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Pop in when you have a few spare moments for a cosy chat. Read about real-mom experiences and contribute your own slices of life at our Drop-In Centre.
The Target
drop-in centre canada
(Dec.18.09)
My son’s fist comes down hard on his keyboard, a guttural roar emanating from his throat.
“What’s up?” I ask. He’s been out of sorts ever since I picked him up from school. Yelling at his guitar during practice, smashing his pencil on his arithmetic sheet – as if everything around him is sandpaper against his skin.
He looks up at me, glassy eyes forming salty pools, and then the dam bursts.
“I hate school. I wish I never had to go there. I hate everything,” he yells. Deep sobs erupt from his chest. I crouch down beside him so we’re at eye level. “I feel so alone. I don’t have any friends anymore at school.”
My heart cracks open as I wrap my arms around him, a wet patch of snot and tears soaking through my sweater as he expels his bitterness. My son, my heart’s desire, has become the playground target of 10-year-old boys looking to prove their budding manhood.
First, it was rock-throwing. My husband and I counselled him to stand up for himself, tell the boys he didn’t like what they were doing. The tactic didn’t work, so we told him to walk away when the bullying began, find other kids in the school yard to play with. But the teasing continued. They taunted him, called him fatso, poured wood chips down the back of his coat. They played “guess the password” to gain entrance to their gang, ran away when he approached them in the school yard, or pretended he was invisible.
Week after week, the playground became more toxic until tonight, when the frayed rope that has become my son finally broke. I am helpless before this crumbled fragment of a boy, and search for the right words to soothe his aching heart. Nothing comes to me that doesn’t sound like a platitude filled with false hope. So I wrap my body around his as if with this gesture, I can protect him from the sticks and stones and words that hurt him.
Penelope Hutchison is a researcher and writer living in Vancouver. A graduate of The Momoir Project, she recently published the story “When We Were Feminists” in Briarpatch magazine.
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