Six Hundred Goodbyes

It has taken me a while to get around to writing this post. Saying goodbye is hard, and the move after those goodbyes can be hard, too. I have opened this screen a few times, but find myself closing it when I start scrolling through pics of my kiddos.

And in case you are wondering, I have intentionally not posted pictures with their absolutely adorable faces. You really should get parents' permission for that kind of a thing (which is a good thing to keep in mind if you ever embark on a service trip!).

So, I've been back in the United States for a couple of weeks now. I've missed my six hundred students incredibly much (629, to be exact), and I've had the chance to really appreciate how much it meant to be working where I was.

During the last weeks of my stay in Atlacomulco, my students did an extra good job of giving bonus hugs, participating diligently in class, and figuring out the details of where I live in the US in case they ever got the chance to come and visit.

"I will come to the United States one day!" one of my little boys told me, "And when I do, I'll say "Teacher Ahleez!," and you'll come out of your house, and I will see you again."

During the last week of classes, though, the students and teachers really pulled out all of the stops for my goodbye parties. I received loads of the most thoughtful gifts, including handcrafted sweaters, candies, purses, wallets, and a plush monkey keychain. I received multiple bound books of adorable goodbye pictures, featuring me with bright yellow hair. I bought an extra suitcase.

This picture is of me with gifts from one day at one school. I worked in five.

Even though I have moved 24 times now, I found this one to be particularly difficult. Especially when it came to saying goodbye to my kids, because I don't think they really understand goodbyes yet. Their straightforward questions broke my heart.

"So, we will never see each other again? Never ever see each other again?"

"I don't want to say goodbye forever. Is this goodbye forever?"

And then their sweet sentiments helped me to remember why saying goodbye was worth it, if only because it meant we were able to meet in the first place.

"I will call the airplane," one of my little girls said, "and I will say, "We need to cancel this airplane.""

"You are my favorite teacher in the whole world."

"I'm sorry I didn't bring you a goodbye present. My mom forgot. I will come to the United States to give you your goodbye present soon."

I mentioned in one of my first posts that I hope to be like my students when I grow up, and that feeling has only intensified over the course of the year.

In my goodbyes, I wished them the best of luck in primary school, said how much I love them, and told them they will always be in my heart. I cried when my students cried, especially Kesia, who hadn't said four words to me all year, but who couldn't stop sobbing when she learned I had to leave.

I'm still learning to be okay with separation being really hard if it is from someone who you really love. I am okay with crying with my students if it means that I am recognizing and validating the emotions of a person who is feeling them deeply.

I am also okay with sharing the following, because I think someone has to.

If you are sitting by a computer in the United States, thinking that the lives of my students are not related to yours, I am going to have to beg you to reconsider.

Right now, our President's administration is enforcing the practice of separating migrant children from their families in the deportation process. In too many cases, these children are being moved to detention centers where the staff are not allowed to touch the kids. They are taken away from their families, cared for by staff who don't speak their language, and are not given the comfort of a hug, much less the comfort of knowing that they will see their parents again.

And if you believe that this is divorced from experiences like mine, experiences of genuine love and human connection, you are deceiving yourself. Just because these children are able to be separated from the people who love them does not mean that it isn't love they are being separated from.

Just because a parent might choose to cross the border illegally does not mean that they are not a good parent.

Actually, if anything could have made me more convinced that the opposite is true, this year has.

It is so easy to imagine that one of my students, Jesus, for example, could live a situation exactly like this one. Jesus' parents may notice that every year, he has more cavities. Every year, he comes back from school with makeshift fake teeth that overworked dental staff have implanted just that day in the untidy principal's office turned dental clinic. Jesus' parents may notice that even though they are working their hardest earning minimum wage, they can't afford just about anything, including another school fee (because most schools are grossly underfunded), or a going away gift for Jesus' visiting English teacher. Jesus' father may have gotten sick of seeing another teenage boy in their small community join the gang that has overrun it, and seeing that same boy die in mysterious circumstances, left at his parents' doorstep months later. Jesus' mother may have gotten sick of reminding her husband that the police can't or won't do anything about it.

A good parent wants better. Any person lucky enough to have experienced what I experienced this past year could see that this story isn't some melodramatic nonsense typed out to pull on foreigners' heartstrings. This is some people's lived experience, perhaps especially in underserved communities, like a few that I worked in.

Let's not forget the pain that already exists in families like my students' because a parent has already made the move, and is unable to visit. Let's not forget, if we were aware of it already, how incredibly difficult it is to simply visit the United States, much less live here.

And if any of my students' parents decided that crossing the border was worth the risk to try and find better, it could be my student that becomes a part of the news that I was made aware of so shortly after leaving the country I also call home. And I am not okay with that.

If it was so hard for my students to say goodbye to me after one year of seeing them once a week, I cannot imagine how hard it would be for them not to get the chance to say goodbye to their own parents. Except that I can begin to imagine it, at least, because I can imagine what it would be like for me to have gone through that as a five year old, or an eight year old, or a two year old.

Until we recognize that the people suffering what our government is subjecting them to is exactly like what it would be if our children, students, friends, or selves were subjected to the same thing, we are missing the point. My students have faces, and names, and teachers and parents who love them. They are incapable of being guilty of a crime, but for some reason, they are capable of being treated as if they had committed it themselves.

Saying six hundred goodbyes was hard. The thousands of goodbyes that families have had to say, unexpectedly, in a matter of weeks, has been infinitely harder.

I have been silent about one of these things because it was hard to talk about, but I refuse to be silent about the other because it is too terrible not to.

Please, stay informed, read the news, make a call, allow yourself to love people you may not have met yet, and to do something about it. But please, don't do nothing, at least not until children don't have to say goodbyes that they shouldn't have to say.