Last day at the Family Center

Thursday, 27 May 2010

I continued work with my refugee students up until May 27, five days before I left for Peace Corps Cameroon. These mothers I taught were amazing – often frustratingly chatty, but amazing, nonetheless. I always thought the Family Center was good for them. I hoped they could learn at least a little useful English from me there, but mostly, I just thought it was good for them to have to get out of the house and come be social with each other – with those of their own language group and those from the other far corners of the globe.

I knew most of them liked coming to class, at least for the social aspect, but I never realized until my last day just how much of an anchor and a comfort my co-teacher and I were to them. I knew I would cry, and I expected a few tears from the moms, too. But I didn’t anticipate the shuddering sobs.

My colleague had the wise idea to say a few parting words to our group privately, before administration from the main office of our organization arrived for an official send-off. She told our women how much she loved them, how much she had enjoyed being their teacher, and how much she had learned from them: how to be strong, how to keep moving forward, how to be brave. Her words encompassed how I felt, too, and I added that I was grateful for how our ladies had taught me how to be a stranger. Here they had been forced to flee their homes and had had no say in where they were sent in this unknown American land, and they adapted. They cared for their husbands and children, coped with a brand new culture and language, and still managed to share smiles and laughter whenever they came to class.

And here I was about to become one of them. I was about to be the alien, to be the one who stuck out, who didn’t speak the language, the one for whom everything was strange and unfamiliar. When I became the foreigner, I hoped to express half as much grace as they had. For the poise they had shown and the affection and joy they had maintained during a difficult transition, I thanked them. And I cried. So did they.

We collected ourselves when the executive director showed up to say farewell and present us with mementos and cake, and I thought that was the end of our being emotional. But after I finished eating, I began the rounds, kneeling in front of each student’s chair to give one last hug to every one. Then came the real tears. Almost without exception, each woman buried her face in my neck and shook with sobs. In turn, I stroked the mothers’ hair and held them as I also wept, and when I could manage, I told each how strong she was, how we would both be OK, how much she would like and be cared for by her new teacher.

My words can’t capture the depth of affection and emotion that poured out of us that day. After everyone left, and we were still trying to stanch the last trickle of our tears, my co-teacher, in a quavering voice, got out something like, “Don’t you just want to go home and cry the rest of the day?” Yes. I was spent.

My childhood friend, who had just moved back to town a few days before, wanted to see me teach before I left the country. She came to school this day and was so glad. She was let in to the inner sanctum of what the Family Center meant to all of us, students and teachers. She was happy to see that I was so loved – and perhaps that I loved so much.

By the end of the day, my eyes burned and my head was full and heavy from too much crying. But I was happy. It was my time to be at the Family Center the year I was there, to touch students’ lives and be touched by them. And it was just the right and appropriate time for me to leave for new journeys.

My students will continue to progress and so will I. And when I think of them, I’ll remember the way the sun shone that day through the stained-glass window of the cross and the dove. I’ll remember how the room glowed with love more than with that light. I’ll remember holding each of my girls in turn, knowing that they were, at least for a time, my girls and that in them, I was – and am – well pleased.