5.27-30.19, Evenings (mostly on the porch), Athens, Georgia
In 26 years as a college professor I have probably assigned and read tens of thousands of pages of student work. Papers, projects, case studies, comprehensive exams, preliminary exams, publishable papers, dissertations, dissertations, and a few more dissertations. The student question most likely to be asked is, “How long should this be?”, usually prefaced by “I know you won’t tell me.” Here, in the later years of my long career, I’m somewhat more likely to respond with a page range. When I was a professor who thought students had to learn from EVERYTHING I’d tell them it should be as long as it needed to be. Except, of course, for the developmental autobiography I used to assign in student development theories. That had page limits because of those two students who wrote for about 63 and 56 pages, respectively. Their lives were that interesting to them, and to me (I’m not kidding they were – as were all student lives. OK, some were rather surprising – in good ways. I’m going to stop this thought progression right here). When I told one of those prolific students the paper didn’t have to be that long the response was, “Oh, this stopped being about you a long time ago.” Those two students, and a few others, taught me that we sometimes have to write our way to answers. Some students talk their way to answers. They have lots to say in class or in my office. It’s a form of therapy – I don’t even have to speak. They talk, and then they know. The writers write until they know. I tell them they need to do that and they ought to.
When I was 14 I read a book about a girl who was my age 100 years before me. She kept a journal. I was intrigued and decided to be a girl with a journal. I had tried those little diaries with the dates to write next to and the tiny lock and key to keep your little brother from telling the whole neighborhood who you had a crush on. This was different. This was grown and for the ages. I had a life to document. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I filled school notebook paper; friends gave me journals and I filled those. I bought bound sketch books and kept writing. Every entry started the same, “Dear Book”. All these decades later I still don’t know who Book was, or is. I don’t think it matters. There was no censoring for Book – Book got everything. (However, Book has since been censored because I will be dead some day and there are things my daughters simply don’t need to know about me – not much, but a few pages I decided weren’t daughter worthy were shredded years ago.) When I was mad at my dad, what I had for lunch, how annoying my brother was (and, later, how utterly and completely he understood me and generously translated me so I understood myself as he did), what I got for Christmas, how much I missed my mom, my friends who were my family of choice, my sisters from other mothers, and all those boys, and later men, who captured my attention and my time even when they hadn’t exactly earned it. Quotes, favorite passages from books, lists of the books I read, what I saw on trips, who I voted for, who I loved, what I thought about my work, what I thought about my professors and the students I worked with, what scared me, it was all there. Every entry included the date, the time of day, and where I was. They’re all hand-written, nothing digital, my interior life in volume after volume. I was raised to be nice and when I was angry it was not acceptable to express it – except in REALLY BIG SLASHING HAND WRITING THAT JUST ABOUT RIPPED THE PAGES APART BECAUSE I WAS PRESSING SO HARD TO KEEP FROM SCREAMING AND YELLING. It was hard work being as nice as I was supposed to be. It was simultaneously hard and breathtakingly easy to write my way to my own answers – even though all those pages I thought I was just documenting my life.
And then, almost 25 years ago, I became someone’s mother. And exactly two and a half years later I became someone else’s mother. I had waited a long time. I had done all of the things. I had worked my way through three degrees, I had moved from home to learning how to make a home, I had married one of those men (by far the best one), I was a nice woman from Nebraska who had ended up as a COLLEGE PROFESSOR. Who would have predicted that? Not me. I had buried my mother, and my brother, and kept on living. I had fallen into some of the best parts of my life, I’d done the next logical thing over and over, and, sometimes I’d been intentional. I was living a life I liked a lot. And I stopped writing to Book.
Motherhood. Wow. WOW. Nothing has ever been so all consuming, so life altering, so hard to describe because of its enormity. Early one morning, around dawn, I heard a toddler voice somewhere nearby. Mommy, . . . Mommy, . . . Mommy, . . . MommyMommyMommy, MOMMYMOMMYMOMMY. Who was that kid? Where was the mom? Why wasn’t she answering? Wait, I’m the MOM. Motherhood is like that – always there, somewhere in the background, waiting for the right moment to burst through your consciousness, ready or not, here comes that kid. In-coming. You’re it. The Mom. As I tell my young parent friends, here, from the vantage point of mothering 20somethings, the nights are long but the years are short. But those girls are grown now, mostly launched. Approaching launch, getting ready to launch. And here I am, mostly grown girls, without my sweet dog, Libby (this is so very much harder than I thought possible – that dog was always next to me, and only judgmental with her eyes, and only near the end). I am a tiny bit adrift. I do have a husband again after a long time without one. There’s a particular kind of joy and wonder in being a newlywed at 60. After years together, I still knew actual marriage would change everything (because I believe in the power of marriage, and I believe in us). I was not prepared for the joy and the happiness that make me feel like I’m about 19 and the best guy I know, the one I sit a couple of rows behind in class just so I can look at him without him knowing, the one whose window I can pick out when I look up at that great big residence hall, that guy, really likes me. He likes me so much he put on a suit (and a tie!) and stood up in front of a lot of people and told me and all of them he’s in this for good, forever, and ever. This from the guy who said marriage wouldn’t change anything because nothing would make him love me more or be more committed to us – he was wrong, it changes everything and now he believes it too.
My life is full, and good, and challenging. There is change in front of me – not yet, but it’s there. The past quarter century (if that doesn’t make you feel old) has been transformative, has given me that two things I’m certain I was meant to do – be someone’s mother and be someone’s teacher. All of this has been the greatest gift. And now my focus shifts, just a little. I look at myself a little more. And I, like those good students, like my younger self, just might need to write my way to some answers. You didn’t assign this and you don’t have to read it. I’m not certain how great I’m going to be at editing myself. And maybe that’s the point. Good night, Book.