This Indigo Girls song feeling like my anthem this spring. I know I'm not actually clearing webs from hovels and feeding the homeless, but in my corner of the world, I'm doing what I can.
My new little guy quit school last week. Calls were made to this therapist and that counselor to try to get him back, and it didn't work. So I went and got him. On Saturday morning, I tromped myself down to the boys' home where he's living, delivered the novel we're reading with the page marked that we'd be on Monday, and a note that basically said that school is the ticket out of where he is now...and the reasons why I know that first hand. Being smart and working hard can change the course of his life. And he's got to choose it for himself, care about it for himself, because no one else is going to do it for him. Reality bites.
He was in school yesterday, and came again today, only for first period English class, even though he had a doctor's appointment and totally could have used that as an excuse to stay home. "Home." Such as it is.
I'll never know if it made the difference, and truthfully, I don't care. I really don't. I am not trying to be the hero, and I can only hope that I am just one of many voices sending the message to this kid that he matters, school matters, and things can get better. And I was often told as a teenager that I should not get involved with other people's problems, that I should not rock the boat, that I should "lie low" and fade into the shadows. Wait and see. Feel it out before you take action. Sit with your chin in your hand in a thoughtful pose. But it's against my nature, and always was. My gut was telling me to take this one small action, even though it really wasn't my place. To know that there was something I could potentially do, and to decide not to do it, would have been a betrayal to the only truth I can hold on to, which is that we are all knit, we are all tied, and that people come into each other's lives for a reason. "If I have a care in the world, I have a gift to bring."
And I'm not writing about this so you can give me a cookie, or say, "Yay you." I'm writing because it's been a moment in my life where I have re-learned the lesson that I need to follow through. This whole blog is largely about that. Lessons learned along the way, my ephiphanies and discoveries and my attempts to live authentically. This event, this child, has been teaching me. In the grand scheme, it might not matter, and his story might have a sad ending. But I've got two more months, at least, to try to alter that trajectory, just a tiny bit. I have to do what I can...because I can.
There have been a number of times in my life where I have felt compelled to take a bold action that seemed to make no sense, that seemed to step way over the boundaries of what was appropriate. When my principal was dying, and I barely knew them but felt like I was "supposed" to help them. When Matt died two years ago and I felt like I needed to be there for the Thayer kids through that, even though I technically didn't really "belong." Other people's dramas that I got involved in, even though I was cautioned against it. I felt compelled, and I went, and I found out, later, what the reasons were. And both cases, as well as some other times that compelling voice has led me, changed my life. Changed me, in my core. Chemical change. I know the difference, now, between that voice and others. And that voice has its theme songs. Obviously.
This song was on the mix CD that I was listening to on Saturday morning as I peeled away from this boys' home in the woods, all spread out like some sort of summer camp for the kids no one knows what to do with. My happy, healthy, adored daughters were in the backseat, crumbs on their faces from the chocolate chip muffins I was able to buy them at Dunkin Donuts on the way down. We were going shopping for new spring t-shirts. And even though money is tight, and we have to budget and make sacrifices and can't have everything we want, we have so, so much. Bounteous gifts, and I never want to take them for granted.
I think often about the fact that I could so easily have ended up...somewhere else, like so many others in my family. Like this little boy, or like my brother. But through my own hard work and determination, and the many, many sacrifices of my mother, I ended up here, with a home and family that I try daily to deserve, having the chance to try to change the world...one twelve year old at a time.
A Hammer and a Nail
by the Indigo Girls
Clearing webs from the hovel
a blistered hand on the handle of a shovel
I've been digging too deep, I always do.
I see my face on the surface
I look a lot like narcissus
A dark abyss of an emptiness
Standing on the edge of a drowning blue.
I look behind my ears for the green
Even my sweat smells clean
Glare off the white hurts my eyes
Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.
I had a lot of good intentions
Sit around for fifty years and then collect a pension,
Started seeing the road to hell and just where it starts.
But my life is more than a vision
The sweetest part is acting after making a decision
I started seeing the whole as a sum of its parts.
Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.
My life is part of the global life
I'd found myself becoming more immobile
When I'd think a little girl in the world can't do anything.
A distant nation my community
A street person my responsibility
If I have a care in the world I have a gift to bring.
Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.
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