The child who walked to his new school that fall wasn’t me, but some other child I didn’t recognize. I stood outside of myself to look at an unfamiliar creature in the mirror who had forgotten how to laugh.
My constant chattiness, my trusting willingness to engage with the world—nothing that I had been before was there. No one reached out to and hold me, and I reached for no one.
The child who walked into that fourth-grade class didn’t know how to introduce himself or how to act. On that day, my ghost sat on the last row and didn’t speak to anyone.
But there was a gift on that day waiting for me when my new teacher Rosita came by and sat next to me. She stayed behind and ate her lunch with me. And she placed her long thin hand on my head at the end of the day and spoke of the happiness she felt by having me in her class.
That somehow became enough for me—a new stranger in my life who possibly understood what I felt. A stranger I hoped would care for me.