If I thought the forces of pain in my students' lives no longer touched me; if I thought I had built a thick enough skin not to be touched; if I thought I could dispell empathy with some cliche prayer or verse, then I was wrong.
When they write "no one for him," and "every time he did something wrong his father called him names/ I'm not going to tell you what he said, but they weren't fun and games," and being "pushed to move on" after five family deaths in the same number of years, and of losing best friends in front their eyes, and of a family coming to terms with the suicide of a child "I'd climb to heaven and back again," and from the perspective of "Melissa's Hat" we hear that "Now her hair is all gone, but I found my place/ I've replaced the hair that once wrapped around her face/... They say the medicine will make her well,/ But all I see is her living Hell," when they write these words, it makes me think: I have it easy.
It makes me think: I need to spare the rod a little less.
It makes me think: I need to hug my family more--even the one who doesn't like it.
It makes me think: I need to leave sticky notes for me to find over the years to remind me to relax my sense of control and more often affirm the dreams and quirks and every little success of my family.
It makes me think: I wish I could take you home. Who would you become with a schedule, with warm family meals, with kind words?
It makes me think: I need to pray more.
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