This evening
The mother
She asked me:
“Should I hit him back?”
With regard to her son
Now
It was a sincere question
Asked through no small amount of tears
And such was the context
I didn’t for a second think she was joking
My response:
“It doesn’t look good.”
In that ironic way I have
Which I’m still hoping
has its way of conveying more
than anything I could say less dry
Just WHO would be learning WHAT from THAT?
which is what I did eventually say
don’t worry
But the distance
and resolution
between the usual baseline of self-doubt and inadequacy
which I pray to G-d never goes away
when I sat down with her
knowing intuitively what she was going to want to know
what we all always want to know
in that moment
when we suck at something so epically bad
And the Tennyson Center that then kicks in
There must be consequences
There must be opportunity for him to make repair
There must be a safety plan
(Hope that it won’t happen again
Figure that it will)
But there cannot be hands laid on him lest the county hear from me
That conversation is up to her now
But make certain that it ends somewhere in the ballpark of
“You are mine
And I love you”
The midterms I’m taking this week
mean something
This I know
It’s good to know