WHEN THE MORNING sun breaks over the mountain, the light seems to magnify everything. From where I stand on a rock at the edge of the lake, the trees on the flank of the far peak seem close enough to touch. The reeds fifty metres out are thick with birds, and the clarity of the air allows me to see every detail. Beside me, the dog is also transfixed by the wonder of the planet. Every day, rain or snow or shine, we’re out here in the early hours. The land, my people say, is a feeling— and that feeling is peace.
When I was younger I rarely felt peace. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to heal, to reclaim the lost parts of myself, to reconnect to my tribal life. But on this brilliant morning, I’m thinking about a boy I met yesterday. He’s fourteen. A white kid, tall and skinny. The man he’ll become is evident in the stretch of him. He was languid and loose, like kids his age are, but there was a cautionary edge to him that spoke to me.
The boy sat on the edge of his chair, leaning forward some, keenly watching the adults in the room. His eyes flicked back and forth as Deb and I spoke with his dad. I could see the muscles twitch in his thigh, see him bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. I could feel his readiness to bolt if the signs of danger came. When the conversation turned to talk of safety and security, I could almost hear him relax.
There was nothing in this kid that would declare him as radical or different: no tattoos, no gang apparel, no posturing, no piercings. He was dressed like any other boy his age, though a tad more shabbily than some, perhaps. It took closer inspection to see that he was someone who’d learned the delicate art of becoming invisible, of shrinking into the background and waiting, patient as a wolf cub, to see whether violence or peace would reign.
The boy’s dad is a drunk. When Debra and I met him, he was coming from a recovery program he’d left early in order to pick up the pieces of his family life. It wasn’t the man’s first bash at recovery. He wore that evidence on his face. He and the boy were camped out in a low-end hotel until they could find suitable housing. They’d come to us to scope out a room in our rooming house. As the talk progressed, the man painted himself as a concerned father eager to provide for his kid. But I could see the street on him as he answered our questions.
It wasn’t so long ago that I wore the same look. It wasn’t so long ago that I roamed about looking for a peg to hang my life on, somewhere to get past the ache that booze leaves in your gut and your spirit. Street drunks and closet drinkers recognize one another when they meet. That’s how you survive out there. You find someone who’s the same kind of drinker you are, or preferably anyone who’s worse off. That’s also how you heal when you finally quit. You find someone who drank the same way you did and walk beside that person in sobriety.
The boy had seen everything. You could tell that. The fragments of his story we got in that brief time were about being plucked from his life and plunked down with strangers. About never feeling at home, wherever he landed. About not knowing from one day to the next when a sweeping change was going to come, when a blow or wounding words would hurtle towards him out of the darkness. About this stranger who was his father, and what it would be like to live with him functionally sober. The boy spoke quietly when he answered our questions. His voice was low and even, and the only feeling it betrayed was resignation. His eyes, when they lifted momentarily from the floor, were distant and devoid of hope. It made me want to cry.
We made plans for the two of them to take a room that would be available in a month’s time. Deb and I decided to offer the room because of the boy. Both of us felt ourselves reach out to him. Both of us felt his pain. He wanted his future to represent something more than it had up to that point.
When I was fourteen, my life was bombarded by pain and isolation. I was trapped and alone, and I had no one to tell about it. I felt all of this in that boy, and it called to me. It’s our brokenness that allows us to recognize and heal each other, not the fronts of stoic capability we display.
So the boy will come to stay. We made that happen, and we feel good about it. He’ll have a place now to set his feet down, a place to rest. He’ll have a home. It won’t be perfect, but it’s a beginning, a fresh start, and roots have taken hold in thinner soil. When the conversation was over and we stood to shake hands, the boy offered his. It was birdlike and small. When he looked at me, I could see the question in his eyes: will it be any different this time? It made me want to cry.
Sometimes it doesn’t take much to change a life. My people’s teachings speak of respect, the ability to honour all of Creation, and we honour it best through our allegiance to each other. We give what we can and stand beside people when they need it. That’s how it works. Peace.