Day Eight: Real Life

Today I was dealing with the stuff regular life throws at you, and then some.  Major care-givers fatigue.  Caring for issues with family and still needing to work with students and find cooperation with the kids in their school. Almost ALMOST done with the school year.  One more week to go, which is crazy as everyone else has been living their summer.

I finished Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  This book appealed to the poetic side of me, the real side that captures real emotions and feelings.  It was heart-wrenching because it was so real.  I think empathy grows when you can see someone's real. It was real.  And some points too real, the UNCOMFORTABLE I have been hearing so much about.  

Finishing up the school year means helping students with last minute projects and I saw that realness from one of my find students.  I so would like to get into specifics but this feels so sacred.  I don't know if I would have saw this realness, this sacred truth, if I hadn't dived into Mr. Coates.  For that I am eternally grateful.  This is what it is all about.

I talked with a neighbor, friend, young black woman that I watched grow-up.  Our conversation was brief.  I asked "If I had to go back in the classroom tomorrow what is the one change I could make?" 

Her reply rocked me: "Just ask how we are doing?" A simple desire.  An everyday gesture.  She stated she often felt the sad she felt, the frustration she felt, the anxiety she felt was never acknowledged.   Those simple human feelings were twisted and manipulated.  The request seemed simple but not simple.  This one human gesture could mean so much to someone.  

I needed to sit on this and really consider what she said.  Our conversation was short but it said a lot.