one lunch break every week

Along with my stepdaughter and her son, I have had another girl in my life that has come to mean a lot to me. I've connected with her through a local program called Going to the Arts for Tulsa Kids. It's a mentoring program in the public schools for at-risk youth. The program involves a mentor who meets with their student once a week during school hours and local artists who come in once a week to teach different artistic aspects such as music, visual arts, dance, etc. I've been a part of the program for over a year now, and have had the blessing and opportunity of developing a relationship with the girl I mentor outside of school. She will be 15 this year, and she is just an incredible young woman! We have volunteered our time together through Animal Aid, we have seen and discussed a couple of movies (including the Chronicles of Narnia and March of the Penguins) together, we have completed a few of our own ingenious artsy projects, and have just shared lots of girl and talk time over the past year and a half.

This past weekend, we got together and finished this project we’d been working on since around Thanksgiving. It was a collage of things that we are thankful for that included clippings of pictures, words, stickers - whatever we could get our hot little hands on. It started as one little piece of poster board. Then, we decided to add another piece of poster board because we kept finding things to add to it. It is a crazy picture. There is a picture of her and I on there, pictures of her beloved dogs, some little kitty stickers, lots of words, quotes, flowers, a flying pig, a donkey, a bookcase full of books, kids drinking bottled water, and a small, covered up picture of a turkey that we laughed about uncontrollably, till our sides hurt, because it looked like a terd. :-)

We have become like good friends. For Christmas, I dared to buy a frame that said “Friends” on it and put a picture in it of her and I from the night we went to see Chronicles of Narnia. When I dropped her off at home on Saturday, I told her I would have our completed collage picture framed as soon as possible. She looked at me, smiled, and just said, “Janine, we both know it’ll take another five months for you to get the picture framed!” I couldn’t help but laugh with her. She has seen my procrastinating and sometimes very forgetful side. I’ve apologized many times for my failings and shortcomings to her and she sometimes laughs at me, as if to say, “Why are you being so serious? It’s OK, Janine!”

She is another part of my week that I look forward to. No matter what is going on, I never forget to take that lunch break moment out of my week to go visit with her. She starts up a conversation without any problem and I have had to learn to listen more than talk. She has surprised me with her initiative and even a little bit of new, genuine hunger for learning – after seeing the Chronicles of Narnia, her brother went out and bought her the single-volume book collection and she has read a couple of the stories on her own already! She is incredibly sweet and wise, longing for the day when she can spread her own wings and really fly.

I am so honored to be a part of her life and I hope someday she realizes that she has taught me just as much, if not more, than anything I could ever possibly teach her.