Being Fed

   Today, after work, I was supposed to drive over to Oak Park to meet with Mr. Tran, my fifth grade student's dad, to work out a new tutoring schedule for this school year, as we start back up after a month long break for vacation.

   As I pull up to their house, Hau's middle-older sister peeks her head out the door, waves, and disappears inside. As I'm parking, Hau scampers down the sidewalk between the brick red paving stones that serve as their front lawn and puts his face to the passenger side window of my car.
   "Hey bud, I missed you! How are you, how was Arizona?"
   "Good, good. My dad didn't tell me we were tutoring today!"
   "Oh, well that's fine, because we're not. He and I are just meeting up to talk about what we want the tutoring schedule to look like for this year."
   "...my dad's out eating lobster right now." The lobster would come back up multiple times in the next hour. Something about it being lobster was very peculiar/important to all the family members.
   "Oh. Okay.... welll... I guess you can just have him call me then," as his face is mixing between acceptance and hope and disappointment and he's just standing there. "...unless you want to tutor today?"
   "Yeah! You can check my homework and then we can read!" Me, blinking, brain trying to catch up to what's happening here.
   "Well, okay, but I didn't bring any of our books with me..."
   "That's fine! I have my book. And I'm onto SIXTH GRADE math now; I finished the fifth grade book. And you can check my homework and make sure I did it okay. And then we can read my book, cuz I didn't get to read it while I was in Arizona, so we should read it."

   A year ago, I was bribing this fourth grader to memorize his alphabet. This is the fourth grader who would only do what I asked because he knew that if he behaved we would read an article about the Chargers together at the end of tutoring. And then when we got there, who demanded I help him through every sentence. Who I had to continuously battle with over quitting early so that he could watch My Babysitter's a Vampire or whatever sporting event his dad was yelling about in the room next door.

   This is the graduated-from-fourth-grader who no more than three months ago sat in a room with me in sullen silence for 45 minutes, refusing to open his life science work book, look me in the eye, or explain to me why he was so furious he was crying. And who then explained to me how incredibly much he hates science (an hour after he had been proclaiming the awesomeness of molecules and debating with me about the reality of matter), which really meant he hated staring at the cal-state science-prep full page essays which his second-language English wasn't strong enough to wade through and his endurance of his dad's desire to push him, failing.

   And today, as I was talking to his mom before leaving, he asks me if I still have the phonics book from the 1930s that I'd been making him learn his sounds from over the summer. Because "You want to keep working on phonics, Hau?" "Yeah, and those other word books too! My teacher says he has really seen an improvement because I can read better now."

   Jesus Christ, Lord of Lord, my life for these days. All the pain and frustration and obnoxious days of warring against 4th-grade-boy-ADD, for today. Thank you, father, for knowing us, knowing what we need, and for feeding us when you know our strength is failing. I cannot get enough of you and what you do.