The Resilient Soul

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

The first time Son #2 ran away, he was barefoot, wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt. It was early December, and it was snowing lightly outside. I don’t remember what upset him or even how I reacted. I only have one picture in my head—a glimpse of the porch light as the door slammed behind him. He was 14.

He didn’t come home that night or the next morning. My husband drove around for hours looking for him. I called his friends and tried to reassure my other children that it would be OK. In those days, the words bipolar and depression were for adults. I’d never even heard of the term “attention deficit disorder”. We “grown-ups” arrogantly assumed such issues were far too complex for kids to suffer. The next morning, I dressed and went to work at Midvale Middle School. That whole day is blank, but I remember clearly coming home.

 It was almost dark outside. Once home, I asked if there was any news. There was not. I can still see myself, my coat buttoned at my throat, my briefcase in my hand. I walked into my bedroom and collapsed onto my bed, still wearing the coat and clinging to the briefcase. I wondered if I would ever be able to stand up again. But I did. Two hours later, I walked down the stairs and drove to the church. I was responsible for 30 Young Women. They saved me from retreating into darkness. Two days later, my son came home. It was the first in an unending string of troubled years.

Before that day, it had never occurred to me that behind the eyes of every person I met or passed on the street, there was pain. No one escaped it. Suddenly, I was weeping with mothers at every parent/teacher conference as they told me their fears and their sorrows. One mother described a fishbowl on the coffee table at her house. The fish had long since died, so they had started dropping change into it as they walked through the door. Then, during middle school, her daughter began having headaches–severe headaches which couldn’t be quelled by over-the-counter meds. They took her to the emergency room. When they got home, this mother cut her daughter’s ID band from the hospital and dropped it into the fishbowl with her change. By the time I met her, the fishbowl was overflowing with ID bands from hospital trips, sometimes lengthy stays, now numbering in the upper double digits. Her daughter was a senior.

Another year, the Special Education Director from the room next door asked me if I would consider letting a quadriplegic student into my college prep English class. On the very first day she attended class with her full-time aide, we read an editorial from a current newspaper which opined about a drunk driving bill the legislature was considering. When I asked if there was any discussion, this girl, who was strapped into a complicated, motorized chair and could not raise her own hand, with considerable effort whispered something to her aide. The aide gestured to me. “Could my friend speak?” she asked. When I nodded, this student took several deep breaths from the oxygen tank on her wheelchair and began haltingly. “A—[pause, breath]–drunk—[pause, breath]—driver–[pause, breath]—did–[pause, breath]—this–[pause, breath]—to–[pause, breath]—me.” There was dead silence in the room. But the essay assignments related to that editorial had little to do with legislation and much more to do with courage.

Some years later, a student in my junior honors English class came in before school and asked me if it would be OK if she took a few minutes in class to explain to her friends why she would be absent for the next six weeks. After the bell, I turned over class to her. She walked to the front of the room and sat on the edge of an empty desk. “I have cancer,” she said. “A brain tumor. I’ve had it for a long time.” Some of the students who knew her well nodded their heads encouragingly. “The doctors have done all they can. Next week I’m going to have a bone marrow transplant. I’m guessing some of you have family members who are sick, too. I just wondered if you have questions?”

For that entire hour-and-a-half class period, she sat poised on that desk and answered questions about her history with the disease? was she scared? what was it like to undergo chemo? how could they help her? Her replies were straightforward, honest, clear-eyed, and memorably articulate. Two weeks later, she died. My principal approved a substitute for my class without my asking so that I and most of the members of my class could be at her funeral in the church down the street from Bingham High School. The next day, my students walked through my classroom door, opened their books, and we began again.

Now our society is assaulted daily by the ripples from pandemic, fire, rage, earthquake, weather, and uncertainty. But, despite the difficult days behind and those we know which are undoubtedly ahead, most of us get out of bed. Every day. And we start again–the very definition of resilience.