Preface: I wrote most of this almost two years ago just before I left Florida but never settled on whether to finish or publish it. For that reason, I'm adapting the title to reflect when it was begun. --ADear You,
On Saturday morning, I went with eight students to the Dixie Walesbilt Hotel. In this town, there's very little to look at, but this beautiful art deco building looms over downtown like some ghost of a time when this town might have mattered. The hotel has been closed for these kids' entire lives. Most of them were born and raised here, so they have a lifetime's worth of curiosity, wondering what's inside, if it's really haunted, etc. My mantra during my entire time here, especially with my photo students, has been "You never know what you can do if you just ask." In that vein, I was struck last week with the thought that for our final photography field trip, I should ask the owners if we could shoot inside. And the miracle was...they said yes. I felt like this was the best possible parting gift I could give to my kids. To actually see inside and KNOW what they'd only been able to wonder about. Yesterday, I missed a call from one of my students who came to the hotel. He's been in foster care for much of his life. He barely knows his father, his mother is dead, and he has very closed-minded and religious extended family who discourage him constantly. He told me recently that they'd had an intervention for him to try to convince him to drop out of high school and just get his GED--because he's not smart enough to finish. If that's not enough, he's gay and living in one of the worst places possible for it. I was packing up my classroom when he called and didn't check my voicemail until hours later. The message he left was basically this: Thank you. You have no idea what that meant to me. Yesterday, I almost committed suicide, and the thing that stopped me was this image of the inside of the hotel, of sitting in the booth at IHOP after, surrounded by all these great people from class who are all really different, sitting by my teacher, who would do something like that for us. I couldn't go through with it because of that. So thank you. I realized then that all these photos he'd been posting online from our trip must have been one of the ways he was reminding himself of that connection.
Today, I met up with another student for coffee. He made a comment that he would rather just elope than deal with a wedding because his parents would never support it. Last year, after he came out to his parents, his father didn't speak to him for months. He said that on Father's Day, his dad suggested they go to Chick-Fil-A. He told his dad he'd rather not eat there; his dad pressed him for a reason, and he said he'd rather not say. When he finally admitted why, his father said in their native language It would be sweet to me to hit you right now.
It is hard for me to imagine such a reaction. I wonder about the origin of the word sweet and if it might have some other layered meaning in his native language. I think of the macarons the boy made me for Valentine's Day this year. Sweet. I think of the way he's called me Mom ever since the day I stood up to the homophobic student in class. We are sitting in a coffee shop, and we are drinking iced coffees. His has vanilla and cream in it. He once wrote a poem about working in his parents' bakery and the smells he was constantly surrounded by. It occurs to me that his father is a baker and knows the full meaning of the word sweet when he applies it to the prospect of his hitting his homosexual teenage son. Who is sweet.
Who, frankly, is one of the best people I've ever known.
Yours,
An Un-Mother of Sweetness
|
