Literacy

My son was recently diagnosed with dyslexia.  This came after I'd spent years homeschooling him and trying every reading method that I could get my hands on. At first I thought the problem was him, that he wasn't trying hard enough because he preferred to play with his toys than to do school with mommy.  Then, I thought it was me, and that I was just not a good enough teacher.  Finally, I became convinced that I just needed to find the right curriculum.

One day last year, we were doing school and it was like I was seeing him for the first time.  Something was wrong and it wasn't me, it wasn't him, and it wasn't the curriculum.  He could read on grade level, and he had excellent comprehension, but it was devastatingly difficult for him.  To read an entire paragraph he had to hit himself, pinch himself, and would usually cry out, but only after first exhibiting reluctance and anger.

In my house, dyslexia looks like a bad little boy.  It looks like ADD.  It does not look like a bonafide disorder.  When it was first recommended to me that I take him in to get tested for dyslexia, I was taken aback to discover that neither my insurance, or our local school district, recognized it as its own individual disorder.  We would have to pay out of pocket to save our son from illiteracy.

Thankfully, we can.  We're not rich, but we have investments and excellent credit. We could lose our house paying for his treatments, but we can still pay.  For some families, the cost may as well be in the millions as opposed to the thousands. Some families would never, ever be able to come up with the hourly rate required to get their children the help that they need.

I tend to feel sorry for myself.  When bad things happen, I often look to the sky and wonder what I've done to deserve the most recent calamity that's come into my life. The older I get, the more that I realize it's not all about me.  Nevertheless, when my son received his diagnosis I fell into a sad and fear-filled silence.  For days I wanted to ask why this had happened to my boy.  Why was such a sweet, smart child afflicted with a disorder that makes most people believe that they're dumb.

As I was having these thoughts, I was also thinking about the best way to build the board for Booker's Place, the new non-profit that I'm planning to launch this year, with the help of Lynn Roer from Ogilvy and Mather.

There are two grown men in my family who cannot read.  Booker was also illiterate, that makes three (one of them is a blood relative of Booker's).  There are some who believe that dyslexia is genetic.  I have to wonder if it runs in my family? I read here that African-American dyslexics are more likely to be misdiagnosed as being mildly mentally disabled than their white counterparts.

Are dyslexics whose skin is a little darker and whose families have little money, less likely to get a proper diagnosis?  The doctor who diagnosed my son charged $190 an hour.  They said there was a chance insurance may not cover it.  The testing lasted four hours.  How many families can afford that?

The timing of all of this - getting the diagnosis while starting Booker's Place, has made me wonder if I can incorporate dyslexia treatment into the free services we provide.  School supplies are great and necessary, we will still do that.  Learning to read, in this society however, is like learning to breathe.  It's all but impossible to thrive without it.

I am finding myself having another wildest dream.  What if I could hire a dyslexia specialist or a reading specialist to work in a city and travel between Booker's Place locations, providing specialized reading programs to underprivileged kids?  Maybe they could even make house calls.  It would be really expensive, but it would change the world, one struggling reader at a time.  It may also be what Booker Wright would do.

Booker's Place: The Movement

I'm learning that in life, it's important to dream big dreams.  Five years ago, I said that I wanted the world to know about Booker Wright.  This past July, Dateline NBC aired an hour long special about him.  There's talk about partnering with an educational company to make our movie, Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story, available for schools to purchase.  That means that kids around the country might be taught the story of Booker Wright while they're learning about Medgar Evers and Rosa Parks.  My wildest dream is coming true.  So, why stop there.  I'm having another, incredibly wild dream.

Blogging about it now feels incredibly nuts, because this dream is in its infancy. The edges of it are fuzzy and none of the details have been worked out.  But, like I've said more times than I can count, this blog space is nothing more than a record of my Booker Wright journey.  So, here's my new dream:

A couple of weeks ago, a woman who is now my HERO, called with an amazing idea.  Her name is Lynn Roer and she is the Director of Moving Images, Alternative Content and Events at Ogilvy and Mather (whew, that's a mouthful) - Ogilvy and Mather partnered with Raymond De Felitta to help produce our film.  Lynn had this great idea about turning Booker's Place into a place for school children who may need school supplies, a bite to eat, or even free tutoring.

This is the perfect way to honor my grandfather's legacy for one reason - he was all about education.  Booker Wright didn't get to go school because he had to work to support his family.  He entered adulthood without literacy.  Not being able to read never sat well with him.  I've heard that, a few years before he was murdered, Booker hired a tutor and he finally achieved his lifelong dream of learning to read.

I've met scores of adults who knew Booker when they were kids and they all describe a man who was a broken record when it came to talking about the importance of getting an education.  He even held back money from the paychecks of some of his employees, only to hand them a wad of cash when it was time for them to go out and buy school supplies.  He bought a bus to drive kids from outlying farming towns into Greenwood so that they could attend Head Start and on and on.  You see why I love him, so.  He was a great man, even when no one was watching.

The original idea was to re-open Booker's Place in Greenwood, Mississippi.  The wild idea is to have a Booker's Place in every state and, one day, in every major city.  Booker's Place could be a corner or a bookshelf in a library with free school supplies.  It could be a place to call and make an appointment for free tutoring.

The point is that lots of kids slip through the cracks because they can't even come up with the basics.  My kids recently went to public school for the first time and I was amazed at all the stuff I had to buy for them - it was not cheap and I know that a lot of families simply can't carry the financial burden.

So, come on, let's start a movement.  Please don't think that all you can do is provide money.  Talk about this.  Facebook about it.  Get the people you know energized.  We'll need supplies, volunteers, ideas, and influence, but more than anything, we'll need you to care and to stay engaged.

Click here to sign up for my newsletter.  I'll be sending out updates on Booker's Place each month to let you know how we're doing and to ask your help in getting the word out.

Shouldn't every kid get a fair shot at an education?  Join with me, to do all that we can to make that happen.

My Boy

I come from a broken family.  Usually when people use the phrase "broken family" they are referring to a family where the parents are divorced.  My parents separated when I was 15 however, when I say that I come from a broken family I mean that I come from broken people.

It's always hard for me, incredibly hard, to write about the failings of my parents. Like I talked about in this post, now that I am a mother myself I have to constantly reconcile the mother I dreamed I'd be with the mother I really am.  It's humbling. Parenting is humbling.

My parents' problems always seemed obvious to me.  There were three kids in my family and none of us was planned.  My parents kind of raised us that way - unplanned, shooting from the hip.  They abused substances, forgot about us, and got lost in their own problems.  I've spent countless hours on the couches of psychologists trying to work through the quagmire of who I am because of the pain that my parents gifted me with.  At least, that's what I used to believe.  The simple truth is that I blamed them for what I didn't like about myself.

One of the ideas I've explored a lot here in this blog space, is the idea that the members of my family wear a "mark" because we're from Greenwood.  There is a heritage of slavery that haunts us.  Greenwood was slave country, and we are her descendants.

Years ago, before that idea had occurred to me, I thought I had all the answers.  In my arrogance, I believed that I could construct the perfect family in the same way that I could mix together and bake the perfect cake.  I met a man who didn't drink, had a stable job, and seemed to be the perfect puzzle piece to build my ideal family on.  He was the cornerstone, and we were both the builders.  We had two sons.  I read to them, I home schooled them, took them to the park, and was convinced that my love would be all that they'd need to be perfectly, adorably happy.  I was wrong.

I always thought that I was sad as a girl because I had absent, selfish parents. Then, I met my son.  He is sad.  He cries a lot and talks often about how much he hates himself.  He is seven years-old.  I play with him, read books to him, take him to all types of doctors, and sometimes, in the quiet of the night, I resent it all.  He reminds me so much of myself at that age.  I was 11 the first time I contemplated committing suicide.  I always thought that particular detail was a reflection of the terrible, oh, so awful home life I came from.

In the life I have today, I easily spend 20 hours a week trying to save my son.  I take him to specialists, read books on kids that are "different", and talk to other moms. Every day it feels like the two of us are on a course marked for certain destruction. It's a game.  People are hiding where I cannot see them.  They watch us and laugh at us as we try to get off, because there is no "off."  There is only a mother trying desperately to find the right pill, the right program, the right diagnosis, the right anything.

Sometimes, he smiles at me.  He truly is the most beautiful boy in the world (although he may be tied with his brother).  He has caramel-colored skin that he hates because it's not white.  He is tall and most people think he's three years older than he actually is.  I know that one day when he's a man he will love being tall. For now, though, it's like a cross to bear.  People look at him and wonder why he can't do more.  Why is he crying?  Why is he screaming?

As I deal with him, trying to nurture and love without getting tapped out, his father lingers in the background, already talking about military school.   I picked him because I thought he'd be the perfect father.  But, I also thought that I would be the perfect mother.

Some days, I am painfully aware of the fact that I'm the only one who "gets" my son. Others hear rage, I hear a panic attack coming on.  I perceive the tears behind the behavior. Sometimes, I wish I could permanently tie him to me to help him navigate every situation or at a minimum, I want to construct a world in which he would experience no pain, a world in which everyone would "get" him.

Along with all of this, I have to wonder two things: 1) Is he like this because I am like my parents? Or 2) were my parents normal and all of my crap was my own fault because I was messed up biochemically or something?

Either answer kind of sucks.  If answer 1 is the truth, then does that make me a terrible mother?  If 2 is true, then I've spent all of these years blaming innocents for my own loneliness.

I've made some of the most critical choices in my life because I wanted to build the perfect family.  I don't have the perfect family.  I have a broken family and I don't know what to do about it.