Its a Mad World

I had a fun weekend, filled with alcohol, corsets and camping.  It was a good thing, because I needed a fun weekend, I needed to relax a bit.   It was rainy, cold and muddy but still managed to be quite fun.  I am hoping that pictures will be posted on facebook so that I can, in turn, post them here.  I didn’t drag out my camera because of the rain.  

Unfortunately the weekend has ended and my mind has returned to churning.  I was introspective to a degree this weekend, trying to recenter myself and find where my balance should be.  Not so much on Saturday while drunk, obviously, but more so on Sunday.  While driving to reach the grounds this weekend we drove through a small rural town.  It is near my own home town, but has not been as touched by development as my hometown has been, yet.  Trees are everywhere, and there are very few real stores to think of.  It is, in a very real sense, the exact opposite of the inner city atmosphere most of my students know.  They are more used to riding the bus than in a car, to walking down sidewalks at night.  They are not used to having yards to run and play in.  They see more trees at school than they do at home.  The people, the attitudes, it is all very different.  One wonders how a young boy would adjust if suddenly uprooted from his concrete jungle and plopped down in the middle of the woods.  I wonder, and I hope, and I pray.  I pray because that hypothetical little boy, uprooted from his urban jungle is one of mine.   

I found out last week that a child I thought had moved with his family, had not.  His mother told me about ahead of time that they would be moving the next week.  It was definitely not anything unexpected.  I was sad that he was leaving, as I get attached to all my kids, and this little boy has come a long way already as far as social adaptations go.  They may have been planning on moving, but that’s not what happened.  Instead he was removed from his parents, and placed in the care of a family unlike his own, in an atmosphere completely foreign to him.  He has younger siblings, and another on the way.  One of those was an adorable little girl.  She was all grins and dimples and as precious as can be.  I used to tell his mother I couldn’t wait till I got to have her in my class too.  She was about 2 years old, maybe less.  She was beaten to death, in front of my little boy.  His parents are being investigated in the death, and until some sort of consensus is reached he is with a foster family.  

I don’t know when it happened.  I only found out after he was taken away.  At the latest it was the day before he moved.  He never gave any signs.  Never said anything, didn’t show any changes whatsoever.  I feel sick thinking about what happened to her, and I feel sick knowing that it happened while he was still with me and I never knew.  I hate to imagine how scared he must have been, and still is, and how much hurt there must have been inside of him… and he never let on, and I never knew .  To me, that means I failed him.  I have been struggling with this.  Part of me hoped as irrational as I knew it was that I might see him on the drive, just so that I would know he was ok.