A Silent Song 5
July 3rd, 2009 by ComputerBob
As I’ve mentioned several times before, I’m a survivor of domestic violence, so I consider it an honor to work as a full-time volunteer at a domestic violence center and shelter. Along with serving as a legal advocate, I’m happy to help out wherever and whenever I’m needed.
Every Tuesday night, I help take care of a group of children while their mothers attend a support group for survivors of domestic violence.
But this past Tuesday night, we planned to take the whole group — mothers and children — to the beach for an early 4th of July picnic and celebration.
Unfortunately, severe thunderstorms forced us to cancel that plan.
So instead, we all got together in the youth room, shared some snacks, and then I got to lead everyone in a really fun, 90-minute game of Pictionary. We didn’t have the Pictionary game, so I just made up appropriate things for each child and adult to draw. At the end, the score was tied at 14 to 14, so the winning team was decided by having everyone guess at the same time while one of the youngest children in the whole group drew a picture. It only took about 10 seconds for a boy on Team 1 to correctly guess that the artist was drawing a snowman.
At the end of the evening, I stayed to help clean up, and then packed up my my box of books to carry it back to my car.
On the way, I passed the laundry room, where two of the four little readers from that earlier story were folding clothes with their mom. I stopped to say hi and to ask them their PC is working.
The mom told me that it’s working great and that she’s really happy with it.
While she was telling me that, her older daughter suddenly did something that she’s never done before: She ran over to me and gave me a big hug.
With a big smile, I said, “Thank you! What was that for?”
The perplexed look on her face showed that she was just as surprised as I was, as she slowly replied, “I…don’t…know!”
UPDATE: A few days later, her mother sent me an email message, telling me that her daughters really love me and that, before they met me, they had never had a positive experience with a man.
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Tags:
Domestic Violence, Inspirational, Personal, Survivors