remember me flying

In the past few weeks, I've been very busy at my elementary internship. I'm definitely NOT complaining… I love to be so involved in supporting the growth of students! But with such a tight schedule, it leaves little room for spontaneity.

Last week, though, I found myself with a 30 minute block of time. In my head, I listed all the things I should do to prepare for the coming week. I headed down the hall toward the first grade wing, but intuition tugged at me. Go see Mitch, it whispered to me. I tried to ignore it, since everyone had been telling me that Mitch wasn't interested in working with a counselor. He'd been there since kindergarten and had rejected any advances from teachers, counselors, or other adults. No, Steph, really. Go find Mitch.  So I turned and walked in the other direction.

When I got to the door of the fifth grade classroom, I found Mitch crouched, forlorn, over a writing notebook. He was clearly spacing out and unengaged. Assessing the situation, I could see that it was a study hall for the "bad kids" and his teacher wasn't likely to resist my request to pull Mitch out for a few minutes. Perfect.

I got a nod from the teacher and approached Mitch. "Wanna come to my office for a little while?" I asked him. Mitch looked suspiciously at me and responded, "Am I in trouble?" I shook my head. "Well then, do I have to talk about my feelings?" he said, contemptuously. Again, I shook my head and said, "We can just hang out for a while, take a break from your work." He grinned; we both knew he wasn't exactly working.

As we walked to the stage that doubles as my office, I asked Mitch if he'd grown lately. He had always looked so incredibly small for his age (which I didn't mention to him :), but had recently grown about 4 inches. He still looked fragile, though, with scrawny arms and dark circles under his eyes. To me, he had an air of neglect to him that made me want to hug him… though I knew no fifth grade boy would go for that! Mitch grew more and more animated as we walked away from the classroom, telling me that he'd been growing and that he was pretty excited about going to middle school. By the time we had reached the stage, he was smiling. I don't remember seeing much of that from him.

I pulled out some oil pastels and some cheap butcher paper and invited him to try the pastels out. He really liked the texture and told me he had been working on drawing raccoons lately. He tried a couple out, crumpling up his work at the slightest mistake. Meanwhile, I drew lazy circles in various colors, trying to keep my work inconspicuous, and asked him completely surface level questions. As he drew, Mitch shared more and more about his opinions of school, his teachers, his younger siblings (whom he was worried about when he went on to middle school), and his family. Abruptly, he began to share about his temper and how he didn't know why it would suddenly come out, like a monster. But, he said, it's not as bad as my dad's monster… that gets really, really ugly. He shook his head as if to clear it, and looked down at his paper.

He'd drawn a bunch of bright orange balloons that took up much of the paper, with a small figure holding onto the strings of the balloons, taking flight. In the corner was a smaller bunch of balloons, with another figure flying along below. He pointed to the main figure and said, "That's me." I asked who the other person was. He said, "That's YOU, of course. You're flying with me."

I almost teared up. He handed me the paper and asked me to keep it on the bulletin board above my desk. "So you can remember me flying," he said. I thanked him and walked him back to class, thankful that I'd listened to my intuition.