A day to remember
Dec. 14, 2011
In the Morning
I woke up in the morning with heavy headache. Last night must have been snowing hard. I can never sleep well in a snowy night. I pulled out the curtain a bit and saw the white snow covering all over the golf course in the backyard. My heart sank with the breezing air.
The clock on the night table warned me that it has been 7:20. I rushed out to Alex's room, yelling:
"Alex, Get up now! We are late!"
"Okay." He muttered.
I had to yell at him the third time to finally pull him out of his bed. It was 7:40 when we rushed to the car.
"Here, have it when it's still warm." I passed him the French toast I cooked for him in a hurry.
He didn’t take the plate, nor said a word. Instead he closed his eyes tightly, continued to sleep.
"Why are you so tired? When did you go to bed last night?"
He didn't answer. I restrained the impulse of complaining, drove silently.
We reached school around 8:15. Then Alex started to talk, in a depressive voice:
"I need to be in school by 8:00. My Band is only 90 now, because I am always late."
My heart stopped beating for a while. He always got 100% in Band previously.
"Don't worry, Band isn't the essential course, it doesn't matter." I said while felt deep pain in the bottom of my heart.
He left me without another word.
The depressive air he left inside the car surrounding me, making me hard to breathe.
Yes, Band is just an option course, maybe it really doesn’t matter, as long as he doesn’t care... But Language Art has been his biggest problem.
”My brain turns blank whenever I tried to write something seriously. If my LA failed, no university will accept me for sure." His despaired voice sounded again.
If only I can do something to help him, anything. My head spin. A figure of a pink cheek lady floated in my memory. Ms. Bossharf, his LA teacher. A nice lady, talked in a passionate way all the time in last parent-teacher interview. I need to give her a call.
I made the call as soon as I reached my office. Luckily Ms. Bossharf picked up the phone right away.
“I would like to know how Alex is doing now in LA.” I said, holding my breath.
“He is doing very well. He finished all his essays, including the missing ones and the bonus one. You can ask him to show his marks to you.” Her voice was happy and passionate.
“Thank you, I guess he will be fine then?” I released my breath and smiled.
“Yes, I think he will be fine, don’t worry.” She assured.
At Noon
I was fully occupied with my jobs, and then had a Christmas lunch around 11:30 with my friends. When I finally came back to my office at 12:30, there were 2 messages in my answering machine, informed me that Alex has an incident in school and will be suspended for 3 days, I must go to the office to take him home as soon as possible.
Something fragile broken inside my heart, then the pain spread into my whole body. Alex’s pale and gloomy face popped up vividly. Suspending for 3 days! In this critical time! He has been working so hard these days to prepare for many final tests, hoping to fill the gap between the current average and the admission requests of the universities he pursued. I can’t image how heavy the knock will be.
“No! This is too much!” I shouted out loud when I drove crazily. My heart burned with fire, while tears burned my eyes. They are doing this again, exaggerating the event and shred him with prejudice.
An obtuse office lady took me to a small room in silence. I saw Alex sat in a corner with his head buried in both hands. His backpack hanged on his skinny back, looked like a heavy shell covering him. A gloomy man sat on the other side, staring at me seriously when I walked in. I knew he is the principal; Mr. Young. Beside him was a fake blonde who always had a silly smile on her heavy makeup face, Alana, the Guidance. I yelled at them once when they forced me to take Alex to the emergency center of the Children’s hospital because he screamed at the counselor. It ended up that the Psychologists in the hospital evaluated Alex as perfectly healthy except that he needs to learn how to deal with stress wisely; while they also pointed out that the school counselor might have exaggerated the case and needed to communicate with him better based on true understanding. That incident ended silently, but I knew the unpleasant seed was planted; nobody likes to be judged as an idiot.
But they are really two idiots. This arrogant cold man and that prejudice ugly woman.
“What happened?” I asked Alex. He raised his head but didn’t look at me. His sight seemed remote and empty.
“He screamed in the LA class and sang songs in the office, disturbing the others in public. He also refused to follow the instruction. We will suspend him for 3 days. He is not allowed to stay inside the school during the suspension time, and you have to setup another reinstatement meeting to reinstate him. This is the suspension letter” Mr. Young said coldly while passed me the envelopes.
“May I ask what happened to my son? I called his LA teacher this morning and she said he is doing very well. ”
“I stayed till 4 o’clock last night but can’t write a word for the group project, I don’t know what to write in the class either. I will fail the project and everyone will hate me.” Alex replied me in a deadly voice.
“That’s not a good reason to scream in the class.” Alana laughed through her nose.
“I only yelled for couple seconds, then cried quietly. Ms. Bossharf asked me if she can help, I shook my head. She asked if anyone else can help, I shook my head. She asked if I want to see a counselor, I shook my head. Nobody can help me anyway. Then they took me to the office, in the public, made me look like a freak.” Alex’s deadly voice continued.
“How can you suspend a student because he can not deal with his stress nicely?” I raise my voice, stared into the cold eyes of the man in front of me.
“Now you are yelling at me! This is the second time. I warn you.” The cold eyes didn’t even blink.
“We can’t keep a screaming student in our school.” Alana said, still smiling.
“I would like to know what happened to my son! Why he was screaming? What did you do to him?”
“You should ask Alex. His behavior was unacceptable.”
“I can’t accept it! You don’t have the right to suspend a student just because he is too stressful!” I started to yell.
“Yes I do. The decision is made; now please take your son out of the school.”
“I will report you, and you. You are not qualified for a principal. And you are not qualified for a Guidance, that’s what Psychologists in the Children’s hospital told me last time, they said you are over reacted, and you didn’t even know anything about my son. "
Alana turned pale while she tried to maintain her hypocritical smile and said: “No, they won’t say that, they talked to me later.”
“They didn’t want you to feel bad, but they told me the truth, you are not qualified. None of you are. You had a student suicide by drugs last month, you should step down. ” My heart burned. I wanted to destroy her hypocritical smile, and his icy calm expression.
“Now, please go, and take your son with you. Get out of my school.”
“It is not your school! Who do you think you are! It’s the school for students, and human. You are not a human; you don’t even have a heart. ” I shred the suspension letter, and through the pieces to him.
“Mom, stop. Please. They are suspending me because they think I am a freak. You don’t know what I did, I was silly. I won’t do that again.” Alex said weakly, and stood up.
“I will report you!” I yelled at the cold man one last time. If my anger can burn anything, I will fire it.
“Go ahead! Now please get out.” He shrugged.
“Let’s go home. You are much better than them. They don’t even have a heart!” I took Alex’s hand with me, left the cold room behind.
I failed, I was crazy. I was ugly, very, very ugly. What did I do! Now they must think both my son and I are crazy, now they must be laughing, thanking that we are trash, with no manner, no dignity, nothing.
Who cares! I yelled out loud to myself. How many times I have been yelling today? I don’t care. I am crazy. Everybody can be crazy, everybody has a limit.
“Why did you say those words to them, Mom? Now they must think I am a freak because of you. They must think we are an insane family.” Alex said to me on our way home, liked he was reading my mind.
“I don’t care what they think! What they did to you was too much, it’s not fair, I can’t accept it. ” I said, but my heart was empty as a bottomless dark hole.
“But you didn’t see what I have done. I acted like I was an idiot.” He said, his voice was weak and full of remorse. I stood still and looked at him. The delicate skin on his face seemed fragile, so were his whole elegant face and his skinny figure.
So delicate and fragile that I didn’t even dare to touch it all the time even when I really wanted to. Now they stretch out their dirty and rough hands to push him, trying to destroy him.
I tried to protect him. But did I really do anything good to protect him? I may just mess things up, to make the ugly things uglier because I didn’t use my brain before the action, and I didn’t have good anger control.
But even if I acted as more likable, more ladylike as I usually pretend to be to most people around me, it still didn’t make any differences. They made the suspending decision before I even talked to them. So why can’t I told them what I really thought about them? I can’t change anything already anyway.
That was just for my self satisfactions though. I exploded to vent my anger, to vent the failure feeling on my son deep inside my heart. It should be all about Alex, not my own feeling. I should have been calmer, more graceful, and smarter, to negotiate, to fight for a better deal for Alex…
It’s all about my son, not about me. I made a mistake…oh God, I made an irreparable mistake.
It took a long time for me to be able to speak again.
“Please don’t do that again. When you are facing to a stressful situation, first thing you should do is to find out the stressor, then try the best to deal with it. Don’t let it grow bigger and bigger until you can’t handle it.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t think about the incident too much now, you need a good rest. Don’t stay too late at night from now on. You can use the suspending time to catch up the missing classes by yourself, make sure you don’t miss anything from your teachers, okay?”
“Okay.”
I went upstairs to work from home. Alex started to play piano. The music sounded passionate and broken at the beginning, and then became slow and sad. The music activated my heart with fresh and bloody wounds.
I walked downstairs to close to him, hugged him from his back.
“I am sorry, son. Mom didn’t know how to help you.”
Tears burned my eyes again.
He didn’t move. A few seconds passed, he said:
“It’s enough, Mom. I am sorry. I will not do stupid things again.”
In the Afternoon
I kept working till around 4:00 PM, and then Angela came home from school. She was a bit surprised to see both Alex and I were home, but not Adrian.
“Mom, why are you home so early today, and where is Adrian?”
“Oh, Adrian isn’t home yet? Where is he? He supposed to be home 30 minutes ago.” I run up and down to check whole house, in case he was hiding somewhere. Alex was reading a book in his room, there was no trace of my little boy.
“Maybe he is playing a bit in the playground with his friends. I will go to look for him.” Angela said then left.
I was going to run after her, while the phone rang. It was my mother-in-law.
“Is everything okay? How are the kids?” She asked immediately when I picked up the phone.
“Everything is Fine.” I said.
“What’s wrong with Alex? Why his school made emergency call to Lynn? It is said he had an incident. ”
“Nothing important, it’s over now.”
“Why can’t you be frank to me? Okay, it’s your son; it’s your own business. But I still want to say, you should take good care of him. I saw he has been a very unhappy boy for a long time. Didn’t you notice it? He rarely smiles; he doesn’t know how to get well with other people. It’s not good for a young boy to be this way. You should pay extra attention to him. ”
“Okay.”
“I guess his brain may have some problems. Did you ever hit his head when he was young? I saw once that when he was fretful, he pull his hair very hard. I am afraid he might have brain problem. Maybe you should take him to see a doctor or a psychologist.”
“Yes.” I said flatly. I didn’t know what the school told Lynn about Alex. I always know that my mother-in-law never be fond of Alex. They are basically strangers to each other, and Alex has never opened his mind for her. Somehow he knew that she was expecting a more charming and cheerful grandson, but has been deeply disappointed.
“I really want to know…” She intended to say something more, but I was thinking about Adrian. So I cut her in the middle:
“I am sorry, Mom. I have to hang up the phone now, Angela is home. We will call you later.”
I hanged the phone roughly, then rushed to Alex’s room, told him that I worried about Adrian and will go out to look for him. I asked him stayed home and called me when his little brother was home.
I met Angela in the school playground. She can’t find him anywhere. I asked her run back home to check our backyard and the other playgrounds, then I run into his classroom. Luckily his teacher Ms. Lowe was still there.
We spent about 30 minutes to call all his classmates; nobody can give any hints where he may go. I started to be scared.
We rushed to the office, the principal was there too. I asked couple questions from me, then started to call 911.
The operator asked me a lot of questions, while the policemen on the way to school. I crashed in the middle of the dialogue, cried out loud.
“Is there any chance that your husband took you son somewhere already?” Ms. Lowe asked. I shook my head. Then I realized, I haven’t given him any call even so much heart-breaking things happened.
He didn’t pick up the phone. He must be in the middle of something then missed the call.
Four policemen reached the school in 10 minutes. They asked some brief questions then started searching. We searched the whole school, the playgrounds, the normal and unusual ways from the school to my house, and finally, searched my whole house.
I followed the policemen everywhere like a corpse. I wondered if today was the end of the world. I wished it was so that there was not just me suffering so much.
Then my little boy in the bright red coat rang the door bell, with big smiling on his pink cheek, like a booming flower shinning in the evening mist.
He has been playing with his new friend in the next door of our house all the time.
At night
I wrote an email to Alex’s LA teacher after dinner, just for keeping the record and refreshing my idea:
Dear Ms. Bossharf;
I am really upset about what happened to Alex in the LA class today. At that time he was very upset about being unable to finish the group project on time and may drag down other classmate’s marks. He told me he screamed and cried in the class for awhile, which was worrisome.
Someone called me after he was sent to the office, but I was having group lunch at that time therefore I can't receive the calls right away. When I finally called back around 12:40, they told me he will be suspended for 3 days!
Before I knew what’s going on, the decision has been made, that’s what I can’t accept.
I am studying the Calgary Board of Education, Administrative Regulation 6001 - Student Discipline section right now. The above action was violating what is stated in section 20 (2):
When the principal suspends a student under section 20(1) above, the principal must:
(e) Provide an opportunity to meet with the student's parent, and the student if the student is 16 years of age or older, to discuss the reasonableness of the suspension
I was worry and angry therefore I said something very rude to the principal and the counselor, but I am not going to blame myself because I do think they were not doing the right job.
Here are my questions:
1. I think it’s okay to make him leaving the class because he wasn't able to calm down and may affect the whole class, but I don't think the procedure after that was right. How can you suspend a student as a punishment because he is under stress and being unable to control the stress well? Yes he need to learn how to control his stress and even his behavior, but is suspension the best way?
2. When he wasn't able to control his stress, did they try a proper way to deal with him? Let's say put him inside a quiet room where he won't bother anyone else to let him calm down, instead of trying to judge him right away?
3. Even if he really didn't behave properly, don't you think suspending him from school for 3 days is too much? This is also violating to what’s stated in section 20(1):
When responding to unacceptable student behaviour, a teacher or principal must consider:
(a) the effect of the student’s behavior upon other students, the staff, the school, and the community;
(b) the nature of the action or incident that calls for disciplinary or alternative measures;
(c) the student’s previous conduct and previous interventions;
(d) the student’s age, maturity, and abilities;
(e) the impact of proposed action on the student’s future behaviour; (f) the student’s learning needs
I can’t accept the way of the principal and the counselor deals with Alex because, I don’t believe when they made the decision to suspend him, they were considering for him at all. By suspending him as a punishment, they are telling him that he is not normal, and they are trying to get rid of him. I will never consider that’s the proper way to do.
I believe in my son because I believe, growing up is a process and pursuing better healthy (including physical and mental healthy) is also a process that we need to maintain in our whole life time. If there is an obstacle, the only thing we need to do is to try to help him to remove it, then going forward. Not giving him up in the middle.
Yours truly,
Janny Lan.
I didn’t think, or actually expected she will say or do anything meaningful at all. Deep inside my heart, I believed I knew human nature very well. People always instantly consider the result of their actions rationally if the incident has nothing to do with them. In this case, nobody in the school will dare to say anything to against their principal, unless Alex is someone very important to them.
Paul came home around 9:30pm, exhausted as usual. He noticed I lost in my mind again, so he put his palm on my forehead, asked me if there is anything wrong. I just shook my head. I was too tired to say anything.
Adrian curled beside me in the bed, asked me if I was angry with him today. I told him instead of angry, I was deadly worry about him, and my heart was really broken when I thought he was missing. I said unless he gave me a lot of kisses and hugs, and promised always make sure let me know where he is, my heart will be broken forever. He gave what I asked for.
I startled at the midnight around 3:00am. The world was deadly quiet except my rapid breathing. I realized that the scene of the night reflected the absolute truth of human life, that we are actually lonely at the end. I recorded the whole day that just passed, during the most stressful and heart-breaking moments, my mind was completely empty most of the time. I had no desire to talk to anyone, nobody in this world I really trusted that I can ask for help.
Absolutely nobody.
Should I choose to believe in GOD instead?
