I need to tell you about my life as principal.
Particularly from the standpoint of this life as husband, dad and foster/adoptive parent.
And the daughter I have who is sitting in prison.
It is the winter of 2009. I had just been accepted into the Doctoral program at National Louis University, and was heading to an informational meeting about the program when my wife called. I was pulling into the high school where our cohort would be spending a lot of class hours together over the next few years, excited about this journey my family had agreed was the best time for me to embark upon, even more ecstatic to be the first in my family to achieve this prestigious degree.
We didn't realize the road I was about to travel was actually riddled with potholes, detours, wrong turns, and dead ends.
My wife can barely speak.
It seems like a lifetime, though it is actually 10 minutes on the phone with her,
trying to calm her down,
sitting in my Volvo with the engine turned off (why did I turn the engine off?),
cohort members filing in for our first meeting together,
my breath visible in the cold air that envelops me,
before she is finally able to tell me that our daughter was involved in something too horrific for words.
Someone has been murdered.
She was at the scene of the crime.
There would be a trial.
A public defender.
An outraged community.
And heartbreak.
There would be heartbreak.
As parents, you don't ever expect things like this. Things that throw your life completely out of whack. I mean, you know that things happen, that there is bound to be something in your life that, when it happens, will leave people reeling and trying to find answers and learning how to grieve and then finding their way again.
The problem with this was... well, the problem with this, was that she was our daughter.
And there were no answers.
At least, there were no answers that we were willing to accept.
And there was the problem with this very moment.
In the car.
On the phone.
And the rest of our children.
And this degree.
What do I do?
Do I cancel, put it off until the air clears?
Until things get... better?
Would things get better?
It seems like a lifetime, though it is actually 10 minutes on the phone with her,
trying to calm her down,
sitting in my Volvo with the engine turned off (why did I turn the engine off?),
cohort members filing in for our first meeting together,
my breath visible in the cold air that envelops me,
before she is finally able to tell me that our daughter was involved in something too horrific for words.
Someone has been murdered.
She was at the scene of the crime.
There would be a trial.
A public defender.
An outraged community.
And heartbreak.
There would be heartbreak.
As parents, you don't ever expect things like this. Things that throw your life completely out of whack. I mean, you know that things happen, that there is bound to be something in your life that, when it happens, will leave people reeling and trying to find answers and learning how to grieve and then finding their way again.
The problem with this was... well, the problem with this, was that she was our daughter.
And there were no answers.
At least, there were no answers that we were willing to accept.
And there was the problem with this very moment.
In the car.
On the phone.
And the rest of our children.
And this degree.
What do I do?
Do I cancel, put it off until the air clears?
Until things get... better?
Would things get better?
