Girl Crush

Or, I really, really love people who love my kids

Summer 2024

She sends me the message in the middle of the week on a July day, which stands out because she is the school principal, and she is not supposed to be thinking about her students over the summer.

But not for Miss K.

“I woke up in the middle of the night wondering how we can best help our sweet boy this year,” she tells me.

I want to text her back a hundred things in response: how grateful I am for her, how my anxiety about Cannon starting school back up is radically high, how I look at a calendar and am afraid to plan anything for fear of being back in “wait by the phone for a call” mode, or how I still cannot figure out how best to calm my son down. This last one, few things have weighed heavier on my mama heart this year than that.

But instead, I try to rein in the emotional stuff, stick with the facts: It’s been a tough summer, and I’m afraid he’s not going to make it through school, and that the school will tell me he’s just too much.

Immediately, she responds with this: “Over my dead body. That is one worry you do not need to carry. This is one chapter for Cannon. We just need to get him safely through it.”

Tears well up in the corner of my eyes, at all of it, but one word in particular.

We.

Fall 2016

I lay my two-year-old little boy down in his crib for naptime, run my fingers through the soft curls of his dirty blonde hair, and pull his gray blanket up to his shoulders. “Mommy loves you, Cannon Lee,” I tell him with all the enthusiasm I have.

He doesn’t respond with eye contact or words, both of which remain hidden in the private world of his mind, one I have yet to peek into. My heart aches for this more than it has ever ached for anything, just a tiny glimpse into him: what are you thinking, sweet boy? How are you feeling? But today, like every day before it, I have to be content with no response. I turn the lights off, gently close the door, grab the clipboard I left on the ground outside his room, and wait.

It's silent.

Holding my breath, I accidentally allow the tiniest glimmer of hope in. I don’t hear anything… maybe today is the day it stops? I lower the clipboard in my hand down to my side, and just as I’m ready to put the cap back on my pen, there it is.

One bang.
Another.
Another.
Another.
And another. The sound of my son’s head coming down on the rail of his white crib. No crying. Just the hitting. It’s usually five bangs, sometimes a few more, then he lays back down until he falls asleep.

I close my eyes and scold my thoughts. Why did you let the hope in again, Katie? I lift the clipboard back to my chest and make five tallies at the 1:00pm column, dutifully charting the frequency and time of Cannon’s head-hitting for his therapist, just as I’ve been assigned.

For two weeks, I’m so careful to mark every “bang” on my chart and note any circumstances that might be relevant to the behavior. Because with absolutely nothing else left to do, I’m chasing the only hope I have, telling myself that maybe there is an answer, a solution buried somewhere within hundreds of lines on a graph.

And right now, with so little coming from his eyes and his mouth, the best I can do at getting to know my son seems contained here on this clipboard full of data.

Fall 2019

The first time I walk Cannon into his kindergarten classroom at the public school, my hands are sweaty and I’m working hard to keep voice from cracking when I speak. First days aren’t easy for many parents, but sending my nonverbal five-year-old into the care of someone else for six hours a day is a level of frightening I have not yet known.

As a disability mom, I heard countless stories of school gone badly for our children, well before Cannon ever set foot in a classroom: teachers refusing to even side hug kiddos that needed some emotional support, principals suggesting a different place would be better, another viral video capturing abuse and bullying of a neurodiverse child, and all manner of the sentiment ‘I’m sorry we just don’t have the resources to handle to your child.’ All of it conveying the same terrible idea: you’re on your own with this one, Mom. 

And when it comes to my son and his various needs, being all alone is one of my biggest fears.

Cannon and I walk down the hallway to his classroom, his tiny hand in mine. Right there at the door is Miss K, standing next to his sweet kindergarten teacher as we walk in. She welcomes him with joy, such genuine joy. “We are so excited to have Cannon here!” she assures me with a smile.

Here I am, sending my five-year-old son who doesn’t say much and still isn’t answering to his name perfectly, into a classroom where everything could go terribly for him all day. He won’t be able to cry to me, to explain how his feelings got hurt, to tell me he felt embarrassed, to find the words for how out of sorts it can feel when you’re in a new place and no one understands you. I know he is going to have those moments. 

So call me naïve, but somehow when Miss K assures me she is so glad to have Cannon at her school, I believe her.

Spring 2023

Cannon has hit his head on hard surfaces on and off for much of his life, but the self-injurious behavior has reached a level we have not seen before. The first time his teacher calls to tell me what happened, I’m shocked, even though I shouldn’t be. It’s just that he hasn’t been hitting his head at school, not ever. Kindergarten through second grade, I never heard from a teacher that he was hurting himself in the classroom. Here in third grade, it’s like something inside of him unhinged and the only relief he can find is in the physical dissonance of his own pain.

For several weeks the behaviors escalate, and I’ve been getting a phone call nearly every day to come help calm him down. But today, a Thursday, there is an alarming urgency in the teacher’s voice. Someone took something from him…someone tried to stop him from hurting himself…something else escalated and “I’ve never seen him like this, Katie. He is seeing red.” I’m unsure of any specifics but I break every speed limit on my way there.

When I pull up to the school, I leave my three littlest buckled in the car and lock it behind me as I run to the side entrance where one of the paraeducators is waiting to let me in. Cannon’s classroom is the first door on the left, and I can see his black Nike shoes through the door that is slightly cracked open. Once I push the door open all the way, my mind has half a second to take in the scene in front of me: there he is on the floor, sobbing and hurting and red faced, blood in the tips of his hair, his big boy body with his dad’s long legs curled up on the lap of Miss K. She is rocking and shushing him, rubbing his head and telling him “You’re okay, Cannon, you’re okay,” tending to this strong boy who is far too big for someone’s lap, caring for him with the same gentleness she would if he was her own newborn son.

Still making sure I know he is welcome there.

Spring 2024

I have stopped feeling insecure crying around Miss K. I cry nearly every time I see her, like it’s a normal part of my greeting. I think it’s a physical reaction to the potent combination of two things: the first is that there are only a handful of people who have really seen Cannon in such a terrible, vulnerable state—when he is hurting himself and cannot seem to stop. Miss K is one of them. She has the bruises to prove it. And the second is that I love her so much for how well she has loved him. Combine vulnerability with gratitude so big it wants to burst out of you, it’s tears in response for me, every time. She hugs me and tells me to stop thanking her. “This is my job, Katie. We are the village.”

There it is again. We. 

But I know this is not her job. What she is doing, how she lives, is so far above and beyond her job.

When Cannon started taking a ride-share service for kids with disabilities from the school to his therapy, she left her post at the school office and rode with him in the car every day the first week to make sure he would be okay.

When she heard about my divorce, knowing how much that would impact the kids, she stopped by the house to check on us.

And when this new school year approached, she made sure we had everything in place that we possibly could to get Cannon through it. As we start his fifth grade year and his last year at Miss K’s school, I’m anxious about a hundred things. But Cannon being welcome, loved, and advocated for where I drop him off every day is not one of them.

I’ve started referring to Miss K when I talk to my friends about her as my “Girl Crush.” I believe the words, “I am obsessed with Cannon’s principal” have come out of my mouth no less than a dozen times this week. Because when I think of what I admire most in people it has nothing to do with accolades or following, physical features or stature, and everything to do with selflessness.

And Selflessness walks into the room every day with Miss K. It doesn’t matter what work she left on her desk or what emails she will be up late answering or what meetings she had to delay, How can I help, what do you need? I’ll get on the floor and rock this big boy calm if that is what it takes today is her whole posture.

Miss K is in charge of several hundred elementary school students every day and yet she makes each one feel like the most important child there. Not everyone can do this. Actually, not many can. I told my friends the other day that when it comes to Cannon’s education and care, “If it’s not Miss K energy, I don’t want it.” I could say that about pretty much everything in my life.

This—the whole disability plus a growing boy plus getting through school—is really, really hard. It is not an exaggeration to say it would be impossible without the Miss K’s of the world. But in a society full of terrible stories about disability and school—and those experiences are so valid and need to be heard—I also need you to know about Miss K, about how confident she is that Cannon belongs at her school. And how Cannon’s entire public school team, all four of the generous teachers he has had and the many amazing paraeducators, have seen the worst of his autism but continue to give him their best. 

Planes that land safely don’t make the news, right? The principals that lose sleep over your child’s care rarely do either, but they deserve to. For that, and all the other ways she loves my son and his classmates, I cannot help but love her.