What Goes Around …

A few years ago, the elementary school close to our church asked for volunteers to be mentors to at-risk students, to be another adult in their lives who could listen and advise and help, in whatever ways we could. We would visit the school once a week and spend time in the classroom with our child, or go with them to the library or teacher’s lounge to talk or do classwork. I had a third-grade girl; let’s call her A.J.

The second time I went to school to visit with her, we went to the library with some math pages. We worked a few minutes and then her pencil broke, so we trekked back upstairs to her room for another one. As we walked down the hallway to her room, we passed a boy from her class. He cut his eyes to A.J. and then looked at me.

“Hello, Old Woman,” he said.

“Hello, Young Man,” I said, wondering what on earth the conversation had been in her classroom the past week.

I may be an old woman, but I was the old woman who stayed, every week, all through Third Grade. In a meeting at church that spring, the principal came to visit us for a feedback/listening session. I talked about my experience, a good one, and the principal identified my girl. She mentioned that the first six weeks of school were particularly hard on A.J., from Kindergarten to Third Grade. She just had trouble transitioning from the lazy days of summer to the much more structured days of school.

“Would it help, do you think,” I asked, “if I sent her cards each month during the summer? Just friendly things.”

“It could not hurt,” the principal said.

So I went straight to Target and bought cards. I sent one in June, in July, and in August, and another one right after school started. In October, when the mentoring program started back up, I went to her new Fourth Grade classroom. The kids were working on various tasks, and I pulled a chair up close to her and sat while she worked. When she finished, she leaned over and quietly said, “I got all those cards you sent.”

“Good,” I whispered back. “I’m glad to know that.”

“I keep them in my car,” she said. Score one for the Old Woman!

Later that afternoon, her group moved to a different table to finish working on posters they had started a couple of days earlier. Things were a little more relaxed, and she and a friend chatted with me about various things.

“Where do you live?” A.J.’s friend asked.

“Do you know where Target is?” I asked. They did.

“My husband and I live in a house sort of close to Target.” I said.

The girls looked at each other, absolutely stunned. They turned to me and exclaimed,

in unison, “You have a husband!?!”

“Yes, I do,” I said, trying to disguise how startled I felt by their surprise.

A.J. and her co-cast members in Wizard of Oz.

I showed up every week of Fourth Grade. I went to the school’s Spring Program. I went to see her in the Mission Waco Children’s production of Wizard of Oz.

I went to the end-of-school talent show, hugged her, and said have a good summer. I sent her cards.

In September, when the principal came to church again to thank us and encourage us for another school year, I spoke with her about when I could come to school to be with A.J. again. She looked at me soberly and said, “She’s gone. Mom came and took her out of school on Friday.”

I didn’t cry a whole lot, just a little, and maybe a little bit more.

I wrote A.J. a letter and told her I would miss her and how I thought she would do great in her new school, and I told her why I thought she would do great (she’s smart, other kids like her, teachers and other adults like her and trust her) and gave her specific examples of when I had seen each of these characteristics. In the envelope I included several self-addressed, stamped envelopes. I said that I would love to hear from her and she could write me any time and mail me what she wrote. That was a year and a half ago.

I still send cards every month or so. Sometimes I put some candy in the envelopes, especially at holiday time.

Some of the best mail I’ve ever received.

Last Saturday, the day before Father’s Day, I went to get the mail. There was a magazine and a catalog, and a bill, I think, and an envelope that looked like it might have been carried around for several days, in a pocket or purse or backpack, until it got dropped in a mailbox.

I recognized the envelope immediately, and tore it open. I didn’t cry a whole lot; just a little, and then maybe a little bit more.

Then I sent her another card.