Angels Among Us

Yesterday Bunch and I were talking about the future. We’re currently trying to figure out where our 2nd choice for residency would be, should Doc not match into the ONE radiology slot here, and we have to move when he graduates. (Our 1st choice is to stay here).

It’s significant because the kids will go through junior high and high school during those years, and Bunch will even start college. So it caught me off guard when she mentioned that she would like to live at home when she’s in college.

“You don’t want to live on campus?” I asked.

“No, I’d like to live at home.” she replied.

Wow! Way to melt a mommy’s heart! Whether it happens or not, can I just say how precious those words were to me!

From a very early age I couldn’t wait to move out. To find a true “home”. I vividly remember the first time I ever heard that people get to leave home. I was four years old, and a baby sitter mentioned that she was going away to college, which I’d never heard of before. She explained that she’d live there so I wouldn’t see her as often. I asked her where she would sleep and she told me that you sleep at school, in dorms. What a concept! As my young brain tried to wrap itself around the prospect of moving away, it seemed like an eternity to wait till I could do the same. I hadn’t even started kindergarten yet.

If you’ve read much of my blog, you’ll know that things didn’t improve much in the next few years. The last day of school in fourth grade, the teacher handed out our report cards which also revealed which class we’d been assigned to for the following year. I desperately hoped I’d get Mrs. Chilius, because the other class was going to be a new teacher. A new teacher no one had ever heard of. A new teacher we knew nothing about. It was too much of a wild card. I wasn’t close to Mrs.Chilius, but at least she was a known quantity.

It was a serious Charlie Bucket moment. You know when his family scraped together their last farthings to get him the Wonka Bar for his birthday, and everyone held their breath as he carefully pulled back the wrapper hoping to see that sparkly golden ticket beneath? I held my breath as I pulled my report card out of the envelope, skipping over the grades to see who I’d been assigned the next year.

And the letdown was immense. Not Mrs. Chilius. The new teacher. Whose name wasn’t even on the card. Just the room number.

I spent a summer slightly dreading the new year, with no real expectation that things would be any better. My life was in a bit of a spiral.

The first day of fifth grade, it took me about 3.2956 seconds to fall in love with her. Miss Ryan was young, energetic, and feisty. With her red locks and fair skin, I thought she was beautiful. She had loads of fresh ideas, and a fiercely devoted heart. She was a breath of fresh air in a school that was getting along in years. I had definitely won the teacher lotto.

As a kid I liked basically everyone, but felt like most people didn’t like me. There was obviously a lot of cognitive distortion going on with my thinking, but that’s how I felt at the time. Most people didn’t really spend much time thinking about me at all. We were just kids.

But Miss Ryan liked me. She was the first person in my life who seemed to care about whether I was happy, if I was thriving, and how I was developing. She spent extra time with me, in what could only be thought of as an intervention. She made up a little notebook which she called “Operation Blue”, and we’d meet together after school and talk about how I was doing, and write notes and thoughts down. She tried to help me think about things from a different perspective. Encouraged me. Listened. Inspired me.

She was the best school teacher I ever had.

When I was in eight grade, Vicki moved to California. She was assigned to be my teacher at church, and for two years I basked in the glow of her love and encouragement. She arrived on the scene in my life after a particularly difficult two years of junior high school. I’d been praying every night for God to just “take me back” in my sleep. Was never suicidal, but was so sad all the time and didn’t see any other solutions.

Vicki was the second adult that I knew loved me. Who believed in me and gave me hope. Whenever I was tempted to make a wrong choice, it was the thought of disappointing Vicki, not my parents, that helped me be true to what I knew was right. Her good opinion of me kept me out of a lot of trouble. I honestly felt like her family was sent to California just for me. They moved away shortly after I turned sixteen, but her impact on my life can’t be understated. We’ve kept in touch all these years.

The Johnsons made a timely entrance onto my life scene right around the time Vicki moved away. You know the type of people who just have a GIFT for working with teens and young adults? That was the Johnsons, and I fell promptly in love with the entire family.

One of the first things that Brother Johnson told me when we met was that there was someone I should be friends with. Her name was Mary, and her mother had recently passed away. For reasons I was never clear on, even though her father and siblings lived nearby, Mary had become a foster child at the Johnson’s home.

I adored Mary and we became friends right off. I never said anything about it to her, but I was so jealous that she got to live be part of their family and I didn’t. Just didn’t seem fair. I did my level best to spend as much time with Mary and the Johnsons as possible, and they were a wonderful influence on me.

My friendship with them carried me through the next few years till that eternally distant day finally arrived: I left home for college.

The 12 hour drive with my dad seemed like forever, but we finally arrived on campus. After he helped me carry my things to my dorm room, he said he’d let me get settled for a bit, and then take me to dinner at a pizza joint he’d dined at back when he attended the same university. While I was hungry and looked forward to eating at a restaurant (a very rare event in my life), I simply couldn’t wait for him to leave that day. The moment he finally said goodbye and left, I felt the most exhilarating sense of freedom for the first time in my life. I wanted to dance, to sing, to twirl. It was fabulous!

I couldn't have made it without my dear girlfriends growing up, but these adults were the main reasons I made it through with the personal values that have governed my life. They instilled hope, believed in me, inspired me to keep trying, and convinced me that I was loved.

I believe everyone has guardian angels…and sometimes they’re flesh and blood.