“Is Harper….sensitive?”
This question came from a well-meaning, good person, who I know meant no harm, but I also know from the way she said “sensitive” – a slight grimace to the face, a shrug of the shoulder, a twist of the body towards mine, like a nudge, nudge, you-know-what-I’m-talkin’-’bout-Willis- that this trait is thought of as negative. Sensitive folk are high-maintenance. Sensitive folk cry a lot, and easily. They yell, too.
Harper is sensitive with a capitol S, and I know exactly where it comes from. Or rather, who it comes from.
I remember thinking at the beginning of each school year, even through high school, “This is the year I won’t cry in class.” Never happened. I can cry looking at the Chicago skyline, or thinking about the Chicago skyline. I cry during the singing Notre Dame’s Alma Mater after football games. I can cry whenI turn the lights on at the library where I work. I’ve cried after having a conversation with a barista about coffee beans, and listening to banjo music over pints on a summer evening. I cry because these things mean something to me, and when tears well, I know this is a beginning to something. This is the point when I get to choose to let myself feel what I’m feeling and in turn create from and with it, or shake it off.
Harper allows herself to feel what she feels, and like me, she doesn’t always make things easy for herself and those around her, but I don’t ever want her to believe she is weak because she is sensitive.
Only a strong person would throw away her lollipop after she’s just unwrapped it because her cousin dropped her lollipop on the street, and, “Now look, I don’t have a lollipop either, Mabel. We can be sad together.”
Only a strong person would swim her first competition a few days after learning how to swim, and only a strong person would say, “I was afraid to swim, Mommy, but I was excited, too. I think that’s what bravery feels like.”
Only a strong person would see a person wrapped in a scarf on an 80 degree day, only her eyes showing, and say, “Maybe that person is like Auggie. She’s afraid to be seen.”
Only a strong person would come downstairs after she’s supposed to be in bed, crying, because the song we were singing earlier, “I love you, there’s no doubt about it,” made her sad, but she couldn’t figure out why it made her sad, and so the two of us sat in the kitchen for awhile in the sliver of light that shone from above the sink, and convincing one another it’s OK when something makes you happy and sad at the same time. We don’t always need to separate the two.
//
“Are you going to wear your glasses tomorrow Mommy?” Harper asked me yesterday.
“I don’t know. Should I?” I asked.
“You did last year.”
She was right. I remembered.
That’s not all I remember. It was a miserable morning. Hours earlier, the country voted in a new President-elect. About the time I’d sat up in bed with contractions 8 years earlier, I sat up again, this time, with a feeling of dread. I went downstairs to check the news, and instead of waking Jesse up to say, “Call the doctor, the baby’s coming,” I woke him up to say, “He won.” It felt like September 11, and I cried myself back to sleep.
But I put my glasses on because of my baby girl, and I drove in the pitch black to Detroit, wishing for so many things to be different.
I got to school, and the janitor took one look at me and said, “Ugh. You look terrible.” He pointed to my glasses and shook his head.
And I took it. I walked to my classroom, sat down at my desk, brushed away more tears and thought about all the things I should’ve said in response instead of silence.
In the early stages of my pregnancy with Harper, we thought I was miscarrying. Actually, all of us, including the doctors, were rather sure of it. We went in on a Monday to run some tests, and try to find a heartbeat. Harper’s heartbeat was so strong, and so loud I swear I could feel its thud inside me. Listening to it was like being at a rock concert.
“Looks like an Election Day baby,” the doctor told us. The doctor was wrong. Harper was born five days after Obama was elected for his first term. She was born on November 9 at 10:02am. The same time as me.
I should’ve said something to the janitor, but I was ashamed and I was afraid. He’s the one who controls the heat in my classroom. He’s the one who rations out copy paper. He’s the one who looks out for my safety when I walk into the school before day break. Plus, maybe he was right. Maybe I did look awful. Maybe I deserved a comment like that.
These things we feel are confusing and hard to sift through, is what I’m trying to say. I do not think being sensitive is for the weak. Being sensitive is for the folk whose hearts are so strong others can hear their thuds from down the street.
I had a stack of picture books I’d brought from home I thought my students would like to read when there was extra time. The first one on the pile was As Fast As Words Could Fly by Pamela M. Tuck. It’s the story of Mason Steele, a young boy who helped with the Civil Rights movement because he knew how to type. He’d taught himself how to do it when no one else would, and was able to help his father communicate to community and government leaders about the injustices that were going on.
Looking at the book that day, my anger toward what had happened turned into an idea. I scraped the lesson I was supposed to teach and decided I would read this story instead.
I wrote the following on the whiteboard:
When my students arrived, I read the story and we talked about places in it where people were both of these things. We decided it was possible, though really difficult, to be both. With that in mind, I told my students to write a letter to the President-elect.
It was a class filled with emotion. Everyone was a raw nerve, but on Harper’s birthday, at a point in my life when I was lower than low, my sensitivity was my strength. Choosing to do something with my anger and sadness made me strong.
So I will wear glasses today, on Harper’s 9th birthday. I will share this story, and when the time right, I hope she sees herself in it. I hope she holds her head high when people call her sensitive. I hope she continues to see what it is she can do with the feelings she allows herself to feel. Knowing Harper, she will show the world all the muscle there is in a sensitive heart that beats this strong.
Happy Birthday to my quiet but mighty girl.
Deb says
Callie, I really love this. I mean REALLY. What a beautiful perspective on sensitivity and the strength a sensitive soul carries. Happy Birthday to Harper!