I find her curled into herself, all knobby knees to her chest and tears sticky on her cheeks. She loves them to stay there, craves for me to see their dramatic fall. It’s the stuff of an aspiring teenager and that’s about enough to take the wind right out of me- the changing I’m witnessing.
With elbows on my legs I bend to meet her gaze and ricochet her emotions.

“You’re angry. I get it that Mondays are tough. And I see you.”

“I just hate going to school because it’s so hard for me and I couldn’t find my other slipper and I’m freezing (oh, the desperation). I want to be home with my family.” (Ah, yes. Bringing out the big “family” bomb sounding so well and good.)

We were in the aftermath of the flinging bootie, her burst of growling. I saw myself plain as day in those angry eyes.
“I’m really glad we had two days together. What if our government made you go to school 7 days a week?” (Which at the moment was tempting me beyond what I could handle.)

The brother interjects just like a brother. “Yeah. At least you have the weekend.” Not now, oh righteous one. Eat your Fruit Loops quietly. 

“Then we would get longer summers.”

“What if you didn’t? What if you had to go to a school where you couldn’t pick your own friends and the teachers made you hate God or you got in trouble?”

Why? Why do I say things like this? Guh. 

“I would still love Him.”
The crease in her forehead relaxes to curiosity. “Are there schools like that?”

“I don’t know.” It’s then I consider stopping but that would be wise and stuff so, I keep going.  “But there are people who lose their lives and even their heads for trusting in Jesus and not following other faiths.” And I believe in my bones He weeps at each family and limb torn apart, for every child found face-down on the beach or bloody and forgotten, every ounce of pain in every lonely mother.
“What’s great about where we live is we have the right to guns so we can protect ourselves.” I say it aloud so they’ll feel safe, and how do I explain that death means nothing when we know where we’re headed? How do I really even explain it to myself? Because what, Lord, of the things happening that words can’t contain? It’s heavy, too much.

The day moves on with a morning bell, an exhale in the car once the noise of the three of them hits the school sidewalk, me cursing my decision to say oh the many things. I scrub at tacky milk spills on the table and pick up wadded toilet paper from the floor and think, thank You that I never have to tell them we don’t have breakfast…or food at all. Thank You for not asking us to hide or risk being murdered. 

We get a mailer of a handsome boy in Africa whose name we try pronouncing. We’re told of the way he doesn’t learn ABC’s or 123’s because he has to work for his family at his tender 6 years old. How the prevalence of auto-immune diseases threaten his existence, and his favorite food is rice.

I become frustrated at their giggling, their poking each other’s sides in tickling. When I’ve washed my hands of them, put them to bed, she sneaks down to me in the dim light coming from above the stove. As I whip around to march her back to her room I see the way her hands cup the box. Tears come again but this time she’s keeping them full, rounded like bubbles at the crests of her lids.

“Here, Mom. He needs this more than I do.” The words hang in the kitchen with the lingering smells of dinner. I choke and grab her to me, the whole of her many months of saved dollars smashed between us. The doll she’s giving up, an afterthought.

Just when I think I’m the one teaching, she gives me the lesson of my life.

“…and many rich people were putting in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent.
      …for they put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”   -Mark 12:41-44