Listen to thisA moment haunts you. you’re not sure exactly why, but you sense there is a purpose. It calls out and says look at me again. For me, this is one of those moments.
On a camping trip along the shore of Lake Michigan with six boys from the residential treatment center:
It’s near midnight. we’re sleeping in the tent. I’m half awake. Daniel, one of the boys, gets up, pulls on his swim shorts, and leaves the tent. I put on my swim shorts and follow out of sight. It’s a warm August evening. Once he reaches the bluffs above Lake Michigan, he stands a moment and looks across the water. The moon is out. I duck behind a tall clump of grass and watch as he races up and down the dunes until he collapses at the waters edge.
Caught up in the mood, I race down the dune hollering at the top of my lungs. Daniel stands and faces me. At the last moment I veer off and dive face first into the water. We play and splash each other and sit on the beach with our chins on our knees and the moon running across the water to our feet.
"Do you think I'll be fucked up like my ol” man?” Daniel asks, his voice shivering.
I hesitate and with my voice also shivering, say, “No,” I reply.
I’m not sure why this moment keeps reappearing, or why I draw it over and over again. There is something more to learn from it but I’m not sure what. Daniel and I had been through hell together. More than once he had run away. He had tried to hit or bite me several times. He had spit at me and said some things I would not repeat. Yet we had endured and our relationship had grown stronger. I trusted him and myself in this moment. I let him go that night whereas in the past I would have made an effort to stop him. I was curious about where he was going. I watched in admiration of how he unleashed his raw energy. It was almost as if he had created a stage to temporarily exorcise the demons that haunted him. An act of great beauty and sadness, the lead actor collapsed at the water’s edge.
I wanted to be part of the drama, to place myself in it with the same intensity, to scream at the top of my lungs. I did it. We played and splashed together revealing something more in both of us, a desire to express, to be what we did together. He was there and I was there in the moment.
Then as we sat together in one of those unforgettable moments with the moon running across the water to our feet, he shared for the first time his fear that he would end up like the father that had so terribly abused his sister and he. And I hesitated before I said no.
Why did I hesitate? Did I know on some level that I did not need to make things better yet tried anyway? Did the mood of the moment make it impossible to resist even though I knew deep down that it might not be? Was I assuring myself once again that I would not end up like my father, a company man? Was I anxious and uncertain, like him, not just shivering from the cold?
I have long since learned that I cannot fix things in Child and Youth Care, or life. That the best I can often do is to be there and listen. I also know that it is my experience of a moment, not someone else's, and that I bring my own story and feelings to the moment, which, if am aware of how they influence me, should make me curious about and open me to the experiences of others.
Yet there is still something from this moment that haunts me, something more to be learned. Even though my response was not the response I would give today, it was a moment of human connection, I’m sure of that, but I’m not sure exactly why. The conditions were perfect. It was just he and I alone on the beach, vulnerable, open to discovering something about our selves. He must have known like I did that there were no guarantees about the future and that my hesitation reflected my true feelings. He probably wanted the assurance anyway. But I’m not sure if that’s the whole story, and wanting to know makes it Child and Youth Care.
