I think I may have found a baby sitting job. One of the FP's lives across the street with her three year old son William. William spends his day's a Stony Brook, MHC's preschool, while his mother goes to class and works on her thesis. His father is still in school in Ohio studying to become a nurse but he comes up on weekends to be with his family. For Taylor, this means evenings at home. However, when we met in Spanish class and she discovered that I babysit, it opened up the possibility of a mutually beneficial working relationship, not to mention a great friendship. So now, I can walk to "work" in 10 minutes, put William to bed and study or watch movies, while she has a chance to enjoy a night on the town or dinner with a friend. It works wonderfully! And, when Taylor comes home we end in these interesting discussions about math, and undergrad major choices. She is a math major and a major brainiac. She already has a paper published and offers from universities for not only a full ride scholarship but the best school for her son and school as well as work for her husband. Pretty sweet! Mount Holyoke will do that to you. I've been meaning to mention a project I am currently involved in here at school. Every Tuesday a fleet van takes a group of girls to carry on a book club with the inmates of the Westfield Youth Detention Center. Seven of us volunteered at the beginning of this year as a way to build relationships with people that we would otherwise not connect with. It's an interesting kind of work. These boys range in age from 13-18, though most tend to be about 16 years old or so. The majority are second generation citizens - their parents fled from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico to find hope in a foreign land. They themselves are as varied as their crimes. Some smoked or dealt pot, or stronger drugs. Others picked one too many fights, or drove without licenses. But it's hard to think of them as criminals once you get to know them. What they really are are lost boys, boys without proper families, with 6 siblings who each have different fathers, who don't trust anyone because up until now there hasn't been anyone that they could trust. Some of them get out and change, some of them are back in a matter of weeks. Our leader, Julie, refers to a few of them as "the regulars." In her three years with the group a couple of the same boys keep cycling through because there is nothing to hold them steady.
In our small groups (one or two students per two or three residents) read selections of poetry, lyrics, and
and short prose and use the ideas as seeds for conversation. Supposedly we go in there to discuss books, but really, we go in there to build friendships under the guise of literature. The discussions hold relative to the topic at hand for perhaps five minutes but then for the remainder of the hour and a half wanders to themes more relevant to these boys.
The odd thing is that I always come dragging my feet. I have so much to do, I think. I don't have time for this. And then I arrive, and when it's time to leave I don't want to go. I feel I am just beginning to know them. And somehow it feels wrong to walk out with my feet unshackled and my arms free to swing at my sides, to return to campus and a school that, for some reason, decided I was worth their time and money. And they sit behind glaring barbed wire chain linked fences waiting for Someone to change their lives. They don't know that's what they are waiting for, but it's the only way they will ever make it. It actually hurts my heart to walk out. There is a real, and intense, ache every time I hear the latch chunk down and see the door swing wide and I have to accept my freedom. Only God knows why we are in the places we are.
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