A Common Heroine

The longing piggybacks on the intelligence leaping from his eyes. His stalwart innocence shines, undaunted by circumstance and experience far exceeding his seven years of hopeful heartbeats. He hasn't yet learned to mask his truth with lip curling sneers, glassy-eyed nonchalance, and quick-witted quips or stinging barbs. But he won't always be seven...And yet, there is a chance that the large brown pools, in which even a soiled heart could learn to swim, may remain crystal in their clarity and caring...

His innocence would have no chance, his caring no hope if not for another of the unsung heroines whose weary, sometimes-unwilling-but-seldom-broken spirits perpetuate us. Until one she's nurtured successfully heralds her heroism, such a heroine is an unpleasant statistic, a symbol of our failed society. She is the single mother, upon whom many cast aspersions...as though she were the one who failed to keep her end of the bargain.

When I look into Duwon's eyes, I see Tiffany's, a teenager when she bore him just five days before succumbing to the capricious whim of cosmic calamity. The only home he'd even known, his mother's womb, gone before he could even conceive of "mommy," much less say it. But even more, I see the eyes of the woman who has nurtured his natural intelligence; the woman whose indomitable will is the impregnable shield that guards his innocence. He calls Roselyn "mommy," though she's actually once removed. She too would march in the ranks of the statistics...if she were the marching kind. She bore Tiffany at 16, well before she knew her destiny as heroine.

I've known her for almost half her life and happiness has never been her companion. Nor had it been before we met. She was 23 then, and had carried, for almost seven years, the not-always-welcome weight of the life she had borne ...precisely as long as her precious Duwon has been nestled in her care. I remember her fighting for the right never to assume such responsibility again. She was too young the doctors insisted, until at 24 she prevailed and was free of fear that she'd have to answer for yet another...or so she thought.

Thirteen years later in utter anguish and raging inwardly at the almighty, she lost one dearly beloved responsibility, and gained another. She had chosen the first, despite disapproval that darkened her days and nights then, and do so now I suspect. Her dreams of a career medicine, well founded on "A" student status, would be deferred. Dreams were buried beneath the daily coping with the greatest responsibility on earth: the well being of the life you helped create.

Although she may not concur, the mother's love that fueled her daily fight and enabled her efforts didn't preclude perceiving that first responsibility as penance...and now, coupled with her tremendous loss, her penance had been extended...against her will this time. What about his dad, his other grandparents? In fact they existed; in reality they may as well not have.

Truth be known, it wasn't without doubt and resentment that she assumed her duty, but neither was it without love. It is that love, braced by an unflagging sense of duty, that allowed me to absorb this young man in training, this "statistic" who defies the numbers and analyses. Without that love and sense of duty, he would not now be holding up the letter from his principal proclaiming his membership on the Super Achievers Honor Roll. Without Ro's daily struggles in life's trenches, his teacher would not have said that in all her years of teaching, Duwon is one of the most polite and helpful students she has ever encountered. Without the resilience to recover time and time again, always enfolding him in her love, Duwon would not have been able to grasp the math concepts we worked on, which went beyond his current studies; would not have been able to answer the questions I asked, nor ask the questions he did.

Perhaps more important, without that mother's love and sense of duty he would not have been able to express his joy at our reunion, his eyes would not have shone so brightly in their welcome. He would not have been able to understand why I preferred to live where I do than where he does. "Is it because people don't litter there, because people don't hurt each other?" were questions he asked among others. "Yes, all of those reasons," I replied, surprised that he read me so well despite our infrequent visits. Duwon's gentle spirit, like the one his young grandmother possessed when we met, continues to blossom although he has seen much to daunt the faint of heart in his seven years on earth. Like his experiences, his strength and wisdom are beyond his years.

Statistics rarely tell the stories of our everyday heroines and heroes. They don't tell the poignant stories about the women who awake each day, if they slept at all the night before, with heavy weights upon their shoulders and deeply held doubts that can diminish one's will...yet still carry us upon their backs. To persevere in the ordinary, to rise up repeatedly after being laid low by life's numbing blows, when once upon a time you held lofty dreams long ago deceased, is heroic. When from ground thought barren can be raised a sturdy tree that offers life and shade, a heroic deed has been done.

Duwon stands now and in time to come, a testament to a heroine's heart, a heroine against her will who sought not the battlefield nor accolades. Such is my dear friend Roselyn who could be inspiration for other heroines who at best are but statistics in the minds of men.