He Gripped Me Tight and Cried

I wrote this some years ago. I revised it to delete some possible identifying information including the school year, principal, and the kid.

Some years ago, one of my boys gripped me tight as he cried his eyes empty!! Here are snippets of his story➡His situation, even at his age, was more than what most of us might go through in a lifetime. I was aware of his situation. Those at home would text me every so often letting me know how he was acting at "home", whatever that meant for him. In class, I liked the kid. No problems. Very respectful and very intelligent. He would even sneak out of the house to come to school.

The Friday before Mothers Day (that year) we were making Mothers Day cards and he was visibly agitated because of his situation. I asked to see him in the hallway because I didn't want his classmates to see him like that. The tears wouldn't stop and neither would his grip on me. I had "allergies" too but tried to control them as best I could. That was [that] year. This [particular] year, instead of cards for our own mothers, we made cards for the female residents of a nursing home 2 minutes from school. I'll take all the hate in the world from a lousy [person] for as long as I can if it means just being there for a kid to grip me up tight and cry in the hallway because he wasn't feeling the love from those at "house", because it definitely was not a "home" 😢