Friday, August 12, 2005
Co Mary
The kids at Peace Village call me Co Mary. Co is the way you address a teacher. When I was younger, you couldn't get me to teach for a million dollars! Now I've been experiencing the most difficult and rewarding summer of my life. It is difficult to teach with the heat and no a.c. and when the kids get nuts sometimes. But on the other hand, I come to school and have students cme up to me with Hello and Good Morning. They point to their noses and say "nose"--kids I didn't think could remember the words. Today I was able to score a big victory, getting little Tai to come up to the board and point out the numbers one through five. Tai is autistic and usually doesn't participate in class at all. With a little coaxing I was able to get him to come up. The smile on his face was worth that million dollars!
The Autistic kids are the most challenging to everyone. Here in Vietnamese Autism very little is understood about it (for that matter I think it may be a mystery everywhere). The kids with this disorder seem to be trapped in infinity.
Tai lives in a world of fear most of the time. A cute little boy aged about seven, he screams at the slightest touch. He likes to open things, so sometimes I give him a book to look through. One book he opened fell to a chapter called "message of the mystics." I wonder if the mystics experienced a temporary kind of Autism. Another thing that works with him is giving him one of those Russian dolls. He likes the process of opening the series of dolls and then putting them back together again. You can see the joy in his face even though his hands shake.
Mai is a young woman who also is silent. She lives in a world of birdsong and sky. Rocking silently most of the time, she takes great joy in looking at brightly colored books.
Ming is my Vietnamese "boyfriend." He greets me every morning at school and loves to point at the street, houses, his shirt, my dress, motobikes, and have me name them. He takes great joy in the sound of words and we give each other the thumbs up sign.
Bao is a young man who likes to dance. Quiet most of the time, you can get a smile out of him from music and a Tennessee Waltz.
Autism is scary for me as a poet. One the one hand, it is scary to think of living in a world without words. On the other hand, the fact that I can communicate sporadically with these kids makes me wonder if words are superfluous.
The Autistic kids are the most challenging to everyone. Here in Vietnamese Autism very little is understood about it (for that matter I think it may be a mystery everywhere). The kids with this disorder seem to be trapped in infinity.
Tai lives in a world of fear most of the time. A cute little boy aged about seven, he screams at the slightest touch. He likes to open things, so sometimes I give him a book to look through. One book he opened fell to a chapter called "message of the mystics." I wonder if the mystics experienced a temporary kind of Autism. Another thing that works with him is giving him one of those Russian dolls. He likes the process of opening the series of dolls and then putting them back together again. You can see the joy in his face even though his hands shake.
Mai is a young woman who also is silent. She lives in a world of birdsong and sky. Rocking silently most of the time, she takes great joy in looking at brightly colored books.
Ming is my Vietnamese "boyfriend." He greets me every morning at school and loves to point at the street, houses, his shirt, my dress, motobikes, and have me name them. He takes great joy in the sound of words and we give each other the thumbs up sign.
Bao is a young man who likes to dance. Quiet most of the time, you can get a smile out of him from music and a Tennessee Waltz.
Autism is scary for me as a poet. One the one hand, it is scary to think of living in a world without words. On the other hand, the fact that I can communicate sporadically with these kids makes me wonder if words are superfluous.
