Tort and Niyah were already buckled in their seats in the back of the car when we picked up Trey as he was walking back from a friend's house. The four of us then headed to their painting and dance classes. The first thing I noticed was that Trey sat in the back seat with his brother and sister. He usually calls for the shotgun position (front passenger seat next to me). I decided not to take his choice personally, though I did wonder if now, at 13 years old, it wasn't cool to sit next to me.
Not long into the drive he said from the back seat, "My eye hurts."
"What happened to your eye?" I asked, looking at him in the rear view mirror.
"I fell and hurt it."
"How did you do that?"
Trey then told me that yesterday he and a neighbor kid were looking for jobs raking leaves when they came upon a pit bull. They ran to avoid the dog and Trey fell. He said it hurt a lot and was swollen.
"I don't want to go to dance class," he said. "I am embarrassed."
As soon as he said this, I realized that the reason he sat in the back seat was so I would not see his swollen eye -- his source of embarrassment. I also remembered a mother telling me that it's safer for kids to talk about things on their mind if you're in the front seat of the car and they are in the back. This seemed to be what was going on here. I also realized that what he was telling me was very important and my response could help facilitate closeness and openness or could make this delicate situation worse.
"What is embarrassing about having a swollen eye,?" I asked Trey in a gentle curious tone.
"The kids will laugh at me."
"Have you ever been laughed at before?"
He told me that he was at his friend's church earlier that morning and the kids laughed at him.
So much can be conveyed in the tone of the voice. Tone can be much more important than words and I was aware of this as I spoke to him.
"How did you handle being laughed at before?" I asked.
"I walked away," he replied.
"So what's the worst thing that could happen to you if you were laughed at and got embarrassed?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said.
"What might you do in the situation if you were laughed at?"
"You could tell the person he hurt your feelings," Niyah offered.
"I could walk away," Trey said.
"When someone laughs at you, how do you feel about yourself?" I asked.
"Embarrassed. Bad."
"If we can't control how people treat us, we'll have to work on how we treat ourselves after someone laughs at us," I said. "If you feel like there is something wrong with you because you were laughed at, you could question this thought about yourself. You could notice that what you might be thinking about yourself could cause harm to yourself. This is where your power lies: Noticing what you are thinking about yourself after someone says something that hurts."
We arrived at the Museum where their classes are held. Trey asked to escort the kids to their painting class with me. I said OK and right after we dropped them off, he lingered in the boy's bathroom across from their class.
"Are you in there, Trey?" I asked as I pushed the door open just enough to see him wiping his eye with some paper towels as he looked in the mirror. "If you come out, I'll perform a test on your eye."
He came out, stood there and I had him follow my finger with one eye and then the next and asked him if it hurt his eye to follow. He said no and that his eyebrow hurt. It was swollen but not bleeding. He told me he put peroxide on the wound yesterday and an invisible bandage.
Again, as I had done just before we got into the building, I silently asked God to guide me in my interactions with him. I could tell this was going to be delicate and I asked for help to do the loving thing.
"You did a good job of taking care of your eyebrow and nursing the wound," I praised him.
"It hurts," he said again. He wanted to sit in on Tort and Niyah's painting class.
"Does it hurt so much that you would like to get some ibuprofen for it or can you tolerate the pain and participate in your dance class?"
He didn't want to go to dance so I offered to take him with me to the cafe where Emily would soon be joining me. He chose that option over the ibuprofen.
"I brought the newspaper with me," I said. "We can read it together."
Trey told me his Dad gives him copies of Sports Illustrated and he reads them on the toilet. "You can have the sports section," I said.
On the walk over I paused and turned to Trey: "Trey, I want you to know that I offered to take you to dance classes because I thought it would be fun for you. I also thought you might learn something new. And today you had choices about how to deal with a tough situation. Today you handled it one way. The next time you might handle it differently. It's about having choices and being aware that you have them."
He listened as I explained. When I was done he said that the class was fun and he would go back again next week to attend the final one.
When Emily entered the cafe, she was surprised to see Trey with me. In her gentle way, she let the story unfold and listened as Trey and I told different parts of it, how he came to be with me and the mystery of his swollen eye.
After picking up the two from their painting class, we went back to Trey's house, got his pencil drawing and headed to the craft store where we let the three kids pick out frames for their art work. Then we hung the fishes pictures in the bathroom and Trey's pencil art in the his bedroom. As Emily and I reviewed the day over dinner this question came to me: "What is my purpose here with Trey? What is the purpose of my relationship with him? I asked myself out loud in front of Emily and then I answered out loud:
"My purpose here is not to judge Trey or force Trey or tell him that he should feel differently than he does. It is not to build his strengths or criticize his weaknesses. It is not to "protect" myself from any real or imagined manipulation of me by him. I chose to take his words at face value and to trust that he was sharing his emotions and experience with me as honestly as he could to the very best of his ability.
"My purpose here is to be present with him, to be a safe witness of his experience as he is able to articulate it. My purpose here is to love him unconditionally."
I got choked up as I said this. I literally had to stop and let the sobs come out.
Emily gently put her hand on top of mine and left it there.
"I think this relationship with the kids is healing for me," I said. "I think I am able to see what they need emotionally and to give that to them and that is healing for me."
"Yes, I think that it is," she replied. "I think that it is."
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