Listen to thisWe never know what engagements with young people might be meaningful /
powerful. Sometimes we engage with young people in activities in the
hope that they might provide the opportunity for connection, sometimes
because we think they might be therapeutically significant and, sometimes,
it is just the opportunity of the moment. Only later might the significance
arise. This story is about connecting through an otherwise meaningless
activity.
***
One early evening in May, two social workers
appeared at our small apartment to confront my father about why he was
breaking the law by not having me enrolled in school. He could offer no
reasonable explanation and within the week I was taken into the care of the
state and enrolled at St. John’s Hostel, a 64-bed residential care facility
for boys. It would be my home for the next eight years.
For the first eighteen months there, I would spend school terms at the hostel and at home for the vacations. My father was trying to stay sober and had arranged to be home with me during the school holidays. But all that soon changed. Our mid-year three-week school holiday was a week away and I was eager to be heading home for the holidays. Except, my father was seriously back on the bottle and had been fired from his job.
I would be not going home again until my father had sorted himself out. I
would have to spend the holidays at the hostel, and all I could remember
thinking was how I would spend three weeks by myself with everybody else
gone home.
It was a couple of days into the holiday when I was asked by
Brian Gannon, the hostel principal, if I would be interested in helping with
a project that would keep me occupied for the duration of my holiday.
Urghhh, not really, I thought. I had stuff to do. Soccer this afternoon, the latest Star Wars movie tomorrow …
“What is it?” I asked.
“A baby blue baby grand piano” he replied.
Huh? What was a baby blue baby grand piano?
“It’s being delivered this afternoon. It’s been donated to the hostel by one of the cruise ships in the harbour” he said.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, suspiciously. “When do you want me to start, because I’m going to watch Star Wars tomorrow morning with Marky and Craig” I said.
“Oh, whenever you want to. I’ll start tomorrow. I’m going out later to buy paint stripper, scrapers and sandpaper.”
At this point I was hoping he would pick up on my hang-dog reluctant vibes and offer me a way out. No luck.
And so, two mornings later, with Star Wars fresh in my mind, I reported for duty while trying to work out why I’d agreed to three weeks of manual labour when I could be doing something else more enjoyable. I dragged my reluctance into the huge sitting room of his house and there, in the far corner of the room, was a baby blue coloured thing. I remember thinking that it was so big that whatever we wanted to do would take a year, not three weeks.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s big” I shot back.
“No, the colour” he laughed.
“It’s okay. Why do you want to take the paint off?” I asked.
“That’s just the top colour of about eight different colours that they’ve painted it over the years. And the reason we’re taking it off is that it looks terrible, but also that all the paint changes the sound it makes”.
He sat down at the piano and started playing. I’d never heard him play the piano before. “Try to remember how this sounds, because when we’ve finished, I’ll play it again. Then listen if you can hear a difference.”
He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. I was not convinced.
Soon we had both slopped our first brush of paint stripper onto a section of baby blue paint – and me, onto my left hand. Why didn’t he tell me it burned like crazy if you got this stuff on your hand?!
I watched in fascination as the blue paint started bubbling and boiling, the stripper taking effect. “Just wait a bit for it to finish its work and then take that scraper and scrape it off” he said.
I waited until the bubbling had stopped and then set about scraping off my first piece of paint. It lifted off easily. But all I saw was light cream paint, white, and dark blue. Huh? Where was the wood he kept talking about?
“What’s going on? I scraped off the paint stripper and now there’s a whole lot of other stuff underneath,” I shouted.
“All you’ve done is take off the top layer. There are still lots of other old layers of paint under that. It’s going to take a lot more elbow grease and perseverance, young man” he said.
Great! How long was this going to take, I wondered.
Fifteen minutes had passed and all I’d managed was one layer the size of a small saucer. More sloppy stripper … wait … scrape. Repeat. After what seemed like half a day, I had managed to expose a saucer-sized section of the original, dark wood. What a sense of achievement I felt.
I walked around to the other side where he was working. Hmm, he’d finished only a slightly bigger section. Cool. And suddenly I couldn’t wait to carry on.
“Hang on, don’t put too much of that stuff on at once. Much smaller sections at a time.” he said. Again, I was not convinced.
A week passed and holidays at home and hanging with friends were distant memories. I had more important things going on. I was hanging out with an adult, doing “adult” work. I couldn’t remember when last an adult had given me such undivided attention, never mind trusting me not to mess up their “adult” work. I remember feeling so happy and having such fun.
But the best times of each day were 10.30am and 3.30pm when tea and biscuits were delivered from the kitchen. The tea tray hadn’t even been laid down on the table when I had pounced on the best biscuits. Six biscuits twice a day, and I would gobble probably four or five each time.
Brian didn’t seem to mind.
It was halfway through the holiday when I finally finished the side section of my half of the piano, all the lush dark wood now exposed. Stripping the paint from the top turned out to be much easier than the sides, and in just another three days all sign of those eight layers of paint were gone. And even though we hadn’t started sanding yet, we stood back to take a moment to admire our labour.
“Pretty impressive, eh?” he said.
I felt such a sense of achievement. I was bursting with pride. I wanted to show it off to everyone!
In a flash, the holidays were over.
We had managed to remove any sign of colour and then sandpapered the entire piano. It felt like silk to touch.
We didn’t get to varnish it, but that didn’t matter because he said he was going to ask someone “who knew about varnishing pianos” to do that.
A couple of weeks later, with the varnishing done, he asked me to come and see what it looked like. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The wood looked so clean, and so shiny. It looked brand new. I felt proud all over again.
“Do you remember what it sounded like before?” he asked.
“I think so”, I responded unconvincingly.
He sat down and played the same piece he’d played six weeks earlier. I wasn’t sure I could hear any difference, but he assured me that there was. All I know is that I just couldn’t stop staring at the wood at how good it looked. And that I was allowed to do that!
As the years passed, whenever I walked into that sitting room, I relived
those three weeks as one of the happiest and memorable times of my life.
Spending every day for three weeks with one adult, talking about nothing in
particular while scraping and sanding, and stealing the tea biscuits each
day.
***
As I reflect on this experience, I hope the reader
notes how much value there is in simply being with the other with
acceptance, hanging out, hanging in and engaging in an activity, and
how that might be significant in the young person’s life. When we
engage with young people and, especially when we engage with them in a
significant or memorable activity, who knows what wonderful outcomes might
occur. Significant connections are made in such moments – connections
with other and also, connections with self.
Reflective Questions
