Forgive and Dare

July 4, 2008

Steve is reading a lot of books. This time from America I carried 17. One of them is huge, a heavy book of Degas. Steve loves art books. I thought Liying might complain, how impractical this was to haul to China, but she didn’t. Steve doesn’t know about it yet, nor has he seen the Monet book, that I bought so he could see two different views from the same time and the same France. I am bringing the books out for him little by little this summer.

For novels, I get him books about kids his age, I think he learns from them about being 12, since he almost never sees anyone else up close but adults. This time, back in Madison, I went to the shelf with Newberry Medal winners – some of them so old, my Mom read them when she was little (Dr. Doolittle), and one I remember Mrs. Himmelfarb read to us after lunch in sixth grade.

Right now Steve is reading Out of Dust by Karen Hesse. I like to read the books, too, so I can talk about them with him; but Steve’s such a fast reader that I must do it ahead of time. I read Out of Dust on the way over on the airplane.

This writer is bold and different, she wrote the novel all in free verse. It takes place in America’s dust bowl years, a bleak, terrible time to be a Kansas farmer. Worse, Billie Jo’s father (so tired from working all the days in all that dust, for almost nothing) set a bucket of kerosene by the stove, and Ma tried to make coffee with it. As flames shot up, she ran out to get help from her husband. Billie Jo remembered to grab the bucket and toss the kerosene out the door, she was desperate . . . the kerosene flew all over Ma who burst into flame.

Ma later died, days or weeks later, and so did the baby inside her. Billie Jo’s hands were ruined by the fire, those moments when she tried to stop the flames on her mother.

Actually, this book has a lot of hope and humor.

Yesterday, we got to the place where finally Billie Jo runs away on the train, like so many people in those times. But she comes back. When her father meets her train, they talk like they never have:

Met

My father is waiting at the station
and I call him
Daddy
for the first time
since Ma died,
and we walk home,
together,
talking.
I tell him about getting out of the dust
and how I can’t get out of something
that’s inside me.
I tell him he is like the sod,
and I am like the wheat,
and I can’t grow everywhere,
but I can grow here,
with a little rain,
with a little care,
with a little luck.
And I tell him how scared I am about those spots on
his skin
and I see he’s scared too.
“I can’t be my own mother,” I tell him,
“and I can’t be my own father
and if you’re both going to leave me,
well,
what am I supposed to do?”
And when I tell Daddy so,
he promises to call Doc Rice.

He says the pond is done.
We can swim in it once it fills,
and he’ll stock it with fish too,
catfish, that I can go out and
catch of an evening
and fry up.
He says I can even plant flowers,
if I want.

As we walk together,
side by side,
in the swell of dust,
I am forgiving him, step by step
For the pail of kerosene.
As we walk together,
side by side,
in the sole-deep dust,
I am forgiving myself
for all the rest.


I asked Steve if he needed to forgive anyone. We were outside, it was evening and we were sitting on the short wall by the flower bed outside the apartments.

He answered, “I need to forgive myself because I cannot do what other children do. How can I? I care about other people, I hope they care about me. Can I dare to become friends with others?”

Written like this, Steve’s thoughts seem so quick, but when we’re sitting together, doing facilitated communication, he often pauses, he often leans his face to mine as if for reassurance. He knows his thoughts, but he’s hesitant to express them.

July 7

We finished Out of the Dust last night. Steve gave the book his top rating (1), and wrote these comments:

“This story tells about Billie Jo in the Dust Bowl. She had an accident, and was burned. Her mother and brother died by fire. Billie Joe could not play the piano. Piano was Billie Jo’s favorite thing to do in life. She found how much her father loves her. She learned her father can take care of her. Billie Jo will be happy again.”



I asked Steve his favorite thing today. He wrote, “Adding numbers in my head.”


July 8, 2008

I asked Steve his favorite thing again today, when we went outside and sat on a real bench. He wrote, “Making words with FC.”


July 9, 2008

Tonight, Steve learned he will go to summer camp at Xianghai. He is very happy.

But then he wrote that his favorite thing today was, "doing good four point.” [that means on his hands and knees; he works very hard at this, and held himself up on all fours for 20 seconds today].