself, grew up, and got a job in construction in Houston.

And that's when his life--and those of his family--changed forever.  He had one of those freak accidents that you hear about but hope to God never happens to anyone you love:  while at work, he fell off of a building and landed head first.  He was care flighted to San Antonio and his parents were given a grim diagnosis:  he would be lucky to survive the night.  But survive he did, and he fought through dozens of setbacks, including having a titanium plate put in to replace his missing skull but having to have it removed several days later due to infection and then having to wait several months before it could be replaced.  The kid is a fighter.  He was in the hospital in San Antonio and a rehab for over a year while insurance companies and his employers fought over who, if anyone, would pay his medical bills.  Finally, he was moved to Irving to a neurological rehab facility and after much prodding by my big sister (another subject altogether), I reluctantly went to visit him.  I didn't really want to go because I had no idea what to expect and was afraid that....well, I don't have a clue what I was afraid of.  

Ben doesn't speak except to say "mama", and has very little use of his right side.  He gives a thumbs up or thumbs down for "yes" or "no", rubs his chest for "thank you", and makes kissing noises for "please".   He also flips us off and then laughs (we made the mistake of telling him that that means "I love you", so it's a favorite trick of his).  He offers us whatever he's eating at the time.  He plays games like Connect Four and shows us where to play so that we will win and then starts throwing the pieces at us so that we'll have to pick them up. He grins a lot.  He laughs.  He never seems sad or angry, but when we start talking about leaving, he shakes his head and gives us a thumbs down.  So we count days with him till we'll be back.  He certainly is, as his mom says, "still in there". 

From the first time I visited Ben in November, I've counted visits with him as one of the highlights of my week.  Kathy asked me the last time we were leaving why I love visiting him so much.  I don't have an answer to the "why".  I just do.  Maybe it's selfish.  Ben loves visitors and I can do that for him, so I feel wanted and needed.  But for an hour or so almost every Thursday, I enter Ben's world and can leave mine behind.  I think it's good for both of us.  I give that a thumbs up.  Life is good :)

This is What I Do

My job is to expose potential first-generation, low-income students to pursue a course of post-secondary education.  Mostly I’m an administrator, but I have a case load of junior high students and that’s the fun part.  No panic like there is with high school students, for whom college is right around the corner.  The objective of my job with these junior high kids, I think, is to expose them to education and convince them that they can go—that they are smart enough, that they can find resources for money to go, and that they deserve to go.

Last week, I went to our state association conference, and the highlight, as it always is, was the TRIO Achievers luncheon.  Former TRIO students are asked to speak to the group about their experiences with their particular TRIO program.  One of the women this year told us these things about herself:  Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was young; she and her brothers were in the car when it happened, and they lived with various relatives in not the greatest environments after that.  When she was in eighth grade, she got pregnant, and she and her boyfriend married; when she was 20, they’d had two more kids and another was on the way, and at that point her husband decided that he didn’t want to be married anymore, and so she worked two jobs just to feed her kids.  College was never a subject in her household, but when her daughter was in high school, they made a pact.  If the daughter would go, she would go, too.  She intended to just go long enough to “learn to type or something so that I could make more than minimum wage”.  She now has a Master’s Degree, thanks to the Student Support Services program at Tyler Junior College.

Yesterday, I had my own TRIO achiever story, and although it was much less dramatic, it brought home to me why I get out of bed in the morning.  Raul, a ninth grader at one of my junior highs, has been in our program for the past three years.  I don’t think I’ve heard him say a dozen words, and he often does not participate in what we’re doing.  I’ve always invited him to participate, but not pushed him; the groups of kids are comprised of smart kids, not-so-smart kids, all colors of kids, and seventh through ninth graders, so students are sometimes intimidated by others in the group.  But as long as Raul shows up, I’m hoping that he’s getting something. 

Yesterday we did an exercise on our vision of our lives at 25.  They were told to imagine that they were 25 years old, and I wanted to know where they’d gone to school, how they were supporting themselves, where they were living, if they had a family, what kind of car they drove, what they did for fun, etc.  I compared their visions to putting an address in a GPS system:  you have to know where you’re going in order to get there.  Then they were all invited to share their visions with the group.  As usual, Raul declined to share.  His paper had no notes on it.  I asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up but he said he doesn’t have a clue.  That’s okay.  When we finished the lesson, most of the kids went back to class, but several of them hung around and we decided to walk around the building to look at some of the artwork that students had done.  Out of the blue, Raul said to me, “Miss, my dad thinks that the counselor at ABC High School [of course, not the real name of the high school, but the school that Raul will attend next year] is racist.”  I asked him why and he said that when his older brother had been there, the counselor had told his dad that “people like you don’t go to college”.  I was flabbergasted and really had no clue how to respond.  I asked if his brother had made poor grades, and he said that no, he hadn’t.  I told Raul that I just thought that was a stupid (a word that wasn't allowed in my household when my boys were little, but holy cow, that was the only word I could think of that was appropriate!) thing to say and that I bet it made his dad really mad.  Oh yeah, he said, it sure did.  As we walked around the building and looked at the art (some of it was his, but I hadn’t known that when I suggested it), Raul kept talking to me.  At one point he said, “Miss, do you have to go to college to be an airline pilot?”  I wanted to throw my arms around him and say, “You go, Raul!!”  He gets it.  HE GETS IT.  And his brother?  He’s currently a student at the University of North Texas.  Life is good J

Valentine's Day Secrets

The best gifts are undoubtedly the unexpected ones.  My cute spouse and I have a pact:  we do not buy each other gifts just because the calendar says we should. We both hate the pressure of being on the giving end and finding something "just right", as well as being on the receiving end and having to wonder if we'll like what's inside.  But we do buy each other things when we see something that the other would undoubtedly like (like the Texas Tech throw that I stayed wrapped up in two weeks ago during the Big Freeze), which makes both giving and receiving on just regular old days--well, it makes regular old days not so regular.
On our first Valentine's Day as a married couple (at the ripe old ages of 50 and 48--no spring chickens here), though, we both broke the rules.  I don't remember what I bought for him except a mushy card thanking him from the bottom of my heart for (finally!) marrying me, but I slipped out of the house after he was in bed to put it in his truck so he'd have it first thing.  Ever so quietly, I opened his car door and started to place my gift where he would see it as soon as he got in.  Much to my surprise, there were a card and single rose in a vase in the passenger side....waiting for morning when he would sneak it into the house so I'd have it first thing.  Life is good :)