PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I saw this thread hanging from my shirt the other day and was hit with a memory…back to my first year of teaching in Florida…and a young girl named Stephanie.

Stephanie was a beautiful little girl…her Autism…she was trapped in it…

she could not talk but whatever she had in her hands…oh…could that girl spin it.

Pencils…books…two by fours…I’ll never forget her grinning as she took any object she could find…and started it to spinning.

Like many young teachers when I started with Stephanie I was determined I would find…the reasons for her spinning…the secrets to her mind.

But Stephanie hated to he held…all she wanted to do was spin…as determined as I was to enter…she was just as determined not to let me in.

I was always watching her closely…looking for a sign…until one day, from across the room…I saw her eyes meet mine.

She threw her arms up in the air…her hands were shaking like leaves on a tree…I took this as a sign…she was calling out to me.

The closer I got to her…the bigger the smile on her face…and when I finally reached her desk…she jumped into my embrace.

With Stephanie clinging hard to me I waltzed across the floor…thinking this is the breakthrough moment I’d been hoping for.

I was proud of this accomplishment…proud of Stephanie and me…so I called to the teacher next door…I wanted her to see.

“Can you believe it!” I said to her. “Miracles do happen if we believe.”

“Jim,” she chuckled, “take a look at what that miracle is doing to your sleeve.”

My bubble immediately burst…I admit my pride was hurt…it seemed my breakthrough moment began with a thread hanging from my shirt.

Noticed by a little Autistic girl…who’s plan I now believe…was to lure me over…put her arms around my neck…and start unravelling my sleeve.

I think I would have figured it our eventually…Stephanie’s little con…

most likely when she’d finished…and my entire shirt was gone.

I set her back into her seat…she was crying…she didn’t understand…

So I cut off what was left of my sleeve…and put it in her hands….

Immediately with a smile on her face she began to spin it…spinning that one entire thread…I smiled…this time from across the room…”You’re welcome, Stephanie.” I said.

It turned out to be a breakthrough moment…not for Stephanie but for me…as deep within the silence of her Autism….I found my humility. 

And I learned how tenuous is happiness as through this world we tread…

How many times we find…

it is hanging by a thread.