Solid Like a Rock

I walked into the room:
A solid, leathered and weathered Mexican gentleman sat on the seat and across him sat a slap-happy teen, topped off nicely with his beanie. ‘What a contrast,’ I thought. He was only here for vaccines and really this should have been a quick visit.

Once the father started wagging his finger and asking me to relay his message ‘via the doctor’s mouth’ to his son, I was in for a longer visit. I can’t put his words in quotes as my Spanish translation is not worthy, but it went something like, tell him that he has to work harder and get better grades in school. This man was a stone cold killer, his body locked up and not a single wrinkle unhinged.

Bypassing any need to isolate the kid from his father, I asked him straight up: “what’s going on in school?” He willingly admitted that his grades are no good, he’s lazy and doesn’t do his homework. I don’t believe that children are lazy, rather they are unmotivated because they have problems learning or something is not right in their life. He did poorly the last two years, but was doing well prior to that. So what changed? This kid doesn’t have a learning disorder or ADD, etc.

The father’s finger wagged again, complaining about his endless hours on the computer into the wee hours of the night. “Remove the computer after hours, cut the cable. This is still in your hands.” I firmly offered advise. And…then the father piggy-backed off my words with a stern look and, yet another, finger wag. One has to wonder if these finger wags have magical powers because they offered up in the spoonfuls in my clinic.

Alas the visit came to an end, “problem solved,” aka ‘I feel like I said enough to leave the room and something will change.’ Nothing will change. It breaks my heart to watch kids lose their parents right in front of their own eyes, more magic.

I quickly called them back in and realized for the first time as I was saying it: children are smart and will out do us, especially with technology, in every way. We cannot control the world they are exposed to, but, and a big but, we can keep them close to us. We can let them know we are here for them and they can bring their worries and concerns home to us. The finger magic wagging and judging has to stop, cuz it’s not really magic and it doesn’t really work. If everyone only realized that in judging ourselves harshly we judge others, especially our kids, harshly. I just figured that out this week.

I watch the stone-faced killer. He was stone-faced, not a wrinkle budged, not a tweak of the lips. I also saw his unscarred, hopeful and carefree son, crane his neck to see his father’s response to what I had said; more so, I saw him crane his neck to catch his glance. He stared, stone-faced, at me. “When was the last time you said ‘I love you’ or gave him a hug?” I asked him in Spanish to which he replied, “Y dalo chichi tambien?” (and give him the breast too?). Now I was the stone-faced killer, breaking through that hardened rock ain’t easy. Just because he was deprived as a child, as his father didn’t know how to demonstrate that love, his son, too, shouldn’t suffer.

I asked him to tell his son he loved him. His son was standing RIGHT in front of him. He over him to me and told me of course he loves his son. I told him to tell his son, the words barely came out.

I reminded him of what I witness walk through those doors everyday, Mexican and Central American immigrants who sweat blood and tears to cross that border to give their children a better life. Now they’re here but don’t know their own kids. Now they’re here and their kids are lost on the streets or lost in the dreamy eyes of their boyfriend or girlfriend who will, in a matter of months, become the parent of their child or lost in the temporary joy ride that is weed and a 40 until some cop pins them to the fence and tosses them in juvi, marking them delinquent for life.

“He is your everything. He is your life.” I pleaded with him. “Show him that.”

Then I asked him to give him a hug. It was the strangest thing: he kinda wrapped his upper arms around his shoulders but couldn’t swing those forearms in, they kinda sat in the air lost for their position in this “hug” that was now happening. The boy soaked every bit of that “almost a complete hug” up.

I looked up at the father, his eyes were red and a little tear welled up in that bottom eyelid. Like true magic, a hardened soul had come back to life and all cuz he dared to see his son standing in front of him. I hope he dares to feel again, though there’s pain, there’s this amazing amount of love that only a child, relentlessly, gives their parent.