New words

Such exciting happenings have been going on in the Cherry house. First, the Cherry house has relocated! We are now living in the way far out suburb of Bristow. I love it here. Tonight, when I went to Chipotle to pick up dinner (come on, just because we've relocated doesn't mean I cook!), there was no line. None. At 7pm. People smile here. They play country music at the pool in my neighborhood. Sometimes, if you drive in just the right spot in our neighborhood, you can catch a peak of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There's a Super Target every direction coming out of our subdivision. In other words, it's just like heaven :)

Jackson loves the new house. We have a basement, so he has a playroom that is completely toddler-friendly with all of his toys. He's talking up a storm these days, and hit an unfortunate milestone the other day: he learned to say "no." I actually love the way he says "no" (although I'm sure I'll learn to like it less and less as time goes on). He says it almost as a question, and he repeats it two or three times every time he says it. For example, at breakfast this morning:
Mommy: Jackson, do you want any more yogurt?
Jackson: Gogurt. Gogurt. No? No?
Mommy: Jackson, you only have a little bit left. Just a few more bites.
Jackson: No? No?

And, of course, he was exactly correct. I made him eat the yogurt, and then he spit it up. I should have listned to the "no," I suppose. He has also learned the phrases "you're killing me" and "big, big mess." I wonder where he could have heard those.

To my students

I'm not a very easy person to get to know. It's not that I'm unfriendly; in fact, I'm actually pretty outgoing. I'm just an introvert. For some reason it's hard for me to put myself out there into the world. Sure, I can discuss weather or sports or even politics, even with complete strangers. People may even think that I'm quite easy going. But it is a different thing entirely for me to discuss myself, my feelings, my beliefs. I don't "wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at," as Iago would say. I think every person has an intense desire to be known, to be understood. Yet, despite this desire, letting myself be known is very difficult for me.

It's ironic, then, that I am a teacher. Because, at its heart, teaching is letting one's self be known. Parker Palmer, one of my favorites, writes about teaching: "Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life. Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul" (The Courage to Teach 2). When I began teaching, I thought teaching meant enabling my students to experience language and literature. This is, of course, a part of my teaching life. But I have found teaching to be so much more. Each day, I share more than just the rules of using an apostrophe or the definition of iambic pentameter with my students. In my interactions with literature and writing in front of my students, and in my daily interactions with my students themselves, I "project the condition of my soul onto my students." The act of teaching is the act of wearing your heart on your sleeve for daws to peck at. The very process of teaching is the process of continual self-examination and reflection, but with and in-front of one's students. My students don't know everything about me. They don't know the crazy stuff I used to do in college or my favorite curse words to say when I get angry driving down the highway. And yet, in some ways, they know me just as well as some of my closest friends. Together we have laughed, learned, and discovered. We have disappointed one another at times, but we always manage to start again each day.

To my students: I am so profoundly grateful for you. You have given a job a love going to each day. I am a person that does not always feel comfortable sharing who I am, and yet, by being your teacher, I was able to learn so much about myself, and hopefully share some of that knowledge with you. I have seen you exhibit such grace, integrity, and curiosity. It is my hope that you have learned from me, as I have learned from you. I used to think that my job as a teacher was to help my students learn how to be better versions of themselves. I see now, that is what you all have been teaching me.  

Being a follower

The last few weeks have been stressful ones, but sometimes it's hard for me to name the source of my anxiety. I think that what's driving me crazy is that my husband has to be reminded to take out the trash or that my floor always has smeared peas on it, no matter how many times a day I clean it. By focusing on these small matters, I can ignore the looming worries on the horizon. Why is it that I take my stress out on my poor floor and my poor husband?

I hate uncertainty. Absolutely hate it. When I was younger I used to make life plans for fun. I know, I know, I'm a crazy person. I used to sit around and daydream every single detail of how I wanted my life to be in a month, a year, five years, and then make detailed plans of how I would achieve these goals. But you know what sucks about life plans? Life doesn't play by the rules. Just like the peas that always seem to find a way to fall off my son's highchair tray and smear all over my floor, no matter how hard I try to keep them in place, life is messy. Life doesn't stay in place. Life doesn't do what I tell it to do. Life doesn't follow a plan.

What am I anxious about today? I am scared that life will go in a direction that is unpredicted. What if being a stay at home mom is harder than I thought it would be? What if it's difficult for me to make other Mommy friends and I end up sitting in the house all day? What if some catastrophe happens and we're financially unprepared?

Perhaps what is most scary for me is that I know that I am called to live a life where I am not in control. Part of living the life of a person that is called to a purpose is living with the knowledge that I'm not the one doing the calling; I'm the one listening to the call, the one following directions, not the one giving them. I have to believe that God, fate, the universe, has a plan that is greater than mine. This is not easy stuff. I am, after all, an awfully good planner and an awfully poor follower.  

This is my prayer today: that I  will trust more and worry less. That I won't miss the great surprises that life has to offer because I am too focused on my own goals and priorities. That I will have faith that the one doing the planning knows more than I do, and that all things work for the good for those who love God and are called to a greater purpose.

Calling

I saw Avenue Q last night. Loved it! Interestingly enough, it's theme (finding one's purpose in life) is something I've been contemplating a lot lately. For those of you who haven't seen the show, a brief synopsis: A recently graduated English major realizes that he has no actual skills and has no idea what he's going to do with his life. He decides he needs to discover his purpose. And he's a puppet. Hilarity ensues.

When I finished my master's degree in English, I had a really hard time figuring out what to do with myself. It's true that nobody comes beating down the door of literature students, begging to employ them, ("You just wrote a 20-page paper on the othering of the exotic and the definition of the self in Othello??  Awesome! Just the skill I've been looking for!"), but my problem was more philosophical in nature: how did I want to define myself in the world? What was my purpose in life?

At this same time, I was working with the senior youth group at St. Alban's Parish in DC. We were studying the ways that God calls us in different directions in life. I began to have a real inner struggle; I was telling these kids that God had called them to a greater purpose in life, and yet I had absolutely no idea to what purpose God was calling me. In fact, I was beginning to doubt that I had any calling at all. I've got to say, this made me kind of pissed off. "Okay God," I thought to myself. "I made good grades, I'm a smart girl, I'm even looking for a purpose instead of a way to greedily rake in tons of money. Plus, I can write a damn good literary essay on Othello. Why isn't that good enough? Why don't you have big plans for me??"

As I continued soul searching, I came to some realizations. One day on the metro, I saw a mother sitting with her little boy. The kid was crying, trying to escape his stroller, and the mother was singing him a song to calm him down. And I knew: "That. I want to do that. I want to be a mom."

"But that's not a calling!" I argued with myself. A calling is an occupation. It's a way to use your intellectual gifts. Motherhood is what traps you, it's what keeps you from fulfilling your purpose. It makes you lose yourself in the needs and wants of your husband and children. It locks you inside your house instead of letting you share yourself with the world. Think of The Awakening: she drowns herself in the end!!

Eventually, I decided to let the two arguing factions inside myself (the one that wanted motherhood vs. the one that wanted to be career-driven) come to a compromise. I pursued a degree in education, enabling me have a job that allowed me to contribute to the greater good and be intellectually challenged while still having a flexible enough schedule to eventually pursue motherhood. I absolutely love teaching, and I have the most beautiful baby boy in the world. I even teach part time so I can spend more time at home with my little guy. Problem solved, right?

Except, it's not. Lately, I have really been feeling the desire to stay home with Jackson full time. I absolutely dread leaving for work each day. I think about all the fun things I could do with my son instead: go to the park, go to the library, play with his blocks. I think of the things I'm missing out on and wonder if being gone is damaging my relationship with my son. I feel so very guilty that I'm not devoting every bit of my energy to being the wonderful mommy that my little guy deserves.

I think this probably has something to do with my perfectionist nature: when I do something, I like to do it well. Right now I feel like I don't have enough time to prepare quality lessons for my kids at school, and when I'm at home, I often have to spend time grading and lesson planning instead of spending time with my baby boy. I spend a lot of my days feeling like a bad teacher and a bad mom. Not exactly what I pictured when I thought about being a career mom.

On the other hand, I'm afraid of staying home full time. I absolutely love teaching. I love my students. I love building relationships with them, helping them grow intellectually, helping them become confident, capable learners. I don't want to quit my job and then regret it. I don't want to wake up one day and realize that I am a great mom and a great wife, but that I have nothing that defines myself outside of my family.

I have again reached a moment in life where I am trying to decide what will define me. When I think about my current life situation, I'm reminded of a line by Ani Difranco. She says, "I guess this is the price that we pay for the privilege of living for even a day in a world with so much worth believing in." Ultimately, I understand that my struggle is one I should be thankful for; I have two areas of my life that I treasure deeply, and it is because I so much in my life worth valuing that I am having trouble deciding the next steps for myself.

Emily the Mommy

Okay, I feel like I'm about 5 years late to the party here. I know that blogging has been the cool thing to do for awhile now, and I am just starting. Why now?

A couple of reasons, actually. I like writing, but I always thought to myself, "Who would want to read my thoughts about life? What do I have to say?" One of my fundamental beliefs as an English teacher is that each of my students has a unique voice; that each of us, even if it takes us awhile to find it, has something beautiful within ourselves that we want to share with the world. Sometimes we lack confidence, sometimes we don't recognize our own voice, but that does not mean that we don't have something beautiful to say. If I spend all this time asking my students to recognize that they have something to share with the world, I should at least be so bold myself.

I really recognized that I have something to talk to the world about when I became a mother. When I came home from the hospital, I began searching for blogs about motherhood. Admittedly, my search was only cursory (I didn't have tons of spare time in those days), but I had a really hard time finding a blog that I could relate to. I think the main problem stemmed from reading about what most mothers said about the birthing process. My first few days home from the hospital, I was sore. Really sore. I was exhausted. Breastfeeding hurt like a mf-er, even though everything I read told me that it should feel comfortable (really???). Going to the bathroom was a 30 minute terror that often resulted in screaming. In short, I was feeling rather overwhelmed, and so I went to the source of all knowledge - the internet - in an attempt to read the experiences of other mothers out there. I found very little out there describing what I was experiencing.

Now, I love my son more than life itself. In fact, I would argue that I love my son more than any other mother has ever loved any other child. It's true. I love him that much. However, I refuse to let my devotion to my son blind me to the truth: Motherhood is hard. As I began reading blogs about the birthing experience, I read so many accounts of women glossing over the pain and difficulty of childbearing. One blog described the pain of labor as so beautiful and enjoyable that she didn't understand how anyone could complain and not relish the experience.  BS. Ridiculousness. Utter tomfoolery.

These are the things I wish I had found in a blog somewhere:

Motherhood is hard. Labor sucks. When you come home from the hospital, you're going to feel like you've been hit by a truck. It's going to hurt to walk or ride in a car (a baby just came out of there, for goodness sake!a small human!!). You're going to want to sleep for a week. But you won't be able to, of course, because your priority will no longer be caring for yourself, but for another, precious little one. But it's okay that you are tired. You're supposed to be. It doesn't mean that you're a bad mother because your body isn't singing the praises of childbirth. It just means you're a new mother.

I came home from the hospital and realized that the universe had entrusted me with its most precious gift: my son. And I began to question the universe's wisdom. Me? How am I worthy to care for this baby? Don't you know that I don't know anything at all about babies?? I've never even changed a diaper! I became really, really anxious. I think those doctor types define this as postpartum anxiety. And, boy, did I feel guilty about it. If the universe has given me its most perfect gift, shouldn't I feel nothing but joy? Shouldn't I feel nothing but elation, even though I'm scared of failure and tired and recovering and being woken up every 2 hours to feed my son?

I wish some blog out there had told me that acknowledging my fears as a mother doesn't make me a bad mother. I wish I had realized that no longer having the ability to make myself my priority is a huge adjustment, and having difficulty with such an adjustment doesn't mean that I don't love my baby. I wish I could have said "Wow, this is hard" without immediately beating myself up for not loving every single second of motherhood.

So, here I am, 14 months later. I have decided that since I never found that mommy blog out there that I needed when my son was born, maybe I can be that blog for someone else. Most of all, I'm reminding myself that the universe has a lot of faith in me; after all, the universe has given me the most amazing son I could ever imagine. I must be capable of being his mommy. And, just maybe, I can be a good mommy to my little guy not because I never notice the negative side of parenting, but because sometimes being a mother is hard for me; it's a struggle some days, but I still keep going, I still try to find the joy in the difficult moments, and I am still remarkably thankful for it all.

A brief political rant

So, here I am, my first real, true blogging experience.

I have to admit, I've had this great blog in my head for like a year now, all about my experiences being a mother, my reasons for wanting to blog in the first place. It has some great quotations about the motherhood and the self, about the idealistic portrait of motherhood vs. the reality. Anyway, the reality of motherhood, at least for me, is that I've had this great blog idea in my head for a year, and I haven't actually had time (or, honestly, inclination, when I did have time) to sit down and type it.

So, instead of my great, wonderfully written blog about motherhood (that will hopefully make it out into cyberspace eventually), I've been inspired to sit down and type in reaction to my Facebook newsfeed. I have a variety of friends with a variety of opinions, and I try my best to avoid putting too much controversy on my page. Okay, okay, I post controversy sometimes. But, today, I desire a full out rant, and I think my Facebook page is probably the wrong place to do so. Thus, my blogging adventures begin.

Through the wonders of Facebook, I came across this:
The Pink Ribbon and the Dollar Sign Christianity Today A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction
This article made me angry. It made me confused. I do actually agree with some of the premise of the article. I agree that many churches have ignored and even encouraged a culture of greed. In the gospels, Jesus devotes a majority of his time teaching about helping the poor. He doesn't say to help them if you think they deserve it. He doesn't say to help them if you have the time or the inclination. He doesn't say to help them after you help yourself. He doesn't say to help them after they pass a drug test. He doesn't say to berate them as lazy. He says that the way we treat the least of those in our society is the way we treat Jesus himself.

However, this article, while commenting on a culture of greed, does not encourage its readers to support government measures to support those in need; government measures such as Planned Parenthood, which provides health care services to millions of women that otherwise would have no access to proper care. Instead, it vilifies Planned Parenthood, saying "they'll make a lot of money. And they'll do so off the shredded corpses of children and the raped consciences of women." Planned Parenthood? Making a lot of money? They are a service for the poor! The raped consciences of women? The very purpose of Planned Parenthood is to help women. What??

I understand that Mr. Moore, the author of the article, is anti-choice. Fine. Here's the thing: I am pro-choice, but I think, Mr. Moore, that you and I actually still have a lot in common. I think the choice to have an abortion must be an awfully difficult one. It is one I wish fewer women were forced to make. But I think the way to stop women from having to make such decisions is to go back to this culture of greed you were talking about. Let's create a world where women don't have to have abortions because they don't need to. Women that have access to health care, such as that provided by Planned Parenthood, are more likely to have birth control, and are therefore less likely to need an abortion. Women are less likely to need an abortion if they have adequate childcare so that they can work to support their children. Women are less likely to need an abortion if they have access to programs such as WIC and food stamps. Mr. Moore, if you are pro-life, work dilligently to make sure that women are provided with the proper programs and support to make abortion unneccesary.

This article encourage us to "work to legally protect women and children." Fabulous! Let's work to provide quality health care to all women. Let's support Planned Parenthood. Let's make sure that abortions are rare, but when it is a woman's choice to receive an abortion, it is a safe one. And let's be honest here: if you are arguing against a woman's choice to quality health care, you are not trying to protect her but to control her.