Nine is late when you’re a teacher

As a teacher, nine in the morning is late to get up, and as you get older nine at night is late to go to bed.

Or at least it is when you get up at five o’clock to get to work on time.

When I was younger I had the strength to stay up late and get up early without feeling the consequences. Now that I’m closing in on 50 I don’t have that kind of stamina anymore.

My students do though. I’m in awe of the things they do as part of their regular day but one student, in particular, taught me about being selfless at a whole other level. He also showed me that being selfless doesn’t have to mean draining yourself.

Nine was a boy who had left Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos with his father and two significantly younger sisters. Their mother, a policewoman, stayed behind to oversee the house they were building and because her job was good paying and stable. Nine understood but he was also young enough that he really missed his mother. After he joined my class I learned about how he made sure his little sisters were safe and well cared for while his father worked. He doted on those little girls. He never made them feel like he was too cool for them or that they were any kind of work for him. They looked up to him so much that it filled your heart just to watch them. He made sure they got to school on time, in uniform, and he picked them up after school, took them home to help them with their homework and sometimes even made sure they had dinner.

One Saturday when I was coming in to get some work done I offered to let him come in and catch up on his reading homework. He had fallen behind because he was having a hard time reading for 20 minutes a night when he was helping raise two young children. He was thrilled. I will never forget him sitting there at a table with his soda and crackers and just so obviously enjoying his personal time. We started talking as we were packing up to leave and found out we were both rugby fans and after taking for a while he opened up about how much he missed his mother and how he hadn’t seen her for two years. He was only thirteen.

It broke my heart to see him so sad, but also impressed me beyond belief to realize what he was managing as part of his daily life. It also reminded me that if a thirteen year old could do what he was doing then I could probably handle what my life was throwing at me. I don’t like to compare one person’s burdens with another, I believe that what one person struggles with is hard for them, and what another person struggles with is equally hard for that person. I think when we fail to take into account how different people’s experiences and thresholds for dealing with those experiences are we do them, and ourselves, a disservice because it becomes easier to avoid feeling compassion for others.

Talking with him helped me to realize that part of what I was struggling with was how I perceived what I was doing, and being asked to do. I needed to take a lesson from Nine and stop thinking of my days as long and what I was enduring at that time as exhausting and find things that brought me joy, like some quiet time to read and a snack. Since then I have gone on to find joy in many of the ‘small’ things in life and Nine finally made it home to see his mother. He came back to visit while he was in high school and showed me pictures and was nearly in tears remembering how happy it made him to see her after so long. I still see his sisters from time to time since they are in our elementary school and they have kept me up to date on his life and how he’s doing. I’m always happy to hear that he’s well and happy, and it’s always a reminder of the life lesson I learned from him.

Thank you Nine.