To Gain Another Soul

Last night I held my 8th grade parent-teacher conferences. First off, I have to say how much I love my 8th graders. They are an eclectic, electric group of kids whose love for each other resonates. There's M, a young lady from Turkey who is pretty professional when it comes to getting her work done, E who hails from Ghana and broke down to me once admitting, "It's hard being Black in Denmark." There's H, who's turning into such a stunning young man, with those large, dark Arabic eyes which his eyelashes flutter above. There's S, the quintessential football gentleman and K, who's dancing skills are better than I've ever seen in a loooong time. To be honest, I could name them all here for you, cause they each have something super dope about them: I could tell you about S who finally, after 8 years of schooling, seems to be waking up (Yeah!)...but you get the point! They really dig each other, which I guess is where my problem is. They have such a good time together that sometimes it's hard getting them to shut up. But no matter what, they are always respectful, smart, witty and not least of all loving. And I love being around them.
During the conferences, I enjoy witnessing the transformation of my students from cantankerous kids into someone's child, someone elses baby. When my students are with their parents I am reminded of the fragility of their age, the fumbling towards adulthood, the clumsy efforts of navigating life teetering between two worlds: no longer a child and yet certainly not yet an adult.
Many of my consultations take place in Danish and depending on my mood it can be effortless, mimicking fluency even or on the hand, I stumble through sentences feeling myself imprisoned by a lack of vocabulary which in the end, can be sort of humiliating. I found myself experiencing the latter situation last night, with one of student's parents and I joked, "It's a good thing I'm your English teacher, and not your Danish." My student and I laughed and towards the end of the meeting, I asked, as I usually ask, "Har I nogle spørgsmål?" Do you have any questions?--Then the mother turned to her son and asked him something in her native tongue. He then turned to me, with a big smile on his face, "My mom wants to know where you learned Danish. She thinks you speak it very well."

Throughout the evening I met with mostly immigrant parents--some who spoke Danish fluently and preferred I speak Danish, others whose English was far more advanced. I met Egyptian fathers with soft eyes and Iraqi men who looked upon their sons with nothing other than pure love. I talked to Pakistani mothers who struggled to get their child academically on board, even cutting badminton out of the schedule! and children who acted as translators. But through it all there were some apparent things, things such as the love these people had for their children, the promise of these children, and the difficulties of parenting in a country other than your own.

Denmark can be, in a way, a pretty easy country to navigate if you speak only English and/or you're a Westerner. Many people speak English (especially in Copenhagen) and if you're American, you sort of receive a carte blanche to integration. But the ease in which you feel you fit in is but an illusion, and it soon begins to crack when you wind up at a party and well, Danes speak Danish--and of course they should, cause, well, as much as I don't like to admit it at times...I am in Denmark.

This inability to connect fully to your fellow human beings begin to gnaw at your soul. And although Charlemagne has said that to learn another language is to gain another soul, you begin to experience the flipside to that which is, to not learn the language of the country in which you live, is like soul suicide and the only remedy available is the radical action of learning another language!

I explain to my student's mother where I studied Danish. I explained that I ended up going to 3 different schools and eventually, after the 3rd one, my resistance to learning Danish began to thaw. I realized that my anger for having to learn Danish was misplaced and had more to do with the fact that I had ended up so far away from home. I continued to tell her how depressed I was, how isolated I had felt. Yes, she said, she was depressed. Yes, she agreed, it was quite isolating--her son the gentle witness and translator to and of this scene.
Thing is, she is a mother of 3, not from the U.S. and perhaps had none of the other advantages I have had. Who knows? She continued to tell me how isolated and sad she feels and I told her to go out! "Do you have a network?" I asked. "The internet?" her son asked. "No, friends, colleagues, family?" No she replied.
She's been her for as long as I have been. I recognize that look in her eyes, that thick, syrupy look of loneliness. I can recognize it a mile away. I give her some information and tell her the story of how I finally decided to learn Danish. I happened past a school I had heard many wonderful things about. I mustered up the courage, went in and thank-goodness met up with a Danish woman whose heart was open. "Your Danish is good enough. I'll make all the arrangements so that you can start." If she had been a bitch, if she had been closed, I wonder if I would have had the courage to stay and persist?

Nos are difficult to take when the spirit of life, your soul is being eroded by a language your heart does not recognize. Language is the way in which we meet each other, it is an integral way in which we express our humanity. I have to say that I take my hat off to the parents that showed up last night. As a daughter of immigrants myself, I have to say that my parents never showed up to any of my parent-teacher consultaions--I'm in awe of the interest, love and dedication these parents show. These parents are, quite simply, my heroes.

farvel,
the lab