LL

From time to time there have been children who, for various reasons, have stolen my heart. LL is one of them. He is a big kid and comes by it honestly. Both his mom and dad are very large people. I had his mom as a student over twenty years ago. I had his aunt as a student too. Their family's three girls so close in age I, until about six months ago, had always thought the two oldest ones were twins. Instead, they were about nine months and fifteen minutes apart, so close in age that these two older girls were in the same grade. Their mom was a very large woman from Mexico and their dad was a wiry little Cuban with a nasty drinking habit. They had those girls rapid-fire style and then mom shut down the fun zone. The marriage wasn't happy. The two older girls were very quiet. LL's mom, Rosie, was bold. God must have given her the guts that were supposed to be shared by all three of them. Fast forward over twenty years and in comes LL. He is a tank, a giant of a kindergartener, and almost the youngest in the class. He is a pusher and a shover and yet capable of some of the best hugs you'd ever want to have. Sweet side, stubborn side, helpful side, silly side. LL has them. If he were standing in the middle of the room and I asked him to sit down and he didn't want to, he would just look at me and shake his head. Don't bother trying to budge him. That would involve earth-moving equipment. I would have to charm him into doing what I wanted. He has a younger sister and brother. The home was slightly unstructured (that's a nice word for 'chaotic with no rules'). Our onsite counseling service was working with the family. Rosie and her husband weren't getting along. They didn't have much money despite Dad working three jobs. Rosie was at home with the three little ones and she wasn't feeling 'in love' with her husband anymore. She was unhappy; he was confused. She was looking to end it; he couldn't understand what had gone wrong in his marriage. There was lack of discipline, lack of structure, lack of finances. Neither parent had finished high school. The psychologist made home visits, the two younger children were in our onsite preschool. A few months later the psych told me the two were going to the local therapeutic preschool. They were having emotional problems and they must have been big ones because few children get placed in that particular therapeutic preschool. By then Rosie had left her husband and there had been some custody issues as well as a visit to the apartment from the police. LL also had some health issues. He had chronic tonsil and adenoid problems and was slated for surgery to remove them. They just needed to get the go-ahead from MediCal (which is famous for postponing surgeries). As he would sit on the rug with the other children, you could hear his breathing. He was a mouth-breather and it sounded like I was teaching Darth Vader. He emitted loud, raspy, sometimes sibilant breaths. He had a speech impediment too, a lateral lisp, sort of like a mild version of Daffy Duck. He dropped sounds and even syllables when he spoke. Everyone chalked that up to being an English Language Learner. I had my doubts. The family had been around too long. I knew the language at home was non-standard English and probably some Spanish since the Cuban grandfather was living with them. But LL was a bit of a puzzle. We waited for the surgery. It eventually happened. LL was pissed the doctor made him stay home from school for over a week. After the swelling had subsided, LL was able to get an appointment with an audiologist. He had a significant hearing loss. I KNEW it wasn't because he was technically an English Language Learner! By the end of the school year, we had him all lined up to start receiving all kinds of services when returns to school for first grade. LL had a habit of spiriting things away. From the very first days of school, I would ask him where a piece of his work was and he would shrug and say he didn't know. His work kept disappearing. I later found some of it in his backpack. We were making alphabet projects every day during the first few weeks of school and one set of projects was to be put in a book (when we got to Z). He was having no part of that. He wanted to take his' Aa is alphabet pasta' and 'Bb is buttons' home. Nevermind that there was another different project to go home for the letter every day. He wanted them both. But there is one other thing that sticks in my mind about LL. It was the mint-green negligee. My classroom playhouse is full of dress-up clothes I have collected over the years. This year we really hit a bonanza because one of the little girls' grandmothers had been a seamstress. She could make clothes quickly and without a pattern. Since her granddaughter, like many five-year-old girls, was going through a Disney-princess phase, she made a Snow White outfit, a Belle dress, a Rapunzel dress and a spectacular Cinderella gown for our class play house. But LL wasn't interested in those. He had eyes for one thing only: the mint-green negligee. Every Friday after lunch when it was time for free choice in the classroom, LL always chose to go to the play house. Once in the playhouse he would don the negligee and spend the rest of the afternoon wearing that and playing with the girls. I kept hoping this would be a passing thing. I kept hoping he would tire of the mint-green, go for a karate gee or abandon the house area altogether for something different, maybe the marbleworks or the Legos, perhaps the block area or the train table. Nope. LL and the negligee were a constant on Friday afternoons until the end of the school year. It struck me as odd that such a feisty little big guy, one who could beat the living daylights out of anyone in the grade level if he felt like it, was so bonded to a chiffon piece of lingerie, mint green no less. And mint green isn't a great color on him..... I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried about him.