If only for a moment

One of the great things about kids is their surprise factor: You never know what they’re going to say next. Like Mrs. Potamia. You know Mrs. Potamia, that woman in Iraq who lived between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. She was one of the ancient aunt-sisters, according to some of my sixth-grade history students, a distant relative of the famous Egyptian lady, Rosetta Stone.

Maybe it’s a language barrier that sends youngsters into rhetorical contortions, or maybe it’s just a delightful little bonus for grownups who need a splash of humor in their lives.

Or maybe I just need to be reminded that I don’t have all the answers.

“If people didn’t exist, where would chickens live?”

I didn’t see that one coming, but the look on the boy’s face said he wasn’t kidding.

“I don’t know,” I offered. “The kitchen?”

Many of the students who pass through my classroom move out of my life altogether as their families follow the ebb and flow of a harvest tide. Parents find jobs elsewhere. Texas and Mexico really aren’t so far away, and so babies are bundled and furniture stored and friendships torn apart. It happens.

“Mrs. Spencer,” I heard one morning, “we’re moving.”

The boy’s dark eyes met mine, void of the usual excitement and anticipation. They merely confirmed an unavoidable fact. And in their old-too-soon gaze I read, “I don’t want to go.”

“Did your father get a new job?” I asked, ignorantly assuming the reason behind the departure of one of my brightest students.

“No.” He glanced away, quickly noting other students nearby. “I’ll tell you later.”

Again I jumped at a possible motive. Perhaps it was an immigration issue.

Later, as promised, I learned the reason. Through the painfully pure sentence structure of one too young to cloak his feelings, I learned.

“My dad left me.”

Not many statements have caught me by greater surprise. In four simple words, this young man revealed all the pain of a broken home, the self-imposed guilt of the guiltless, the bottom line loss of one left behind.

I will never know if he confused his pronouns and really meant to say, “My dad left us,” but somehow I doubt it. I think his heart spoke the words before his mind could interfere.

Teaching is often like parenting and grand-parenting: You want to protect those who suffer from that which causes them pain. If only you could.

If only I could capture the joy of innocent, misspoken discovery and save it for later. If only I could answer the unanswerable questions and dry the eyes that watch a hometown slip past the back window of a car.

If only I could assure them, that in spite of the surprises and the questions and the pain and the struggles, they will make it, the journey is worth it, and I was blessed to have them in my life.

If only for a moment.