I’m reading a book in bed with my 8-year-old. It’s meant for 9-year-olds, but that’s not why I’m reading it to her. I’m reading it because it’s one of the only books my 18-year-old (the older one) liked. And I never read it with her. It was her mom who read that one.
But I always wondered about that book, so I sort of forced the on Hazel; she’s the 8-year-old.
It’s written well. It’s about grade-schoolers, probably 4th or 5th grade. Hard to tell. Anyway, I’m reading it, and there’s this part where a girl runs out of the classroom because she’s being made fun of by the other students, and a teacher, the good teacher, follows her out to the swing set and he patiently stands there while she cries and wipes snot away with her shirtsleeves.
And it’s right at this part where my voice, for some reason, gets lost in my throat a little bit, like I just realized I’m in front of a crowd.
I try to prevent myself from blinking because I know how a single blink can release a tear. Hazel and I are so close, laying there on the bed together, she’ll definitely see it.
I keep reading, knowing that these words were read before and loved before, loved by my 18-year once a 10-year old — that 18-year-old who is absolutely brilliant but has always hated reading, HATED reading, vowed never to do it if she could help it+, and more or less stuck with that premise.
The girl on the swing, back in the book, she says this thing she’s been keeping inside, the thing that drove her out of the classroom. She wants to tuck it back down, away from her teacher, away from the schoolyard, but in time, there’s just no more room to hide such things.
And these words she spoke, they had to be in my daughter’s brain at some point, had to have crossed her mind.
“I can’t read, okay! I can’t read!”
And I am floored.
I love this part, the part of the teacher standing there silently as a witness, knowing that this moment is changing a life.
I feel every single word in my throat as I read them to Hazel, still hoping she doesn’t notice that her old man is somewhere else, not because I don’t want her to know but because I don’t want her to stop me. I want us to keep reading. I want to live in that schoolyard, stand near that swing, bear witness, reach out to a part of a girl that is hated by the other parts. Be there now, where I wasn’t before.
The teacher is great. He does everything right: patient, soft, kind. I wish I had had this moment but it’s his, and I can only borrow it. And honestly, that’s good enough because few things are as immensely spectacular as a dad’s love… Something so great it can outwit time. Reading this book, being this teacher, I’m reaching into a place where things are stored forever, where emotions travel millenia, where there is always an open door to put things because they are the right things.
As I read, I know it’s a moment that never happened for me but I feel like it did. I feel like I’ve already uttered these words, or maybe was meant to.
You’re not stupid.
You’re an incredible artist.
You’re good at math.
You’re good at telling stories.
You just think differently, that’s all.
You see the world differently.
You have dyslexia.
I say these things, along with the teacher, exactly as the teacher, feeling the vibrations in my throat, the texture of the pages, the soft mud of the ground beneath the swing.
It’s weird, as if the thoughts of a 10-year-old, now 18-year-old, somehow slid free and fell into the book, then laid there patiently in the crease for 8 years…
And the teacher waited.
And the schoolyard waited.
And the child running to the swing waited, held onto her secret, while I went through all the things: making lunches, checking math homework, praising artwork, driving there and back, patting her leg on the ride home after the school kids laughed at her spelling on the blackboard.
It makes no sense, but it’s undeniable: this love I’m having for the girl on the swing, this resonance with the tall, lanky teacher.
Like a wire traveling all the way from Massachusetts to California, all the way from 5th grade to college, and back home again.
It’s like she’s talking to me, her ghost or her spirit, something that isn’t burdened by time.
It’s powerful, this moment. Inexplicably powerful.
Hazel’s eyes are closed; there is a peace on her face that fits so well, I start sobbing.
I draw a line down the crease of the book with my finger, close it, and leave it on my chest, rising up and down with my breaths. I look up at the ceiling fan; its pattern becomes a song.
Whirrwhirrrwhirrwhirr Whirrwhirrrwhirrwhirr Whirrwhirrrwhirrwhirr
On my back, so deep in my thoughts I’m not even sure if I’m speaking out loud.
But I’m speaking.
I got the message, girl. Don’t worry about nothing. Daddy got it.