Over the last few weeks, I've given several keynote speeches to young adults and the time afterwards has been spent answering questions about my life, etc. One commonality amongst the groups I've spoken to has been questions related to motherhood- do I want to be a mother? Will I adopt a child? Would I be willing to be a single mom?
I've answered honestly. Yes, I want to be a mother. Someday. Of course I would adopt. I have no other option. No, I don't want to be a single mom. Whereas, I think many women are capable of successfully raising a child without a husband, I am not.
The subject of this questioning and answering seems a distant place on my life's timeline. I am neither emotionally nor financially prepared to be a mother. I have no prospect of a husband to share the responsibility of raising a child with, nor do I expect that option in the near future. But that doesn't mean that I don't have special moments of deeply wanting to be a mom. I had such an occurrence at work this past week.
I have a student, George, who struggled with his behavior when he was a second grader. He had a bad attitude, received poor marks on his report card, and overall had a rough year. In third grade, though, things have luckily changed. George has been a different kid- he's respectful, he works hard, and has shown vast improvements in his classroom conduct. Don't get me wrong, he still has faults and habits that he needs to work on, but don't we all?
One thing about George is that when he does get into trouble or makes a bad grade, he shows no remorse of any sort. He, in fact, has a smirk that spreads widely across his face which typically tells me that he could care less. It irks me to no end and has truly tested my patience, but as I said, George is rarely in trouble, so I haven't had to deal with this issue very often. However, on Friday morning, the speaker on the ceiling of my classroom buzzed and the sound of my principal's voice came through requesting that I send George down to the office. He sat at his desk, smirking as if proud, and I asked him what the reason was as to why the principal would be calling him down. George told me that some boys that he was sitting with on the bus had picked on a girl and taken her backpack.
"Were you a part of it?" I asked. He told me no. I said for him to tuck in his shirt so that he would look nice and to make sure to look the principal in the eye when he spoke to her.
"Yes, ma'am," he said to me and left to go and give his account of what he had witnessed. Thirty minutes later, George had not returned to my room and so I went down to the office to find out what was going on. I found my student, and two other third grade boys, sitting across from the principal giving their testimony of how they were searching for candy and money that was supposedly in a girl's backpack and that when they couldn't locate the goods, they ripped up her homework in anger. George was no more a witness than I am a professional athlete. He had conspired with his peers to commit this act of bullying.
My principal told me that George and the boys would have in-school suspension the entire next day and asked if for now I would take them to their classrooms. We walked briskly in silence. I told George to stand outside of our room while I ushered the other children back to their teachers. When I returned I proceeded to yell at George in the hallway. With each word that came out of my mouth, his eyes got bigger and bigger from shock as I had never yelled at him before. In fact, I've never yelled at any of my students. I don't believe in raising my voice at children to get them to behave. But in that instance, I completely lost all ability to think rationally, and I made George feel like the size of a peanut- leaving him to spend the rest of the day silent and sullen.
By the next morning, the guilt had overtaken my head and heart, and as I walked my precious student down to the principal's office to serve his punishment, I stopped him in the hall and asked if I could say something to him.
"George," I softly said, "I owe you an apology for yelling yesterday. I feel terrible that I lost my temper. You are one of my favorite students and when I heard that you lied to me and were a bully on the school bus, it hurt me deeply. But that is no reason for me to have hurt you in return. And so I want you to know that I am so very sorry." George slowly looked up at me, with tears in his eyes that I had never seen before and no sign of a smirk to be found.
"I'm sorry, too, Ms. Wrigglesworth."
And with those words, I felt like I had experienced a brief moment of motherhood. Perhaps I am wrong, but if the emotions I felt during those few seconds of our apologetic exchange were a glimpse into what it is like to have a child, then I welcome the chance to become a mom. I envy those who encounter such moments of love everyday in their journey of parenthood- and although that love can have moments of ugliness that involve tempers lost and voices raised, it is still love.
