Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
The Kindness of Strangers, Pay It Forward, “You don’t have to be rich,” or What I was Reminded to Remember Yesterday…
(I needed to write 750 words to finish a publication I’m working on today. Instead, I wrote these 1,000 words…)
Yesterday, my husband, daughter, and I stopped at a Ruby Tuesdays in Summerville, SC to eat dinner. (Thanks for the suggestions, friend who lives in Summerville. We decided we didn’t want to wade any farther down Main Street!) We were on our way home from Charleston, where the army band played a concert on the USS Yorktown. It was rainy, and there was a ton of traffic. We stopped to avoid the traffic. Scott was in uniform.
A woman, probably in her late fifties, who had been sitting at a table adjacent to ours, approached Scott and introduced herself, thanked him for his service, and handed him a gift card to pay for his dinner. Scott replied by saying that he was proud and honored to serve, thanked her, and tried to refuse the gift. (Honestly, I don’t know if there’s a protocol, field manual, army regulation for this kind of stuff. We’ve been approached and thanked before, but not quite in this way.) When he is approached by strangers, Scott is always really good—humble, kind, respectful—I don’t actually have the right words to describe his behavior during these exchanges, but I feel like Scott always exudes just the right amount of humility, engagement, etc. I know he feels awkward, but he’s sincere in his responses. I just feel uncomfortable and tongue-tied.
We volunteered for the military, and while we believe service members deserve our deepest respect, we remember that we chose this, have been treated well by the military, etc. We also remember that there are public servants—police officers, firefighters, social workers, teachers, and countless others—who serve our nation as well and often go unsung. In fact, we know, as I’m sure you do, that everyone is fighting his or her own battle, and that most people we meet deserves our respect and admiration. So, we feel awkward, but also awed by people who thank us in words or actions.
Our bill didn’t nearly approach the amount of the gift card, and when Scott was “paying” the bill, he asked me “What to leave?” The answer to that question was easy: leave it all, pay it forward, it’s not OUR money. Someone was kind to us; we should be kind to someone else in return.
But it wasn’t our money, and while it WAS kind to leave a very generous tip, the experience we had yesterday reminded me that we are in a good place and could do more.
Yesterday, I posted a link to a project my sister is trying to get support for through Donor’s Choose (Here’s the link: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=552364), and I jokingly wrote, “In case I have any rich philanthropic friends.” I clicked on her project this morning to learn that my amazing and kind friend donated money to my sister’s project. I was deeply touched by this gesture. (I realize I am an intensely sentimental person—and I believe that sentimental identification is a productive way to understand the world. I also understand that historically sentimentalism has enabled a sort of distanced ambivalence and we should all be a little suspect of any sort of congratulating ourselves for “feeling good.”)
In fact, I have lots of friends who are doing a lot of good with their money and their time—a friend who’s made it her mission to foster dogs in response to a horrible situation at a local shelter, friends who spend their time collecting canned goods, donating blood, and volunteering at churches, friends who donate their hard earned money to various community organizations. There’s a lot of good out there despite what your favorite news source might be telling you.
My friends are in much the same situation I imagine myself in. We are comfortable. We aren’t rich, and that’s where the greater lesson becomes obvious. We don’t need to be “rich philanthropists” to positively affect our worlds. I realize this isn’t much of a revelation for probably everyone out there, but it’s something I keep forgetting. And I think now more than ever before in my adult life time, we need to recognize that every little bit helps. Not to sound like one of those children’s network commercials, but for the cost of a cup of coffee, for the cost of the Netflix increase, you and I can help someone else out.
So, please let me tell you about my sister. She teaches fourth grade in an elementary school in Richmond, VA. She paid for college herself. She has not had a raise since she started working there. She pays for supplies for her classroom herself. What she pays for classroom supplies throughout a school year greatly exceeds the $250 federal tax credit given to teachers. She started her school’s cheerleading squad, which she coaches. She drives her students home when their parents can’t or won’t. She takes her students to dinner; she takes them out in their communities. She goes above and beyond. In fact, my sister sounds like A LOT of teachers I know. If it hadn't been for a few of my teachers in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college, I probably wouldn't be writing this. I hope you have a few teachers you remember too.
Her school sounds like a lot of schools we know; most of us live within a stone’s throw of schools where students come from poor socio-economic backgrounds, are ill-prepared for education, etc. I don’t believe that throwing money at problems is a solution; I do believe that good teachers know what their students need, and in most schools, they aren’t getting those things. And I believe that those of us who are in a situation to help have resources, like DonorsChoose.org, that can empower us to choose how we’ll help others.
If you don’t want to support educational projects, there are lots of people, animals, groups, and environments, that need your time, expertise, and/or money (volunteermatch.org and serve.gov are useful sites).
Thank you to my friend and to the stranger in Summerville for reminding me that I belong to this world and am responsible for it.
Yesterday, my husband, daughter, and I stopped at a Ruby Tuesdays in Summerville, SC to eat dinner. (Thanks for the suggestions, friend who lives in Summerville. We decided we didn’t want to wade any farther down Main Street!) We were on our way home from Charleston, where the army band played a concert on the USS Yorktown. It was rainy, and there was a ton of traffic. We stopped to avoid the traffic. Scott was in uniform.
A woman, probably in her late fifties, who had been sitting at a table adjacent to ours, approached Scott and introduced herself, thanked him for his service, and handed him a gift card to pay for his dinner. Scott replied by saying that he was proud and honored to serve, thanked her, and tried to refuse the gift. (Honestly, I don’t know if there’s a protocol, field manual, army regulation for this kind of stuff. We’ve been approached and thanked before, but not quite in this way.) When he is approached by strangers, Scott is always really good—humble, kind, respectful—I don’t actually have the right words to describe his behavior during these exchanges, but I feel like Scott always exudes just the right amount of humility, engagement, etc. I know he feels awkward, but he’s sincere in his responses. I just feel uncomfortable and tongue-tied.
We volunteered for the military, and while we believe service members deserve our deepest respect, we remember that we chose this, have been treated well by the military, etc. We also remember that there are public servants—police officers, firefighters, social workers, teachers, and countless others—who serve our nation as well and often go unsung. In fact, we know, as I’m sure you do, that everyone is fighting his or her own battle, and that most people we meet deserves our respect and admiration. So, we feel awkward, but also awed by people who thank us in words or actions.
Our bill didn’t nearly approach the amount of the gift card, and when Scott was “paying” the bill, he asked me “What to leave?” The answer to that question was easy: leave it all, pay it forward, it’s not OUR money. Someone was kind to us; we should be kind to someone else in return.
But it wasn’t our money, and while it WAS kind to leave a very generous tip, the experience we had yesterday reminded me that we are in a good place and could do more.
Yesterday, I posted a link to a project my sister is trying to get support for through Donor’s Choose (Here’s the link: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=552364), and I jokingly wrote, “In case I have any rich philanthropic friends.” I clicked on her project this morning to learn that my amazing and kind friend donated money to my sister’s project. I was deeply touched by this gesture. (I realize I am an intensely sentimental person—and I believe that sentimental identification is a productive way to understand the world. I also understand that historically sentimentalism has enabled a sort of distanced ambivalence and we should all be a little suspect of any sort of congratulating ourselves for “feeling good.”)
In fact, I have lots of friends who are doing a lot of good with their money and their time—a friend who’s made it her mission to foster dogs in response to a horrible situation at a local shelter, friends who spend their time collecting canned goods, donating blood, and volunteering at churches, friends who donate their hard earned money to various community organizations. There’s a lot of good out there despite what your favorite news source might be telling you.
My friends are in much the same situation I imagine myself in. We are comfortable. We aren’t rich, and that’s where the greater lesson becomes obvious. We don’t need to be “rich philanthropists” to positively affect our worlds. I realize this isn’t much of a revelation for probably everyone out there, but it’s something I keep forgetting. And I think now more than ever before in my adult life time, we need to recognize that every little bit helps. Not to sound like one of those children’s network commercials, but for the cost of a cup of coffee, for the cost of the Netflix increase, you and I can help someone else out.
So, please let me tell you about my sister. She teaches fourth grade in an elementary school in Richmond, VA. She paid for college herself. She has not had a raise since she started working there. She pays for supplies for her classroom herself. What she pays for classroom supplies throughout a school year greatly exceeds the $250 federal tax credit given to teachers. She started her school’s cheerleading squad, which she coaches. She drives her students home when their parents can’t or won’t. She takes her students to dinner; she takes them out in their communities. She goes above and beyond. In fact, my sister sounds like A LOT of teachers I know. If it hadn't been for a few of my teachers in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college, I probably wouldn't be writing this. I hope you have a few teachers you remember too.
Her school sounds like a lot of schools we know; most of us live within a stone’s throw of schools where students come from poor socio-economic backgrounds, are ill-prepared for education, etc. I don’t believe that throwing money at problems is a solution; I do believe that good teachers know what their students need, and in most schools, they aren’t getting those things. And I believe that those of us who are in a situation to help have resources, like DonorsChoose.org, that can empower us to choose how we’ll help others.
If you don’t want to support educational projects, there are lots of people, animals, groups, and environments, that need your time, expertise, and/or money (volunteermatch.org and serve.gov are useful sites).
Thank you to my friend and to the stranger in Summerville for reminding me that I belong to this world and am responsible for it.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Getting My Goat
Recently, a friend posted a link to an article, entitled "The No-Baby Boom." The article was about couples' decisions not to have children. (Note: Current trends, of course, indicate that more people of a certain persuasion--middle-class, [semi-]professionals are choosing to have only one child or have no children. This is not news to me.) Additional articles, including "Why Parents Hate Parenting" and "40 Good Reasons Not to Have Children" were posted by other friends. "Why Parents Hate Parenting," I thought, was well-written, insightful, and poignant. The other two articles, not so much, and as far as I can tell, they are part of a trend in published writing. That trend--well, they are about as savvy and insightful as a freshman composition paper on lowering the drinking age.
The author of "No-Baby Boom," Bryan Frazer cites Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness, where Gilbert writes that "Couples generally start out quite happy in their marriages and then become progressively less satisfied over the course of their lives together, getting close to their original levels of satisfaction only when their children leave home." It's not that Frazer misrepresents Gilbert, but Gilbert's main argument is that we are really bad at looking forward and determining what WILL make us HAPPY in the future. (I read this book after my first year in graduate school as a PhD student...why? Because I THOUGHT graduate school would make me HAPPY.) It's not just that having children doesn't make people happy in the ways they thought it would--it's that pretty much every time we guess what will make our future selves happy we are mistaken. (The article, I'd like to note, doesn't consider that many people, without children, often feel less fulfilled by their marriages as time goes on. I'm going to guess that people forget that they have to work at marriage for it to be fulfilling.) I may be guilty of reading the article reductively, but the article seems to miss that point.
Instead, it seems to propose childless homes as care-free, edenic spaces where everyone gets to do what they want, eat what they want, and drink what they want. And maybe some of them are, but I doubt all of them are, and I doubt that's what everyone wants. (Where some see care-free, I see potentially infantile like a bad bromance.) Also, Frazer's representation of parenthood seems like a bad caricature:
"But for the child-free, the benefits go beyond dollars and cents. There's less guilt, less worry, less responsibility, more sleep, more free time, more disposable income, no awkward conversations about Teen Mom, no forced relationships with people just because your kids like their kids, no chauffeuring other people's kids in your minivan to soccer games you find less appealing than televised chess....Besides, we've never—not even for a heartbeat—envied parents. Our next-door neighbors have kids, and the amount of yelling, stress, and competition for day care, car pools, and a school with working metal detectors hardly seems worth it. As we head out for our after-work hike, followed by yellow curry in Thai Town and then an Arctic Monkeys concert, we wave goodbye and smile, pretending not to notice their faces frozen in exhaustion."
Maybe this is what my childless friends see when they look at my husband and me. Maybe my need to wash diapers every other day, to pack up my daughter's diaper bag in order to head out to dinner, make them pity me. But I don't think I pity myself. I didn't go into child-rearing thinking it would be all sunshine and lollipops.
Further, it just feels like the article's trying to advocate for no-children households and prove that it's the RIGHT way to live. (And again, I might feel this way because I DO have a daughter, and I did choose to have her, and I don't like being told that my life is now less than ideal.) I also don't believe that having/not having children is a right/wrong issue. As my liberal-minded side will tell my conservative friends, "Don't like gay marriage, don't get one...," I will tell everyone, "Don't like/want kids, don't have them." Trust me, I'm not holding a gun to anyone's head on this one.
I guess part of my problem is that prior to having my daughter, I didn't say to myself, "This child will make me HAPPY. She will resolve all of the bad feelings I have about the world, or myself, or myself in the world." If anything, I probably worried a good deal that I would become a wreck and wreak havoc on both her and myself as well as my husband. And I don't believe MOST parents go into child-rearing believing a child will fix things (I know some people think children will fix their marriages, but really, I think they are in the minority); that's a lot of responsibility to put on someone so young and little.
The article "40 Reasons" is a list written by Corinne Maier, a French mom who has had enough with "the myth that having a child is wonderful." Maier is a mother of two frustrated with France's policies advocating child-rearing and pushing women into defining their lives through reproduction. I can sympathize with her feelings; I don't think women should be forced to define themselves only through motherhood. or through motherhood at all if that's not what they want. I think attacking women for choosing not to have children is as bad as attacking them for choosing to have children, which is what Maier's list feels like...an attack on child-rearing as a way of being. The list includes the following:
"1. The “desire for children”: A silly idea
4. You keep having fun
6. You keep your friends
8. Open the nursery, close the bedroom
14. Kids are unbiased allies of capitalism
25. It takes real courage to keep saying, “Me first”
34. Motherhood or success: Pick one
40. Reject the ten absurd commandments of the “good” parent, such as your children are more important than you, than your work, than you as a couple, than any other child, than all the adults living or dead in the world you live in."
The tone of the list is, I think at least some what sarcastic/humorous, but also indicative of Maier's style in general. In another book, she explains how to be lazy at work and why it pays off. But the article, like "The No-Child Boom," just points to the problem of the child-rearing debate: Everyone involved is so gun-ho about her views that she simply reduce the other's view to caricature or absurdity. "No-Baby"-ers present their lives as more free, more fun, and more cool, and "Baby"-ers argue that they are more fulfilled. And I'm guessing for each and everyone there's a truth somewhere in the middle. But the above mentioned articles aren't really looking for complexity.
Except for "Why Parents Hate Parenting," which seeks to examine what happiness, regret, purpose, etc actually mean and how they inform our understanding of having children. I started pulling quotes out of the article to share. The document is two pages long. So, instead, I'll just point you to the last few paragraphs of the article, which pose Gilbert's question, "So you have to think about which kind of happiness you’ll be consuming most often. Do you want to maximize the one you experience almost all the time”—moment-to-moment happiness—“or the one you experience rarely?" or as Segilman puts it “Should you value moment-to-moment happiness more than retrospective evaluations of your life?” Jennifer Senior concludes the article by thinking about the retrospective view Segilman seems to buy into: "It’s a lovely magic trick of the memory, this gilding of hard times. Perhaps it’s just the necessary alchemy we need to keep the species going. But for parents, this sleight of the mind and spell on the heart is the very definition of enchantment."
And maybe that's it for me. The day to day of human relationships can be shit. I don't like picking up my husband's dishes, the dog's feces, or changing my daughter's clothing for the fifth time in five hours. But I love being with my husband, being with my dogs, and being with my daughter. My relationships have defined my life, and most recently, my relationship with my daughter has made me think about what it means to love, how much I am capable of loving, and what it means to live both while I'm here and when I no longer will be. And that makes cleaning up the shit of life worth it. If it doesn't for you, that's okay too. I won't define your happiness for you if you don't define mine for me.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
9 pounds lost in 6 weeks
It's been kind of slow going, but I am slightly ahead of schedule, which is a good thing since I've not been always trying my hardest, but still trying.
41 pounds to go. 1.8 pregnancy pounds to go.
Hugs
41 pounds to go. 1.8 pregnancy pounds to go.
Hugs
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Starting Over...
There are 365 days in a year. There are 52 weeks in a year. Health experts recommend losing 1 pound in a week. Some weeks a person will lose more than 1 pound; some weeks, less. Surely, over the next year, I can lose, on average, 1 pound a week. And that's what I'm going to try to do. Lose 1 pound a week for the next 365 days, 52 weeks, 1 year.
When I say I want to lose a pound a week, it sounds manageable. When I say I want to lose 50 pounds, it sounds impossible. So, I'm taking it day by day, week by week, and pound by pound.
Let the journey begin.
When I say I want to lose a pound a week, it sounds manageable. When I say I want to lose 50 pounds, it sounds impossible. So, I'm taking it day by day, week by week, and pound by pound.
Let the journey begin.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Claire's Birth Announcement
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0QcNGrFsybsnKg
Andante Dots Cerulean Baby Announcements
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View the entire collection of cards.
Monday, October 25, 2010
At the end of my rope...
Throughout my pregnancy, I've been hoping that "Ziggy" comes on time or late, but I was always pushing for late. Most women who've been pregnant think I'm crazy. Why? Well, because each day it becomes increasingly difficult to walk, get out of bed, go to the bathroom, put on my shoes, and generally feel comfortable in any way. My back hurts, my feet are swollen, and I feel (and feel like I look) like shit. I'm excited to have our baby, but I have not enjoyed pregnancy as a whole though and am ready to not be pregnant anymore.
So, why would I want to extend this past my obligatory forty weeks?
...
Well, I've been concerned about leaving/abandoning my students. Primarily, they are my students, my responsibility, and I've agreed to get them through the courses they are taking with me. (Note: My due date is 5 November, so basically, we have three weeks of class after that.)
Secondly, while the university has a "Family Medical Leave Policy" for graduate students, it doesn't really have any real protocol for an instructor who needs to be out of the classroom.
I should say that our department chair has helped to make sure plans are in place so that I can have coverage for the two weeks between my due date and Thanksgiving, and that it is my desire to go back for the last week of class. My dissertation director has been awesome, and many people have been supportive.
But one can't help but feel that the university, as a whole, has an attitude about pregnancy that's cringe worthy. It's as if one might plan pregnancies around the semester (at least if she is a graduate student). Or better yet, one should choose to wait until they've finished graduate studies to create a family (yes, I was told NOT to get pregnant by a faculty member who said I wouldn't finish if I did), or that having children is tantamount to taking your studies and your work lightheartedly if you're a woman. Since I've been in my program, lots of male students have started their families; a lot fewer female students have. The gender politics of that fact amuse me to no end in a department and a field of study that claims a rather liberal agenda.
Add to all of this, the reality of Scott and my situation. Most likely, I will never apply for a tenure track position. I will teach adjunct or go back to public education (a more appealing choice every day). In other words, there is no light at the end of the tunnel here. No means to a more appealing end.
And add to that my general frustration currently with the university. One, our CAS isn't funding graduate student travel to conferences. So, I've been accepted to give a presentation at MLA, but I probably won't be able to afford to go (because after all, my salary is $12,000 and graduate students are currently required to pay for printing in our department). It's as if the university has become so big that it forgets that students are not there to sustain it, but it is there for students. I've once again not received this or that award, which would be fine if it didn't feel like the rules were always changing, and that what goes one year will not the next. And finally, while I was being "considered" (I don't even know what that process looks like) for that award, I was being overlooked for classes (upper level classes that meet two days a week--a schedule that would be really handy for someone with a newborn and a schedule that normally would be given to senior graduate students) that I would like to teach. So, I have little funding for an important trip, I didn't receive another award, and I don't know what I'll be teaching in the spring. I realize I'm complaining, but I'm frustrated right now. I am so disillusioned with higher education, and I find myself asking why the hell I care when I go into labor...
Oh right, because of the students.
But the thing is, I'm about to have my own kid, and while that may not be important to other people, it's got to be the most important thing to me, which is to say...
F--- it. Ziggy, we're waiting for you.
So, why would I want to extend this past my obligatory forty weeks?
...
Well, I've been concerned about leaving/abandoning my students. Primarily, they are my students, my responsibility, and I've agreed to get them through the courses they are taking with me. (Note: My due date is 5 November, so basically, we have three weeks of class after that.)
Secondly, while the university has a "Family Medical Leave Policy" for graduate students, it doesn't really have any real protocol for an instructor who needs to be out of the classroom.
I should say that our department chair has helped to make sure plans are in place so that I can have coverage for the two weeks between my due date and Thanksgiving, and that it is my desire to go back for the last week of class. My dissertation director has been awesome, and many people have been supportive.
But one can't help but feel that the university, as a whole, has an attitude about pregnancy that's cringe worthy. It's as if one might plan pregnancies around the semester (at least if she is a graduate student). Or better yet, one should choose to wait until they've finished graduate studies to create a family (yes, I was told NOT to get pregnant by a faculty member who said I wouldn't finish if I did), or that having children is tantamount to taking your studies and your work lightheartedly if you're a woman. Since I've been in my program, lots of male students have started their families; a lot fewer female students have. The gender politics of that fact amuse me to no end in a department and a field of study that claims a rather liberal agenda.
Add to all of this, the reality of Scott and my situation. Most likely, I will never apply for a tenure track position. I will teach adjunct or go back to public education (a more appealing choice every day). In other words, there is no light at the end of the tunnel here. No means to a more appealing end.
And add to that my general frustration currently with the university. One, our CAS isn't funding graduate student travel to conferences. So, I've been accepted to give a presentation at MLA, but I probably won't be able to afford to go (because after all, my salary is $12,000 and graduate students are currently required to pay for printing in our department). It's as if the university has become so big that it forgets that students are not there to sustain it, but it is there for students. I've once again not received this or that award, which would be fine if it didn't feel like the rules were always changing, and that what goes one year will not the next. And finally, while I was being "considered" (I don't even know what that process looks like) for that award, I was being overlooked for classes (upper level classes that meet two days a week--a schedule that would be really handy for someone with a newborn and a schedule that normally would be given to senior graduate students) that I would like to teach. So, I have little funding for an important trip, I didn't receive another award, and I don't know what I'll be teaching in the spring. I realize I'm complaining, but I'm frustrated right now. I am so disillusioned with higher education, and I find myself asking why the hell I care when I go into labor...
Oh right, because of the students.
But the thing is, I'm about to have my own kid, and while that may not be important to other people, it's got to be the most important thing to me, which is to say...
F--- it. Ziggy, we're waiting for you.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Better Blogging Does Not Come with Pregnancy...
My pregnancy is almost over (so, yes, if you calculate correctly, the last time I blogged, I was pregnant though we didn't know it yet) . I am both excited and frightened by the upcoming birth and responsibility of caring for Ziggy (still no name) outside the womb. But I know all will be well.
We're "trying" a natural birth, which mostly means I'm partially crazy and maybe a little bit of a martyr. But we'll see how it goes.
Mostly everything is in order though we still need to deal with the diapers. Navigating the world of mommy blogs is different than navigating academia, but more interesting on some level (I never knew there were so many different cloth diapers).
Look for regular blogs once Ziggy's born for real updates.
Hugs,
Jamie
We're "trying" a natural birth, which mostly means I'm partially crazy and maybe a little bit of a martyr. But we'll see how it goes.
Mostly everything is in order though we still need to deal with the diapers. Navigating the world of mommy blogs is different than navigating academia, but more interesting on some level (I never knew there were so many different cloth diapers).
Look for regular blogs once Ziggy's born for real updates.
Hugs,
Jamie
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
I am the worst blogger in the world...
...or maybe I've just been really busy?
It's February, which is to say that we've survived a lot. Scott is HOME! With his homecoming has come a lot of celebration, a lot of adjusting, and a lot of emotion, but several months had gone by before Scott's return...so here, goes...
Dad successfully got married. I got to see my sisters and my aunt Lisa. We hadn't seen each other since I was 13.
I went to Korea. It was great being with Scott, fun exploring a new country, and sickening...the air gave me the Korea Crud as they call it.
I came home. I got to teach an American Drama class (it was amazing), and I have been working for FYE--mostly fun stuff. I defended my prospectus. :) I went to the SSAWW conference in Philadelphia and the SAMLA conference in Atlanta.
I visited Randi and Dough in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving and Beth and Jonathan in Richmond for Christmas.
I will try to be a better blogger.
It's February, which is to say that we've survived a lot. Scott is HOME! With his homecoming has come a lot of celebration, a lot of adjusting, and a lot of emotion, but several months had gone by before Scott's return...so here, goes...
Dad successfully got married. I got to see my sisters and my aunt Lisa. We hadn't seen each other since I was 13.
I went to Korea. It was great being with Scott, fun exploring a new country, and sickening...the air gave me the Korea Crud as they call it.
I came home. I got to teach an American Drama class (it was amazing), and I have been working for FYE--mostly fun stuff. I defended my prospectus. :) I went to the SSAWW conference in Philadelphia and the SAMLA conference in Atlanta.
I visited Randi and Dough in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving and Beth and Jonathan in Richmond for Christmas.
I will try to be a better blogger.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
An Update
It's been a busy month--lots of birthday parties, farewell parties, and of course weddings! My beautiful sister, Randi, married her sweetheart, Doug, on May 30th in a lovely backyard ceremony. I was honored to give one of the toasts; here it is--
A lot of good in the world, but a lot of sadness too.
Today is a special day because not only is Doug blessed with Randi as his wife, but he also gets two new sisters-in-law. Now, instead of just having one baby sister cooler than he is, Doug has two—Mary and Beth. And instead of one older and wiser sister, Doug has both Amanda and me. Too bad Randi didn’t have brothers.
As an older sister, I’ve spent much of my life thinking about my younger sister—first when she was born—how to get rid of her—in order to be an only child again, then as she grew into a toddler, how to convince her to do my bidding—so that I might live the spoiled life of an only child. None of these was very successful.
Finally, as she grew into the beautiful and intelligent young woman before you, I’ve often contemplated what dreams and hopes I had for her—so that she would know that she was loved in ways that would be impossible if she were an only child.
I have been blessed with two younger sisters—Randi and Beth—and today is a special day, not because Doug gets more sisters, but because the happiness I have always hoped for Randi, I get to wish for my new brother-in-law as well. So, for Randi and Doug—I wish:
· That you will love each other at your best and at your worst.
· That you will maintain this ecstasy and burn always with this hard gemlike flame.
· That you will have poetry in your life.
· And adventure.
· And love above all. Love as there has never been. Unbiddable. Ungovernable—like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.
If you would please, raise your glass and join me in toasting my sister and brother-in-law. To Randi and Doug.
It went well--as in, I didn't cry during it, though I cried a whole lot that day. It was great to see our uncles, our father, and grandfather, and it was wonderful to see Randi so happy.
And this weekend, well, my dad gets married to Susan, whom I adore. So, Friday, it's a trip up to good old Pittsburgh. I haven't been there since my grandmother died in August of 2007, and trips there are always filled with emotion. But I get to see my good friend Faith, and Beth and I are going to see Pap again (we're surprising him).
A lot of good in the world, but a lot of sadness too.
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