I GET to see him every weekend, and relish every moment of watching this grandson grow.
I wonder if my grandparents would’ve felt the same way about me and my two brothers in our childhood.
It’s a wonder unanswered. All my grandparents on both sides did not outlive World War II.
I’ve watched this little boy hold his own in a house of adults. Not having seen nor played with another child in that house, he must think he’s their age and so, should be left to decide what and when to eat, attend school, nap, play, bathe, take his vitamins, and rest for the night.
When he was born, everyone in the family agreed that we’d be extra-careful with our language around him, that we wouldn’t gift him with toy guns or symbols of harmful aggression.
We’d also agreed we’d let him enjoy his childhood; it comes and goes too fast, anyway. Childhood is like sand slipping through the hand. Before we know it, children have upped and grown.
Not privileged with a sibling, he’s played alone with his toys until close to five years of age. On his first day at nursery school, while he was about to sit on a swing, another little boy hit him on the chest and grabbed the swing away.
I expected to see anger or hurt on his face, or to even cry. Instead, the look was of confusion, accompanied by his question “Why did he hit me, Mommy Ya?” Irony of ironies, it was in school that he got his first exposure to aggression.
The worst irony happened in his kindergarten years. As a teacher was explaining, this little boy put in a word edgewise, too soon. Peeved, the teacher said she would cut off his ears for not listening.
She then proceeded to call for the school nurse. Soon after, the latter went to the classroom, bringing a pair of scissors.
The little boy covered his ears and cried, “Don’t cut off my ears! Don’t cut off my ears!” The teacher asked, “So, are you now going to listen?” The little boy nodded his head.
“Were you scared?” I asked him. “Yes, very scared, Mommy Ya. I cried.” But maybe the teacher did not mean it, I offered. He asked, “So why did she say it? And why did the nurse bring scissors?”
At six years old, he learned that teachers and nurses can be harmful.
Today, half a year later, he’s now in another school. He rattles off the activities that make his day exciting, the names of classmates and friends who are equally happy, and the new lessons he has learned.
Between his bubbly recounts I ask, “Are you happy in your new school, little boy?” “Yes, Mommy Ya.”
“But you miss your old school, right?” He says, “No, Mommy Ya.”
I venture further. “Why don’t you miss your old school?” I ask. He says, “Because Teacher ________ and Nurse ________ cut off children’s ears.”
Imagine the trauma they inflicted. For a school which boasts of inculcating values in its students, the little boy’s memories remind me of a wise old maxim, “Beware the man whose actions do not match his words.”
It’s our hope and goal that his tabula rasa will hold more happy memories, enough to neutralize, obliterate the damage in his kinder year.
To children, emotions can go strong.
“So, how about Teacher Bianca?” I asked. He said, “She was good, very nice. I like her.”
Those with scissors were “bad people.” The mind remembers.
(lelani.echaves@gmail.com)