There's a shy little girl named Susan in my grade six class who has lived in Seattle Washington for years. Her family has only recently moved back to the land of kimchi and sometimes she looks a little lost. Susan's English and her Korean are both perfect and she's been one of my favorites from day one. I can tell she likes me(in that way that young kids always hero worship the smiley young teacher). She wants to be an artist and we tend to exchange secret smiles when the other students make hilarous blunders. Susan asked me at the start of class today if she could stay after school to talk with me. I agreed and assumed she just wanted to speak English for a few extra minutes. Existing in Korean day in and day out is exhausting and I thought maybe she was feeling the same way. I waited around while she stuffed her crayons into her bag and then she asked me a question that completely caught me off guard.
"Do you think people are supposed to mate for life?"
I had no idea what to say to this. I racked my brain for an answer and came up with nothing. "I don't know Susan. Maybe sometimes?" She started to cry and told me that her parents were getting a divorce. I didn't really have a response to this so I just hugged her while she sobbed and ate lunch under a tree with her(much to the charagin of my co-teacher; in Korea it's not okay for teachers to eat lunch with their students). I'm not really sure why she decided to tell me, maybe because I speak English and she's more comfortable sharing in this language than her own. Maybe she just needed a grown-up and I seemed to fit the bill.
Either way, it's the first time I ever really thought about how heartbreaking divorce is for young kids.
queen of mistakes
14 years ago
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