Marble Cube

Eons ago, when I was a college student, I had a part time gig in the university's writing lab as a writing tutor.  Students would come to the lab for help with various writing tasks; some came because their English professor told them they had to go to the writing lab if they wanted to pass the class.  Others came because they were motivated to seek help on their own.

The semester I graduated, I had a writing lab client who struggled with the written English language because it was not his first language.  He had come to the United States as a college student, and he was learning as he went.  One day, near the end of the semester, I was walking down the hallway of the English building, and I heard my name called. It was my foreign language student, holding a small square chunk of marble in his hands.

I want to give this to you, he told me.  It's from my country.  I want you to have it.  You helped me so much. I won't forget. 

It's a beautiful cube, with lovely brown and green layers.  It's also very heavy;  I could use it as a deadly weapon, if I needed to (and if I had halfway decent aim, which I don't).  It's sitting on my desk at work, where it sometimes does duty as a paperweight and sometimes it just sits.  Every time I look at it,  I can hear that student's voice telling me, I want you to have this.  It's from my country.  It is part of me, and I want to give it to you.

We leave bits and pieces of ourselves behind when we have encounters with other people.  Some are good, like my treasured chunk of marble. Some are not so good.  Every time I walk down the corridors of my son's middle school, I hear the echoes of my own middle school years (which, for the record, sucked): Why are you wearing that? Who would want to be your friend? Don't you realize how stupid you are? Go away!

As the beginning of the school year approaches, not everyone is filled with excitement. Some students are heading back to school knowing that they're walking into a minefield they can't avoid.  As adults and parents we decry bullies, expressing at every opportunity how appalled we are that bullying happens.  Do something, we tell the school administration.  How can you let that continue? Isn't there some program you can do? Zero tolerance!

But as adults, who should know better, what bits and pieces are we leaving around for the kids to pick up?  When we complain to schools about bullying, maybe we should also be looking at how we talk about and treat other people.  The message is often clear: we should be kind and respectful to each other, unless you are different from me in some way. In that case, it's open season.  The gloves are coming off.  It's especially obvious this year, with a particularly contentious election season.  How often, especially as adult women and mothers, have we looked at another mother, judged her, found her wanting in some way, and made that judgment clear by our actions? Kids are astute little turkeys; they pick up on what we do as much as or even more than what we say to do.

What are we, as parents, showing our kids about relationships with others? As our young pupils head off to school this fall, what bits and pieces are they leaving with each other? What bits and pieces are we leaving with them?