The lost boys
This essay was first published on The Daily BS on June 28, 2025.
The year was 2020. A virus was sweeping the land. The medical name was COVID-19, but it carried a second virus that held many in its grip. That virus was called fear.
Our family had traveled to a distant city to meet friends. After months of lockdowns and isolation, seeing them again was food for the soul. It was time for a fiesta and so, like one of the twelve tribes of Israel, we marched in line behind the hostess to the tables that were ready and waiting. Bring the manna.
The dark-haired waiter wore a mask. He deftly arranged baskets of chips, bowls of salsa, and creamy jalapeno dressing before us. Was I drooling? I checked my chin surreptitiously. No, all was well.
He returned with refills, baskets brimming full, and spontaneously I cheered with a fist pump and a heartfelt, “Yea!” His eyebrows rose, becoming one with his hairline.
“My goodness. I’ve never had anyone show such excitement about our chips.” His eyes, they crinkled above his mask. Laughter swept the table, and he was off again.
I could not help but watch him as he moved back and forth. A tattoo circled one muscular bicep, disappearing up into his sleeve. Something about him plucked at my heart, and I knew that divine, loving nudge. When he returned to our table, I said to him, “Would you do me a favor?”
Brown eyes glinted at me. “Sure.”
“Would you pull your mask down and smile at me?”
Surprise etched his features. “Why?”
Looking full in his face, I said, “Because you’re such a delight. You’re doing a good job, and I’d like to see you.” And there it came. A bright, white smile. Warmth suffused his countenance, erasing trouble and care.
But I wasn’t done. “Is your mother still alive?”
“Yes, she is. I just saw her yesterday.” And here, he told us about his mother, a retired schoolteacher, and his father who was convalescing from surgery.
“I want you to tell her that you’re doing a good job.” That’s what I told him. “I am the mother of boys, and it means so much to me when someone says something nice about one of them.”
For a few, ephemeral moments in a noisy restaurant far away, there was no COVID. No lockdowns. No isolation. No left or right or red or blue. Only humans, truly seeing and affirming a fellow man behind his mask.
“This has been a good day!” That’s what he said, my new friend, as every face around our table beamed back at him.
****************
About a year ago, the teenager came home with a little story of his own. He had noticed a kid sitting alone in the cafeteria, and he approached him. They had a sobering conversation, and as he relayed it to me later, I could see that he still carried its effects.
“At one point, Mom, I realized I was raising my voice.” This, upon hearing how his fellow student had been treated by well-meaning, but thoughtless peers. “I was miffed! I told him not to judge all Christians by that.” He went quiet for a bit.
“Someone told me just the day before that he’s a raging atheist, but he’s not.”
“Sounds like the telephone game,” I said. Clearly, this young man had suffered judgment at the hands of others who hadn’t stopped, first, to inquire as to the truth. Who hadn’t taken time to sit—just sit—with the guy all alone in the lunchroom.
We talked for quite a while. At times, he sank into silence, thinking, thinking, rolling it all around in his mind.
Hearing the young man’s story, my heart was touched. There were reasons that he struggled with the concept of God, and it pained me greatly to learn of his treatment in the hallways of our school.
At last, I said, “I’ve learned by experience that people who’ve been brutalized or traumatized are very fragile. Some of them can’t even accept love. It frightens them, and so I have to be very gentle. People like this want to see what you do before they can hear what you say.”
And there it was, the key that unlocked so many padlocked doors. I had found it myself, and it was time to hand it to The Cub.
“I accept you like you are. I love you like you are.” This was the deep medicine that would incline the heart and the ear of the suffering to say, at last, “Why are you the way that you are? What is the reason for your hope?”
For years, now, a stream of lost boys has crossed my path. One after another, they come, and when I see them, I speak or, if not so prompted, I simply pray for them.
At the big, beautiful, boisterous barn party for The Cub, our recent graduate, they appeared again. In the tidal wave of teenagers that came to celebrate with him, two of them stood out to me and for both of them, I had special words.
It thrills me that my son is learning to see them, too. The sheer number of friends who came that day was a testament to his life and his heart full of love. If he can learn to see and to care, anyone can.
May God teach us the perfect blend of compassion, wisdom, truth, and love so that many, many lost boys and girls will join us at his table.