safety patrol
Thursday morning, and it hits me.
The tears unexpected, I turn the corner into our neighborhood, thankful I’ve made it well beyond the place where I left my kids before the emotion rolls over me in waves, making me gasp.
Sometimes it happens that way.
I’m going on about my day, and then I see it, the evidence of what God has done, and it knocks me flat with perspective.
My whole life with Him, He’s teaching me:
He is LORD—-YHWH, the every breath, the I can always—-of my I could never.
He speaks this into my life over and over again, while I am running up hills whispering, Let your hands hold these knees, work these muscles, move these legs; in the weary hours when I’m not sure I can anymore; when I tremble in fear over this fallen world and I think, Please, LORD. I could never; and oh, oh how He shows me! breathing through each day with my children. And I’m learning how to embrace this truth, to own it fully:
I could never. But He can always.
The day Riley started third grade, she also started asking me questions about the safety patrol, which at our elementary school happens to be the group of kids who help other students in and out of cars in the carpool line, who open doors for those coming in off of buses, who remind the others to walk away from the curb, walk in the halls, stay out of trouble on their way to class. I didn’t know, but back then I told her I thought that job belonged to fifth graders. It made sense to me, and the kids looked older. When I went to school, participating that last year of elementary school had been an honor reserved for a select few.
When Riley wants to do something, she thinks about it a lot, rehearses all the details, considers every angle…for years. She has been talking to me about driving a car since she turned eight, which is one good reason I found it funny when a neuropsychologist once predicted she’d never drive. But you don’t understand. She’s planning it already. She talks to me about marriage too, in just that way, as though it’s something already decided. “But Mom,” she says to me randomly, “I’m not sure yet who I’m going to marry.” And I always look at her carefully and say, “Oh, but God knows, and He knows if—if you’re supposed to marry, too.”
I released all of these kinds of expectations for my children years ago, placed them securely in God’s palms right in the tender spot engraved with all our names (Isaiah 49:16). Written in the old language is the way He holds us, so tightly pressed in deep that we’ve cut an impression there in His hands. So I refuse to take up these hopes, am afraid to see them fail that way. But Riley knows, lives matter-of-factly more than hopefully, as though God has already told her Himself. She is sure of what we hope for, certain of things unseen.
When the safety patrol came up as a topic around the dinner table that third grade year, Kevin enjoyed telling Riley about how different the job had been when he grew up. I liked imagining the boy who became the man, hair curling ruefully over his forehead, the white shirt, the badge glinting, helping other kids cross the street safely. I remember the school pictures of my brother tucked away in albums at Mom and Dad’s house, his hair carefully combed, that gold badge shining right over his heart.
And now we have this beautiful child, this one who loves the way that God does, who always wants to do the things few would believe she could ever manage. Third grade, and that year she still struggles to sustain conversations, and she says it simply, “When I’m in fifth grade, I’m going to be a safety patrol. I’m gonna do that.” She decides this before we know she has absence seizures, before we know if she will ever be able to read a passage and comprehend it fully, before we can name a single sincere friendship to her credit. She says this looking over the edge of the school yearbook, which she studies like a textbook, the one book besides her scrapbook that she actually reads for pleasure, the way I drink in a novel that I can’t put down.
I smile at her over all that thinking a few years too early, as though she knows it will take a while for her to be ready, as though the rehearsing comes as natural to her as breathing. “If you are a member of the safety patrol in the fifth grade, you will do a really great job, Riley.” I always feel like I have to add the if, as though God needs my permission to choose something else for her. But when the Spirit speaks the unseen things, the things YHWH must breathe into being, the things too wonderful for my inadequacy, I want to just know the way that Riley does.
I could never. But He can always.
Riley looks at me again over the edge of her yearbook. “Mmm hmm, I will do a good job.”
Everything else I mention then she shrugs over. “Do you want to try chorus, Riley? You could do that this year.”
“Ummm…I’m not sure. I don’t think I know yet.”
But this, this she says more than once, solidly. She has decided already, two years early. “When I’m in fifth grade, I’m going to be a safety patrol.”
And then the first day of fifth grade, I pick her up from school, and before she’s even all the way in the car she’s saying, “Mom, I’m not sure how I do safety patrol. I talked to Mrs. H (the teacher in charge of safety patrol, apparently…until that moment I’d not known), and she says we’ll have to see. She says she’ll have to talk to me first.”
By that day, I know Riley can handle the job, but I’m used to hesitation from adults who know about her but don’t really know her. And isn’t that the way we’ve all been with God too at some time, afraid to trust Him when we know about Him without knowing Him really at all? It was Job who told the LORD, “…my ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you (Job 42: 5).”
So I’m not entirely surprised when it happens that Riley’s abilities go underestimated by someone new. If what I knew of my daughter came down to the sum of so many evaluations, numbers reflecting only a little, labels, brief encounters, I might hesitate before handing her responsibility too. So much of what she can do doesn’t make sense. She’s the bee who flies anyway, aerodynamically-challenged body and all. And If she reads this, she’ll argue with me about the comparison. She hates bees; they’re too loud.:)
Riley is one more I could never, but He can always in a long, long line, each one important to God, each one engraved in His palm, tightly held. No human being would’ve chosen Moses either, nor the disciples, nor Paul. Only the I AM, the Lord of our I could never, would choose the likes of you and me, just to show that He can always. So I’ve come to expect that there will be many times when I will have to push for Riley’s chance. We just aren’t used to seeing things as clearly as she does.
I email her teacher that afternoon, our relationship brand-new, and I ask her to tell me how the children are selected for safety patrol. Are they nominated by teachers? Can anyone do it? I need to understand how this works, I write to her. Riley really wants to be a member of the safety patrol. I’m not sure what to tell her. I think she would do a really good job, if given the chance.
The next morning, Riley’s teacher’s email makes me smile. I know this is something Riley wants to do, she says, and I smile because I know Riley started telling her the first minute of the first day, that they’ve had multiple conversations about this already. I will talk to Mrs. H.
A few days later, Riley comes home with a safety patrol application and a quiz she has to take about the job. I have to explain some of the questions to her because they are asked tongue-in-cheek. When I am on safety patrol, I will talk to my friends. True or false? At first, Riley has circled true. It would be unkind not to talk to one’s friends. Riley always talks to everyone. But when I explain that this means she would not be doing her job because she’s talking to her friends and not focusing on the work, she twists her face into a practiced are-you-crazy expression. It isn’t natural, but she’s figured out that some people communicate feelings with their face instead of with words, and she tries to copy what she sees the way she used to copy phrases all those years ago when she first wanted to talk.
The question stabs at something outside of Riley’s nature, the idea that she could be socializing instead of doing a task she’s been given, breaking the rules instead of following them. “No,” She says finally, with a how-silly tone, and she rubs a hole into the paper trying to erase the circle around true, making a big, confused mess when she rings false instead. I shake my head, wondering if this teacher, whom I’ve not met, will see past the hole and the smudges and Riley’s awkwardness to the potential for more.
A week after Riley turns in the quiz, Mrs. H still “has to talk to her” before she can be a member of the safety patrol. “But she’s going to talk to me and see if I can,” Riley reports, updating me every day. Then comes the day they will talk that afternoon, and then Riley getting into the car, showing me a blaze orange sash. And then she says: she will stand at the cafeteria door. The cafeteria door?
I can’t figure out what safety issues happen outside the cafeteria in the morning when the kids are coming to school. I feel skepticism settle in my stomach like a rock. Are they giving Riley that job so that she can say she’s on the safety patrol but so they don’t have to actually let her be on the safety patrol? Already, I see myself sitting in the conference room with this teacher and the principal. Already, I am telling myself I will ask questions before I make assumptions, that I will speak carefully, that everything must always first be about honoring God. But either Riley will be a member of the safety patrol or she won’t. There will be no fake, let’s-pacify-the-kid-who’s-incapable job. Because my daughter is capable.
And then, as I’m praying about this, I realize I should ask Adam’s teacher what she thinks first. She’s level-headed, and she doesn’t like to see children with autism underestimated anymore than I do, and she has perspective outside the protective-mom filter. And she knows this other teacher.
So I ask Adam’s teacher, and she smiles. She has already looked into it, wondering herself. “No, it’s a good job,” she says to me. “That’s actually one of the areas of highest traffic in the mornings. That’s where all the kids come in from the buses. It’s perfect for Riley. And Mrs. H used to work with our students. She knows.”
She knows. And so I relax, thankful that God has helped me see, happy to have been over-sensitive.
For the first half of the school year, Riley arrives early and takes her post outside the cafeteria door. The teachers tell me that she’s the best ever at this job. They love seeing her when they walk in the building, the way she greets them at the start of the day. And one day, when I am helping Zoe take something inside, I see Riley standing at her post, “on the job,” and she’s all business. My enthusiastic wave does little to distract her. I hear her greeting every student by name, and in my mind, I see her on the couch with her nose buried in the yearbook. She knows them all. I watch her point at the floor with a crooked finger, softly reminding someone to walk in the hallway. Riley loves rules. And I see what she knew even in third grade. She is good at this job. It suits her. And I am so proud of her for being happy right there beside the cafeteria door, for doing her job well, though I know that she had actually planned on helping in the carpool line, had rehearsed and dreamed about serving in a different spot. So often things do not happen as we expect, and the question is, are we then able still to serve contented, in faith?
Mrs. H has told Riley that she will be on patrol at the cafeteria door until we track out for Christmas, and then maybe she’ll have a different post when she comes back from her break. So for half the year, Riley talks off and on about whether it will be better for her to do morning or afternoon carpool after the break, how it will be more difficult for her in the afternoon because we sometimes need to leave school quickly. She serves happily at the cafeteria door, but she also sees beyond it.
When we come back from our break, Riley goes to see Mrs. H early to find out, “whether I’ll be doing morning or afternoon carpool, but I need to do morning, because I can’t stay sometimes in the afternoon.” That day, Mrs. H hasn’t yet arrived, and someone else tells Riley to stand at the cafeteria door in the mornings for a bit longer. We talk about how it will be okay if she always helps out right there, how she does a fantastic job right in that spot, how I feel so proud of her for the effort she makes. She nods, “Yea, I do a good job.” For Riley, this is not subjective evaluation. It’s fact. She follows the rules, she stays on task, she arrives and leaves on time. She does a good job.
But Wednesday afternoon, she jumps in the car and touches my arm, waiting for my attention. “Mom, Mrs. H says tomorrow morning I can do morning carpool.”
“Really? Just tomorrow?”
“No. I’m doing morning carpool every day.”
And Thursday, all the way to school she tells me that Mrs. H says there’ll be a teacher to help her know what to do. She wants to do it exactly right. I tell her she’ll do great, and she nods, certain. So, when I drive through carpool with Zoe and Adam that morning, and I see her there, standing in her orange vest opening car doors, talking to students and parents, doing the thing she told me two years ago she’d be doing in the fifth grade, my breath catches in my throat.
We turn the curve, and we get to stop right beside her. And she’s all business. She opens Zoe’s door and says, “Good morning, Zoe,” as though she hasn’t just seen us ten minutes before. She tells me to have a nice day. And I pull away smiling, the joy too much for the expression. And I can’t help but see her wandering aimlessly, wordlessly, around a classroom at age three, blonde curls shining. I see her lining up her toys, flapping her arms, grunting and pointing and crying out in frustration, unable to sleep through the night.
I turn into our neighborhood and let the tears fall, saying to God,
Oh sweet LORD, just look what you have done.
