Reflections on the need for support for the younger generation
Sunday, a day of recovery, order and good resolutions made with purifying herbal teas.
But tomorrow in class I will look at the activities and remember that I still have notes to read, inside the shoebox I use for secrets, the den of pain children and adolescents“a friend of mine told me I have to die”, “I stopped eating because everyone told me I was fat”, but also the place of provocations and jokes and gifts: huge cards made very small that later open to reveal: “none of your business”, doodles, candies.
I have three big envelopes of cards in my cupboard, I think every time I should do something with them but they just stay there. As a teenager I went into a man's house who had stuck I don't know how many envelopes full of stuff to the ceiling. I really should do something with them, the image of me as an old woman full of envelopes of cards from sad little girls gives me pause. Anyway, she also had a nifty way of picking up envelopes, sort of like a pulley. Funny, in the end.
The fact of the matter is that these little notes stay there and so sometimes I reread them, I always sigh and then close them again trying to do it the way they did, to follow their folds. I think in these years of teaching I have done nothing but try to follow their folds. It seems a good metaphor to me and no, I have not always succeeded. I also wonder if it is useful to try to follow them by sinking in with them; am I able to keep my eyesight lit even in the darkness where they take me? I don't know, but I do know that I don't want to leave them there alone.
A colleague told me years ago that girls and children throw bombs at you without warning, bombs that would shock the toughest people, maybe in the middle of a game we thought was fun, with a sandwich in our mouths, or a cigarette in the joint, before hiding away from them to smoke in peace. They throw pain at you, like that. The only possible thing to do is to take that bomb in your hands. To defuse it? Maybe. For now to hold it in your hands: you gave it to me, I take it, I'm there.
A few days ago she didn't write a note, she stood with her bomb in the middle of the room, in the centre of the circle that frightens everyone, and cried on my jacket.
She did not want the water the teacher offered her, she did not even want to be with me in the bathroom or in the garden, she wanted to talk, straight and proudly sobbing in the middle. She spoke of her family, of her mother, of the constant insults, she cried for understanding, for protection towards her younger sister. She screamed saying: I can't take it any more. He decided to break the silence.
I teach physical theatre. For me, everything starts and goes back to the bodies, so even a few days ago, after widening my eyes in surprise, I kept them like this, hyper-open, sight on because we are sinking sweetheart, and I know the darkness down there but you are not alone.
Then we both climbed back into a circle that was snowed in with silence, saw our comrades again with moist eyes, said goodbye and off we went. The teacher said something, I said things, the project leader and the head of the cooperative and the headmaster said lots of things. Hours of things said including: you have to be careful because then the social workers take a moment/ I'm not saying it's not true but you have to understand/ sometimes, you know, the kids are exaggerated/ a problematic family/ our hands are tied/ we're nobodies/ don't give opinions describe the scene/ and finally: I feel you're tried.
I am tried by the lack of long-term strategies to deal with these cases. By the umpteenth confirmation that the voice of the girls and boys has no resonance, activates nothing but scepticism and at best (brief) compassion. I am very tried by the fact that social work enjoys (rightly!) the same reputation as Meloni in left-wing circles. That there is a lack of free, accessible parenting support for all, because we are left alone in parenting and we are still too many mothers with more and more social pressures, less money and less time.
I am tried by the fact that it is not possible to open up within each school, alongside traditional teaching, a pathway involving students, parents, teachers, social workers, not a few months a year, every who knows how many years. A safe place. It would be a space for listening, for collective, intergenerational growth. It might even be the case that at least at a hurling of pain there would be a collective that could respond: I am there.
I would like to be in a group of people with untied hands, in action. To defuse bombs? Maybe...
