A Ringing Endorsement

I attended graduate school for social work in Los Angeles. Less than a week after graduation, I packed my car and moved to Portland, Oregon. At that time in my life, I viewed my car as a means for self-expression. Two aphorisms adorned my back bumper—Do Your Dream and Magic Happens—, and countless items hung from my rearview mirror—drying pennyroyal,
a fake eagle feather, beads, that sort of thing.

For three years, I worked as a home-based child and family therapist and social worker for the Albertina Kerr centers, providing therapy for a shoestring after school program. Participating kids saw me for therapy during their time at our facility. While they were in school, I drove around various Portland neighborhoods talking with their parents. Ostensibly, the parents also engaged in therapy, but most of them weren’t interested. They put up with my visits because it meant their kid got to be in our program. They thought of our program as enrichment, though it was intended to be therapeutic—meaning each child could only be there if they had a diagnosis.

Two years in, I worked for a while with a six-year-old girl. She was one of—I don’t exactly remember—maybe five, maybe seven, kids in her family. All I recall is that when we learned the family would be getting a Habitat for Humanity house, and also learned how many bedrooms the house had, we had trouble imagining where all those kids were going to go. I’ll call this kid Cordelia, but only because I remember her somewhat unusual first name started with a C. I don’t mean to invoke King Lear. She wore pint-sized glasses with bright blue frames and had straw-colored hair. Physically, she put me in mind of Ramona Quimby, long-legged and clean but always disheveled looking.

Nowadays, Cordelia might be diagnosed on the spectrum and with ADHD. As it was, girls rarely received these diagnoses back then, and because she was an unusual combination of energetic, whip-smart, and willfully self-governing, she was diagnosed with oppositional-defiant disorder. That kid could not follow instructions to save her life.

Usually kids arrived at the program in a van that picked them up at school, but occasionally I’d transport a kid if their therapy ran late, or if a doctor’s appointment overlapped with the start of the afternoon program and they needed to be brought separately. Cordelia made me glad kids were required to sit in the back seat. Seat-belted and everything, whenever I drove her, she’d squirm and strain to reach between the bucket seats, hoping to touch items in the front. Whenever I knew I’d be driving her, I made a clean sweep of my car so she wouldn’t discover any loose change she’d be tempted to pocket or candy wrappers to make her sad that she’d missed a chance to eat sugar.

My boyfriend and I had recently decided to get married. He’d given me an object as a token of that intention, and I hung it up on my rearview mirror with the other items. The next time Cordelia found herself in my car, she immediately noticed the addition. “What’s that? Where’d it come from? Why’s it there?” Unlike many of the kids I worked with, I knew Cordelia would get the pun: the item was a small bell, and I told Cordelia, “That’s my engagement ring.” A beat passed, and then she cackled with laughter. For the rest of the drive, I heard her from the back seat repeating to herself, “An engagement ring,” and then chuckling appreciatively. It was the calmest car ride we ever had together.