Bullying-Scars and A Healing

Bullying defies stereotypes.  Bullies come in all shapes and sizes, from good homes and broken homes, and can be rich or poor.  Bullying is not just a metropolitan phenomenon.  Bullying can occur in even the smallest rural town.  And those who have been bullied struggle with a sense of identity.  I Left My Heart focuses on the struggles my family dealt with as a result of bullying in a small Nebraska community.

 

I hope you will share this article with someone.  I doubt I will ever do a more important story.  For change to take place it has to occur where our children are. Our schools need to become more sensitive to how much damage bullies can really do and that even someone they might consider as an unlikely candidate to bully may well be among the worst at emotionally or physically bullying someone.  

 

Bullying leaves terrible scars and the healing process can be slow.  Though my family found a way to help my daughter heal, she still suffers from what a therapist calls post-traumatic stress.  And I still suffer from being unable to protect my daughter.

 

MY HEART

 

Labor Day, 1981.  “She’s a good baby.  She’s a smart baby,” the Korean adoption escort told us as she brought Hyun Soo In, now Amanda Soo Ann Meyer, off the Northwest Airlines plane.  Wife Jane’s “labor pains” were over.  Amanda cooed and fit perfectly in Jane’s arms.  Kindergarten son Matt walked through the terminal carrying a teddy bear bigger than the tiny girl he just met, smiled a perfect smile, and announced to everyone “that’s my baby sister.” 

 

Weeks after Amanda arrived, a bout with Salmonella brought a stay in Omaha’s Children’s Hospital.  A much healthier Amanda came home, and she grew and flourished. Snap shots from those years show her crawling and walking, and opening presents at family gatherings. She loved story books and Sesame Street. Amanda was a healthy and happy little girl. The pre-school years were an idyll compared to what awaited us.

 

Precocious Amanda started school in 1986.  She displayed a God-given talent with words, hated math, loved music, and did not care for sports.  Amanda was a typical American girl who just happened to be born in Korea.  Her grade school days were carefree, but then she entered North Bend Central Junior High School.  

  

Our soldiers receive months of training preparing for war in Iraq.  Amanda received no training for her tour of duty.  What training could have prepared her for slurs, even physical threats, merely because she looked different than 99% of the students in that school? Nobody escapes adolescence heartache-free, but Amanda’s life was heartbreak after heartbreak. How could children be so cruel?  Junior high was open season on Amanda, and scores of students had a license to taunt. Where were the teachers?  Can’t they see a girl sobbing in the hallways?  

 

High school brought little relief. How can I describe the anguish of a father who cannot protect his daughter?  Damn the First Amendment if it must allow such language.  Behavior like this should not be protected.  I thought of baseball bats and billy clubs, only to realize the worst possible punishment for Amanda’s tormentors would be to live her life for one day. On graduation day, she deserved a Purple Heart to go with her diploma.

 

Though Amanda received a scholarship to Creighton University, she struggled, reeling from the hurt of the past six years.  She was unable to trust her peers, afraid that taunts were never far away. A switch to a different college did not help.  Neither did time away from school, and therapy meant reliving the horrors.  One depressing day followed another.  Amanda desperately needed an escape from her everyday life. We plotted and planned a vacation to San Francisco.

 

Less than an hour after we checked into San Francisco’s Argonaut Hotel, Amanda and I were off to Chinatown.  San Francisco is a walker’s town, and Chinatown was only a mile away.  We walked along Columbus Avenue through North Beach, made a quick detour into City Lights Bookstore, then embraced Chinatown, an assault on our senses. Chinatown is bright colors, intriguing smells, and noise. And for block after block, Chinatown had only one Caucasian face, mine.  But I didn’t feel any discomfort.  How could I?   Looking into Amanda’s eyes I saw joy.  In those eyes, I saw a peace that had disappeared long before. I saw a sense of place, a sense of being.  Only hours into our vacation Amanda was smiling and happy again.

 

The next few days we worked hard at taking a vacation, up early, then off to one of the city’s famed attractions. Fisherman’s Wharf and Alcatraz and the Golden Gate.  Cable cars, Coit Tower, and the two thousand year old wonders of the Asian Art Museum. Though it seemed like hours, the days passed and it was time to go home. 

 

On the night before we left Amanda was near tears, not at all showing the joy she experienced this trip. She had fallen in love with the city and its people. One in three faces in San Francisco is Asian.  Maybe one in a thousand in Nebraska is Asian. In San Francisco Amanda could disappear into a crowd.  Before our visit we couldn’t imagine how healing that security would be. I couldn’t let our trip end in tears, so we planned one last adventure, a sun-rise walk, just the two of us and all of San Francisco.

 

The pier at Aquatic Park is near the cable car turnaround. Its cold, scarred concrete was formed and set scores of years ago, and it pointed like a dagger to the heart of Alcatraz. The pier offered what we most cherished this morning, solitude.  We were alone with the elements and a stunning view.

 

Mark Twain said “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” and dress in layers is not just a cliché.  That June morning, the sharp claws of a cold wind cut deep. To our left lay the Golden Gate Bridge, enveloped in a fog.  One moment only the uppermost spires of a single bridge tower could be seen, the next moment, maybe half of the bridge, and seconds later, only fog.  

 

In the few minutes spent watching the bridge, the area became quite active, though the pier remained a safe haven for our souls. Darting across the bay was a ferry heading for Sausalito.  Sail boats dotted the harbor, dancing a dance only sailors seem to understand. Even one-man kayaks plowed through the dark waters where only minutes before a massive container ship had passed.  The small, the powerful, the homely, the elegant, are all able to co-exist under maritime laws.  If only it were so easy on land.

 

Moments spent on the pier were meditative, and like the fog surrounding the bridge, calm settled over us. To our right was Alcatraz Island, barely a mile away, an eerie remnant of its past.  I shivered, though not from the cold. To see the city, hear it, smell it, never able to live it seems a harsh punishment indeed.  

 

Back to the bridge, the fog lifted.  Like toys on a gigantic track, cars were streaming into the city as another day of work began. For us, a special time had ended.  We turned from the bay, and began the short hike to our hotel.  Near the end of the pier I stopped, and looked at Amanda.  Tears in her eyes, a lump in my throat, I said “we’ll be back.  And when we come back, I promise that we will walk this pier again.” 

 

We moved from that small Nebraska town to a bigger Nebraska town.  But we return to San Francisco almost every year. Each time we find something new, something unexpected, something to stir deep in our souls. And we stroll along that pier.  Amanda heals a little with each visit, and so do I.

 

Amanda has decided she is going to move to San Francisco “some day.”  I hope she does. 

 

 

 

 

 

~ by Ron Meyer on March 3, 2009.