Stories from the Fig Tree

It was my first year of teaching in a school, rather than in a language academy. He was one of my students in what was (at the time) an enormous group of twenty-seven children. The first day I was with them in class, I asked him to stop throwing a spinning top at the wall as they are outside toys not inside ones.

He gave me attitude.

So much attitude.

I was horrified. I lost my temper and seem to remember shouting and asking who he was to talk back to an adult like that. From then on he took joy in finding all the buttons that made me explode, and like a true maestro used each and every one of them every day and all the time.

It was an excercise in patience, trying not to get angry, trying to look for the positive.

I remember being out in the playground and joining in with a game he was playing with the other kids, and laughing with all of them. I helped his team win, and even tricked another boy into coming to talk to me so that he could ‘tag’ him and then run off. We had a conversation afterwards where he asked why, if I had been so serious with him in class, was I able to go and join in the games outside. My answer was that in the classroom I am not going to permit bad behaviour, which has nothing whatsoever to do with who he is as a person. He as a person had, and still has many amazing qualities. He is a source of fun, always finds something to laugh about, makes working together feel like joy, and manages to do things that are just bad enough to be described as naughty without ever crossing the line into petulance.

He looked at me strangely and then left the conversation.

Eventually I learnt to tolerate what was going on, but not push it too far as it would only escalate, until one Thursday afternoon.

We had three hours together, and there were projects to do, things to hand in and to top it all off, parents were coming in later to see what they had done and listen to thir presentations.

My good friend decided it was time to play tricks on the others and annoy them, stop them working and even break some of the things that they were working on. At the end of the day I lost it. Really lost it and properly shouted. One of those times when the voice seems to be coming from your stomach, grunted rather than spoken.

I told him I wasn’t going to forgive him, that he had been cruel and unkind, which for me is the lowest of the low. I told him to get out, go home and think about what he did.

Five minutes later he came downstairs with the head of school counselling, crying like nothing I had ever seen before. Pure emotion. A flow of feelings, repentant and sad. The counsellor told me that he had run upstairs to her office and said that he had completely destroyed the relationship with someone that cared for him and that he cared for and he didn’t know what to do.

I told him that this time it was my turn to say sorry, to say that for once I had lost my cool and that I did not want him to feel that way either. As soon as he heard the word sorry, I had him hugging me, tightly and sobbing.

After that we reached a much deeper understanding – as a teacher I learnt that their behaviour often comes from a place of wanting attention. It is not about letting them do what they want, but also not forgetting that they are people with lives as well. I found that by laughing with him, I could say that it was time to work and he would. I could speak to him and calm him down becuase he knew I was on his side. I still got angry but from a place of frustration, able to remove myself from the situation.

He taught me to stop, to listen to students, to try and understand why before deciding what to do and whether to take action. I still listen and they are well aware when they have not done thier best. Now after a good decade in the same place, a look is usually enough and telling them they have disappointed me is far more powerful than any punishment.

Anything worth doing takes time.

Image: https://www.stockvault.net/photo/185422/gold-pen#

It’s cold outside

Rain is dripping slowly down

Down my window pane

In our own worlds

Separated by a touch

I’m too scared to make

This broken mirror

Is just shattered glass

Reflecting pieces

Of a love that’s ours

Situations don’t permit

That I ever reveal

The way you make me feel inside

I’m alive and this pain is real

But if you leave me now, my world comes crashing down

Please don’t leave

Please don’t leave

Please don’t leave me here alone

Guess I don’t mind

Image: https://www.stockvault.net/photo/150904/tropical-storm-window-raindrops

A mumbled apology of a morning grumbled its way into being, dragged across a sky that was already complaining about the weather despite being slightly responsible for it.

The birds outside were already swirling around almost hiding from the rain, or trying to get rid of it, very difficult to tell. The olive trees seemed like they were more alive than ever with all of the new visitors they had acquired since the rain started to come down.

It was threatening snow, but had already been doing precisely that since last week, it seemed to get bitterly cold but never take the bite. The rigmarole firmly set in swing as the people in the village started to crawl out of their houses to the frosted cars left outside to battle the Castillian winter.

Everything hummed into existence slowly, the aching bones of an already old-before-its-time morning starting to move.

People shuffled by the end of the road, no one really in the mood to talk, far preferring to stand at the bus stop in a game of mutual ignoring until the bus deigned to show up. The shine of a mobile screen giving some light to the grey faces waiting for the single-decker to finally arrive and take them to a destination even less interesting than the one they were currently in.

A coffee would do nicely right now, maybe a quick trip to the bar down the road to slug down something acidic that tastes like uncleaned pipes. Perhaps accompanying it all with some tostas or another local thing before taking on the day.

The tar dripped into the porcelain, crumbs and drops of sugar-stones thrown in for good fun.

Is it Friday yet?

Image: https://www.stockvault.net/photo/101146/last-drip

There was a smell of wet leaves stuck in the drain outside, the air slowly warming again after one of the end-of-summer storms. The work needed to remove them would take more effort than just leaving them there to rot and closing the window if it got too offensive.

A life spent comparing to others, a life spent alaways thinking that they were right. After all, the aggression in thier voice suggested that they couldn’t be wrong. Authority and a sharp high pitched tone always meant trouble, another round of being shouted at for perceived mistakes.

It didn’t seem worth the fight, didn’t seem worth the trouble. After all, it would go away again when someone else became the latest nuisance, but then it would be back again soon after, stronger and more hurtful, looking for the reaction, on the scent of blood.

A broken man, a shattered dish with sharp pieces hiding in the darkest corners of the kitchen. There’s nothing left, a kitchen conundrum contemplating the carving knife at the callous steel sink. Everything is cold, the leaves don’t matter anyway.

The rain started to tumble down as the wind blew the drops in circles, forming puddles, ripples and finally dislodging some of the debris from the drain.

It could wait until tomorrow, the thoughts would still be there, so would the blockage.

Who cares anyway?

Empty sockets stared forward sightlessly as the ground shook around them. The underground was always humid, nothing had bothered what was left of the body under there until the building work started.

Inching towards where it lay, deep enough not to be found by chance, but quite high up enough to be found when foundations needed to be laid, only the occasional insect bore witness to any of it. The sour smell of fire burning, cement being mixed and the shouts of labourers got steadily closer.

The body waited.

“You’re impossible!”, shouted Alice, as Tom glared at her, having exploded at her again about how the neighbours were parking far too near her car, demanding to know why she couldn’t just move hers forward an inch or two, two more steps to the front door were not going to kill anyone. On top of which, she could sort it out when an accident happened, the damned neighbours drove like maniacs anyway.

Angry words jutted out jarringly into the silence of the otherwise quiet residential area, with no audience to hear them; old Tom was just in a mood again. It was the same every day, the building work was interrupting everyone’s sleep, nerves were frayed all over the estate. House prices were being pushed down as the council had made the electioneering move to build affordable housing.

Tom could make the words affordable housing sound like an affront to anyone’s civil liberties, as well as something that was quite dirty, unclean. Not the sort of thing you could chat about politely over lunch.

He slammed the door shut behind him, one hand twiddling the car-keys in his pocket, the other tapping all over his coat to look for his cigarettes.

He walked to the edge of where the building work was going on, sat down on an old stone structure, remnants of another time, lighting up and taking a long drag, eyes drawn instinctively to the same spot.

The body waited.

image: https://www.stockvault.net/photo/213212/earth-section

“I hope he dies. I hope he dies because no one loves you. You’re ugly and unlovable, you are going to have the same thing happen to you, because you are worthless. Don’t cry little woman it ruins your complexion”

Head-locked underneath someone’s arm the kicking started, the pain is terrible and there is no escape. Some of the kicks hit the target, others go right to the prostate, it doesn’t stop. It feels like hours, it feels like there is no point carrying on, it is just another day. Let it happen, take the high road, do the right thing, there is honour in truth, good will prevail.

But it does not.

Thirty years have passed since it started, twenty-five since it finished. Their faces look back through social media, smiling, surrounded by family in luxury places, happy children, laughing, successful. There is no sorrow, none of the promised destitution, none of the promised bitterness, none of the failure that is bound to happen to those that do the wrong thing. They did it all, and now they have it all.

Some thought deep inside a damaged brain hopes that their children go through it. That they have to look at their child not eating, shaking in a corner, becoming an over the top mess desperate to be loved, looking for acceptance anywhere it can be found, hoping the laughs will avoid another beating or being made a fool of in public yet again. That maybe the prophecy of those being cruel actually having some sort of comeuppance is real, but it is not.

The answer is always along the lines of “It happens to you because you’re too kind. You’re too nice! You need to harden up because it’s a cruel world.”

Thus all actions no matter how bad are justified along the lines of – if you were exactly what every moral code tells you not to be, if you don’t follow the peaceful teaching we have been ramming down your throat since you were able to talk, if you go against that, then maybe you won’t get beaten, ridiculed, spat on and your head shoved into a toilet. The logic of these statements goes beyond any poor understanding of the world at large.

Let go, it doesn’t change anything, and they don’t care anyway.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/5543854426