I literally could have killed him.
I smiled at his tongue protruding indignantly from his mouth the first time I asked him a question. I shrugged off his slumped posture and sullen stare whenever I invited him to participate in the games. I even kept my cool when he pushed Rachel’s desk halfway across the classroom and when he pinched Noah’s arm.
But when Cody’s pint-sized Reebok flew through the air and hit me in the head, I knew the spawn must die.
I was hired last minute as a teacher's aid for a two week Chinese immersion summer camp for 1st graders and while I love kids and have what I would consider a high tolerance for noise, I was not prepared for Cody. After school I commuted to Provo for my second job and continued to fume all night. It wasn’t until I got home that I flopped down on the side of my bed and asked, “God, please help me love Cody.”
The next day at school I was already in battle mode when Cody came in late and proceeded to knock all the backpacks off the rack finding a spot for his lunch. For a moment I imagined his little sillouette cut from the brick wall of the classroom and calculated the velocity at which I would have to hurl him to clear the playground. Instead I asked, “Cody, come read a book with me.”
To my surprise he stood and followed me to the bookshelf. We picked out a book and took it to the back of the classroom where he quietly rested his head on my shoulder and repeated each word in Chinese as I read it. When the book was finished, he carefully closed it and put in back on the shelf before returning to his seat and listening quietly to the lesson. This is not to say that Cody never threw his shoes again or that a story kept him from spitting water from the drinking fountain all over Hannah’s shirt, but it is to say when he felt love, his behavior changed. And mine did too.
At the end of the two-week camp, the kids performed a play of the Little Red Hen for their parents and families. I sat in the far corner hear the sound and noticed a cutoff t-shirt shuffle in and find a spot on the floor near the front next to me.
After the play, Cody ran across the gym and jumped on the man sitting next to me, nearly spilling his energy drink, and buried his face into the small tattoo on the left side of his neck. Shifting in his lap Cody told the man all about his teacher and how to say “hen” in Chinese and all the numbers 1 through 37 while he smiled back with eyebrows raised, listening intently.
As Cody excitedly introduced me to his "real" dad, I shook his hand and looked into his kind, tired eyes still blood-shot from working the night shift. He asked me how Cody was doing in class and before my brain could catch up I just smiled.
Cody's doing just fine.
*(name has been changed)
