The Tarnished Princess

 

She sat completely still in her chair. I guessed her age to be about eight. Soft curls hung loosely around her face. She didn’t smile back when I smiled at her. In fact, she looked utterly miserable. An invisible cloak of shame hung about her thin shoulders, like an ill-fitting coat. Her enormous hazel eyes spoke secrets too difficult for her tongue to share.

 

It was my scheduled day to read to children at a city homeless shelter. When I was buzzed into the interior, the director met me at the door and walked with me to the prearranged reading area. As we passed the office with the sad little girl, the director mentioned that her family had just arrived and had gone through the intake process. It was discovered that the girl had head lice and was waiting to be treated before being allowed any further into the facility.

 

Ah. No wonder she looked unhappy.

 

Despite her obvious discomfort, a toy tiara sat comically atop her head; its once-silver paint partially rubbed raw from usage and age. Tarnished and tattered. But in an inexplicable way, it gave her certain aura of regality. Despite her environment, she tenaciously held to an inner stoicism that kept her head held high. Homeless, desperate, and physically dirty, she clung to an inexplicable sense of pride.

 

I have thought of her often. In many ways, she represents the many homeless children I have encountered over the years. Scared, confused, longing for stability.

 

A few years back, I received a call from a desperate mother who had found a coveted spot at a shelter, but they had to report immediately, or they would lose it. With nowhere else to go and desperate to have a roof over their heads that night, she meekly asked if I would give her bus fare to get across town. With my boss’ blessing, I left work and drove to where they were being evicted. I quickly shoved them and their few meager belongings into my van. We pulled into the shelter with no time to spare. I helped them unload and sat with the children while their mother went through the registration process.

 

Those sweet children’s eyes… how they haunt me still. They sat rigidly around me in the lobby, fear pulsing with every heartbeat. Yet another move. Another new place to adjust to. Unspoken questions with no answers.

 

I sang to them softly and assured them it would be alright. Their mother reappeared and began to gather their belongings. She hugged me and thanked me for my help. I hugged her back and, like her babies, assured her it would be alright. She smiled weakly and hoped so. It stabbed my heart to walk away from their broken hopelessness.

 

Homeless children need much. Physical necessities, yes of course. But they also need (and deserve) respect and dignity. They need to understand their own sense of agency. They need to be given safe spaces to be heard. Really heard. And they need unconditional acceptance.

 

Whatever the decisions and ultimate consequences of their parents, none of the responsibility lies with the children. They are the innocents.

 

Psalm 82:3-4 thrums through my head like an incessant beat. “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (NIV).

 

If you have encounters with transient or high-risk children, be unfailingly kind. If you teach them in your classroom, treat them with dignity and reach deep for extra patience. They already feel like outsiders. Make them feel included and normal for the few hours you have them. If you have the means, give generously of your time and resources. I call it transmutive compassion. Acts of compassion that literally change, not just the receiver, but the giver as well. 

 

It takes so shockingly little to stir the soul of a child in crisis. 

 

There are tarnished princesses everywhere.

 

 

 

The Giver

 

 

 

 

As mentioned previously, it brings me to near delirium to be back reading live in the homeless shelters after Beast Covid devoured two years of volunteer service. Yesterday after work I headed to a local domestic violence shelter and was greeted by a gaggle of boisterous children.

 

This shelter is dedicated to women and children who have been victims of domestic abuse. I find myself compartmentalizing my emotions before entering. It’s the same with reading to patients on the pediatric floor. Reading to a child with medical tubes running in and out their bodies or facing a daunting cancer diagnosis is tough on this mama’s heart. Children shouldn’t suffer. It pains me when they do. Stepping into a structure that houses children who have most likely experienced (or at least witnessed) violence is a pain of another variety, but one that can be as traumatic as a health crisis. To that end, I find myself steeling my emotions before stepping into this place. I focus on the task at hand and the children as they are in that moment, happy and interactive.

When I arrived, I buzzed into the entrance and was greeted by a smiling staffer. “Lots of kids today?” I ask. “Yes! Lots of kids,” she replied with a grin and a bit of forewarning in her tone. “They’re in the back, waiting for you.” I head toward the gathering spaces in the shelter and am greeted by a sweet mix of moms sitting at the kitchen table working on arts and crafts, and kids… everywhere!

To my delight, they recognize me and come running, anxious to peek into my ever-present book bag. We choose a sofa to sit on together and in a flash, I am a reader, a fresh listening ear for their cacophony, and a human jungle gym, all rolled into one. It’s like sitting on the floor with a litter of 6-week-old puppies. They are crawling into my lap, climbing into my arms, and maneuvering behind my back. This frenetic movement never stops for the 40 minutes I am there. I am silently thankful I had worn my hair up. If not, I would have left looking like a dandelion gone to seed.

The challenge in shelter reading, I have learned over the years, is gently pushing past the behaviors that can go with children who are currently living in a crisis environment. They are almost always sweet and loving, sometimes reserved, but often a little frenetic due to developmental maturity, lack of space to burn off energy, and other factors. They also sometimes have little idea of book care and can be a little rough on materials. I don’t take offense. It becomes a gentle teaching moment.

The golden moment of the day came near the end of my reading time. A four-year-old beside me was zeroed in on every book I read, asked a mountain of question, and shouted his answers to mine. When we finished reading his chosen book, he closed it carefully and declared, “my book!” and ran off to squirrel it away. He soon returned from the playroom with a book from the shelter’s stock. He shoved into my hands with a shy smile and said, “You keep it.” My heart melted a little as I gently placed it back into his small hands and said, “That’s a good book. You should keep it here.” He tried again. “You keep it!” The smile was a little wider. Again, I gently refused. “That belongs to someone else,” I explained. “You should keep it here.” Two more times he tried to gift the book to me. Each time he glowed with anticipation at the hope of my receiving his “gift.” Although he didn’t cognitively understand what he was doing, he had observed the cultural norms of our budding relationship that involved the gifting of something precious to me, books, and wanted to reciprocate as a means of expressing gratitude. After his fourth attempt my heart was reduced to a gooey mess of melted marshmallow. Such a beautiful gesture from a child with so little. Oh, how these little ones teach me to be a better person!

My doctoral dissertation had a strong theme of children’s agency, premised on the belief that children are capable reporters of their own feelings and ideas. This little guy tried to convey much through his giving gestures. His actions said to me, “I like you. I like that you read to me. I value the books you give me each time you come. I want to give you something to show my appreciation.”

I hear you, sweet child. I like you, too, and I’ll be back soon.

Waiting For the Other Side

Two years. 

Two years since a virus raced around the world with dizzying speed, closing public gatherings, emptying store shelves, social calendars, and upending life as we knew it. Parents became teachers and teachers became pioneers of instruction delivery. 

For Project Armchair it meant an abrupt end to our volunteer services. The door slammed shut with a loud and reverberating clang. Two years of waiting and hoping for life to return to normalcy, then fighting despondency when new variants emerged, plunging hope into despair. Two years waiting to emerge on the other side. Two years of wondering how a volunteer organization premised on direct interaction with children could re-calibrate to still be of service. 

I must be honest here. I have felt a little lost wondering just how to do that. If we can’t read to kids, then… who are we? 

Miraculously, we DID find purpose. Or rather, purpose found us. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and its sub-committee, Children of Incarcerated Parents, asked us to help them find a way to increase visitation rates for incarcerated fathers at the state penitentiary. We collaborated with an incarcerated artist and a band of really nice high school shop guys to create an inviting space inside the visitation room at the penitentiary, where we filled the shelves with book and will continue to fill them, as long as donations for the project continue. This energizing task kept us thinking, growing, and dreaming big. 

While that initiative kept us from growing moss on our north side, today marked the turn of a really big corner. A big, beautiful, hope-is-born corner. For the first time in two years, I loaded my bag with books and headed to a local domestic violence shelter. Not to simply drop off books at the door, but this time to step inside, remove my coat, and stay for a spell. I looked forward to it all day, willing time to speed up, through meetings, presentations, desk work, and interaction with colleagues. C’mon, clock! Let’s end this workday. 

Pulling up to the facility, I felt a joyful buoyancy. Ringing the access buzzer, I fairly sang into the intercom, “reading volunteer!” The staff was happy to welcome me back and it felt so utterly right to be there, like finding the perfect spot on your pillow in the middle of the night. 

My little charges were sweet and unafraid of the grinning-too-big and alarmingly happy lady with the bag of books. They moved from bench to toys and back to bench, listening briefly then running off, only to run back to me the next moment. The tiniest tot munched happily on cheese puffs, ran his tiny, orange-coated hands over my black dress pants, and grinned at me with laughing eyes. And, oh how I loved every moment! I loved the brief flashes of true engagement when they pointed to the illustrations and jabbered incoherently, and the acrobats demanded to keep up with agile moving bodies. I loved seeing their mother’s happy smile watching it all. I loved the look of true gratitude in her eyes as I handed her new books for her children to keep. And I loved the brief chat we had, one mother to another. 

Coincidentally (or not), as I pulled away from the shelter, I had a phone conversation with another mom that I met in a shelter years ago under similar circumstances, who has since become a dear friend. She has worked hard to rise above hardship and overwhelming odds. Over the phone she glowingly shared her plans to attend college in the fall. To be witness to her triumph is an honor so deep words fail me. 

Because of women like these and the hundreds of children our organization has read to, I believe in the value of this work more than ever. A caring adult, a good book, and a child dealing with challenging circumstances is a sure way to provide a needed disruption in the difficult narrative of a child in crisis.

This work matters, and I have missed it. Perhaps the long, dark night of abstinence has helped me realize just how much. 

Now it’s time to get back to the work of serving our community's most vulnerable children. But first I need to wash the cheese powder out of my pants.