The Blessings
i promised to stop adopting teenagers, but they keep slipping into my heart…
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I love these young ones so much it’s ridiculous. Each one has crawled into my soul in a different way, and while at times this process splits me open, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
There’s a scene in the Princess Bride where a funny old crone makes a pill for new life, and she paints something on it croaking: “The coating makes it go down easier.” I want to wrap my arms around each of these precious ones and let my heart for them coat them like chocolate –one long-lasting dose of mama-love to help the new life of adulthood go down a little more smoothly.
I want wrap them up with affection. With warmth. With stability. With all the elements of unconditional love you can think to put on a menu. And then, when they are all warm and cozy, I want to drop integrity into the center of their chests, like a silver quarter slipping into a coin slot.
If they have integrity then all thier live-long days they will be the stellar creatures they are already becoming. Not integrity to the rules, but the kind of integrity that allows you to acknowledge who you truly are, and stand in that truth. The kind of integrity that is not beholden to outside rules, or your peer’s opinons, or because of ‘the way it’s done’– but because of a solid internal compass that will not steer you wrong if you listen. The kind of integrity that lets you live a life on the outside that is true to the life you hold in your heart. If they have that, well, they will have everything they need.
So that is what I bless them with, in my dreaming, in my words, in my living. And the old Christian mystic who married that witchy little crone in my soul says, “Amen, may it be so.”
“Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid”
-Basil King
4 comments
I love teenagers. They are awesome. I tried teaching all different age ranges of kids, and settled into HS as my favorite. I haven’t taught for five years, but I still think about my kids. Sometimes I see them on Facebook, and watch as their lives take shapes, and think about the effect that I had on them.
It’s pretty awesome, in the true sense of the word.
I second that emotion.
I like the last quote. The mom in Almost Famous says that and it’s just about the most precious thing ever.
I just applied to Seattle University’s Master’s in Teaching program to get my secondary education certificate. My boyfriend was just bitching about teenagers and I had that brief moment of thinking, “oh god, what have i done?” when it came out that he was really talking about what a shit head he was in high school. I remember when I first worked with teenagers after not being one for 8 seconds and having a really hard time keeping all my “stuff” from clouding the vision i had for those lovely young people in front of me. It was good.
It will be an adventure. And i’m sorely in need of an adventure.
To know themselves, to love themselves, to be free of standards put on them by others. That is what I wish & dream for them as well.
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