The Swirl of the Peppermint Dahlia

I love looking at that which is hard to see with your naked eyeballs.  To pay attention, focus in on that which we usually miss.  Like the very center of this peppermint swirl dahlia and all its reproductive flower parts.  I laugh at my near-obsession in capturing such close-up images as this dahlia these days, given that I can't recall my childhood.  For the first chunk of my life, my attention was focused completely on self-survival and not on the intense reddish-orange of fall leaves or the swirling center-point of a red and white dahlia.  When I think back it's all black.  The lost early years.  It's not that I didn't have attention back then cause I was excellent in school but my brain space had little room for the world around me.  I was in survival mode.  After grad school, I worked for a while with misunderstood kids.  The kids who frustrated the hell out of school staff.  Kids who ran down the hall barefoot.  Kids who wouldn't (couldn't) attend to instruction.  Most of the kids presented as attention deficit in one way or the other.  In fact, I'd say with confidence all the kids I worked with were attention-deficit in some way cause they didn't fit in and couldn't keep up.  They'd be tested, assessed, observed, poked and prodded and yet their ability to focus in on the perimeter of a circle vs. a classmate tapping his pencil or the curious high-pitched noise just outside the window, persisted.  The tests were all academic and attention-related.  Which helped confirm that these kids were neither learning nor attending.  Nobody asked these kids, "So how do you feel about yourself?  What's going on in your family?" And yet, the most desperate kids I worked with settled down with individualized attention, when it was just the two of us in my office.  Like a hummingbird's instinct that compels them southward in the fall, I got these kids on the deepest level.  The kids who spent their lives in a vigilant state.  Who has time to attend to the short story about a boy and his dog when your mother is selling drugs and calls you Mookie.  When the staff laughs at your beloved mom behind her back after a meeting because her hair is dyed white-blonde and her boobs were nearly flopping out onto the conference table.  Ya gotta be on alert for all that because something just doesn't feel right.  I used to chuckle and tell my friends when they asked why I so easily managed the kid who refused to leave the last seat on the bus and come into school, the little girl sang while the teacher taught, the second grader they kept putting in time out for swearing, "They're my peeps.  We get each other."  Who can attend to a word problem if you live in fear?  Paint a picture of your happy nuclear family in art class if the emotions right below the surface overwhelm you because your dad is in jail?  If your mom calls you You-Who and your parents are in the midst of a nasty divorce, writing a story about what you did on vacation is ridiculously impossible.  But you can learn to attend if a kind person takes the time and interest to develop a relationship you.  Pays attention to you.  This is absolutely not a cure-all but over time you may learn to trust enough to open your eyes.  You might start to see the short story on your desk or the multiplication word problem sheet the teacher places on your desk.  You might even begin to wonder at the swirling center of a peppermint dahlia.  It happened to me.  It happened to the kids under my care.