Tears

Osvaldo came to school crying again.  Three day weekend, and he’d lost the habit of school.  I want my mommy, he sniffled.  I’m scared to go to school.  Is far away.

Now I know for a fact that Osvaldo lives three blocks from the school.  I know that when you walk, especially if you’re an Angelino like my son, three blocks is an infinity and an eternity.  The same child who will happily traipse along for miles in Manhattan or along a wilderness trail in Montana enters into the LAndscape of our great city and instantly becomes a wuss.  Three whole blocks?!  Why can’t we driiiiiive?!!!

But I know that my son and his friends have different issues from Osvaldo.  Osvaldo, in his head, is still living in rural Oaxaca.  He may physically be present in the City of Angels, but he lives in a world of Zapotec and Spanish and rural values.  Like that Oaxacan dad, Marcelino de Jesus Martinez, who last week showed up in the newspaper headlines for ’selling’ his 14 year-old daughter to be the bride of an 18-year old.  He made news when he went to the police because he didn’t get the ‘dowry’ that had been agreed upon: 16,000 dollars, 100 cases of beer, and meat.  The beer and the meat were for the wedding, and the cash was an insurance policy for the bride and eventual progeny in case the groom went deadbeat at some future moment.  No matter that the girl was 14.  She was already living with the boyfriend anyway.  The US is increasingly full of people living in parallel universes with different cultural values and assumptions and realities. Maybe that’s always been the case.  Maybe we just intersect more often than we did in the past.  But nevertheless, parallel universes.

Like Osvaldo.  He and Yadira have taken least to the value system of the classroom: work hard, accomplish, strive to learn, complete tasks, complete homework, take pride in all this work.  In the beginning of the year, school was just a holding cell for the two of them: six hours away from the home world, hours in which they’d play airplane eraser in daydreamland.  They’re way more acculturated now than then, but it’s still a different world to them.  A world they’re not quite sure why they’re being sent to.  Explorers without a mission.

I give them tough love to get them to shape up and lots of praise to get them to want to try.  The old carrot and stick method.  I give them words to name their feelings.  I give them Chocolate the teddy bear to hug.  But I do not coddle them.  Especially not today.

The entire second grade gathered in the library to watch the inauguration.  Teachers tried hard to hold themselves together.  I failed miserably.  I was crying in silent shaking heaves.  Across the room, Osvaldo was crying in loud wails.  He cried for his mommy.  I cried in joy and gratitude for the words Obama was speaking.  I cried in relief at finally having a president who loved words and could inspire and bridge differences with them rather than mangle and mutilate them.

When the ceremony ended, my neighbor teacher and I hugged each other, both of us crying.  The students filed out of the room,  and one little African American boy from my neighbor teacher’s class came to hold my hand to offer comfort.  Brianna, from my class, took the other hand.  They walked me back to our room.

The two classes reconvened to debrief.  The question that came up the most was about the crying; the speech went over their heads and was very far away in some remote place called Washington (way further than three blocks!).  The emotions were right there in the room.

Why did you cry?  Osvaldo cried because he was sad.  He wanted his mommy.  That makes sense.  But you cried because you were happy?  That does NOT make sense.  People don’t cry when they’re happy.

Then the African American boy said, it’s okay, remember how I took your hand?  That was what Obama was saying.  You help each other.

Someone remembered Elizabeth Alexander’s Praise Song, though they may have attributed it to Obama: it’s about love, right?  We must show love.

Then someone brought up Dr. Joseph Lowery’s rhymes: the classes laughed.  Yellow mellow, brown stick around… They remembered that.  That registered.

Rhymes, love, and tears.  That’s what these second graders will remember of the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States.  Hopefully, when they’re older, they’ll want to go back and make sense of the text itself.  That, right now, is our task: to make sure they all want to live in Obama’s universe, the world of meaningful words.