Lately I've been going through my journals and remembering some really big life moments that changed me forever. There are so many wonderful ones, from Camp Sunnyside to my Disney Days. I will dedicate another entry to those, but for this one, I want to write about a day that left a scar on my heart. It was a day where I let a little boy down in the most fundamental of ways.
I remember sitting there beside his cot at the daycare, his little body trembling as he alternated between crying and screaming. He kept saying, " I just wanna go home. " The more I'd try to calm him, the louder he got. My coworkers had just shook their heads when I decided to go sit with him, " just let him cry it out " they said. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I just cannot do that. This little boy was brand new to our daycare, and was going through, what I was sure to be, the hardest days of his life.
I sat there quietly for a few minutes, hoping my presence would help him feel more safe. He got louder and louder, wanting desperately for me to listen and take him to his mom. I talked calmly and reminded him that I could not do that. It was breaking my heart, but I tried again to assure him that he was going to love it here. I reminded him of the playground he had loved so much earlier in the day, and of all the arts and crafts we would be doing. I told him we could skip naptime and go for a walk. I tried everything, but it only seemed to make his body shake more, and the tears come faster. After awhile I knew his little body couldn't go on, and his voice was getting horse from all the screaming. I got firm and said, "Look, you can cry if you want to, but you have to stop screaming!" My strong voice startled him, and he had the saddest look on his face when he looked me right in the eye and begged, " Please, I just wanna go home". My eyes instantly welled up, and so did his. I could feel his little heart breaking, and I pulled my eyes closed and leaned my head back against the wall. The tears came down my cheek, and my heart began to ache like it hadn't in a very long time.
I felt awful for being a part of this. I wanted so much to take him in my arms and tell him it was going to be okay. I wanted to take him to the one person who could fix this for him. He wanted his mom. Not the woman who the courts had given him to today, who had brought him to this shelter to live. Not the woman who had finished her own long struggle with addiction and who now was trying to put her life together. This woman was fun to visit now and then in an office or at the park, but this woman who would be picking him up after his nap, she was not his mom. She may have given birth to him 5 years ago, but ever since then, there was another woman who had held him and sang to him, and tucked him in each day at napttime. That was the woman he was crying for. That little boy fell asleep begging me to take him home, to his mom. My heart broke, and it has yet to heal.
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