A Small Grievance

Dear grandma,

I had thought we had a deal. If not a deal, then at least an understanding. You had told me that you would stay with us until I was married and had a baby. I got married, but I thought I still had you on the hook for the second part. I wasn't ready yet. I wasn't ready to have a baby, and I wasn't ready for you to leave. I guess you caught on to my game and called my bluff...but I heard you'd bought fabric to make me a baby blanket. I haven't found it yet, but I will. I'm pretty good with a needle, if I know what direction to head. I wish you were here to give it to the kid yourself, whenever we decide to have one. Thank you for thinking ahead and leaving a part of you for a future part of me. I love you.

Love always,
your granddaughter

A Belated Thank You Note

Dear grandma,

Your thoughtfulness never stops. I don't know what it means to "send away for" a book, so I don't know if you sent a paper check through the mail for a book you saw in a magazine or saw something on TV or hoped something existed and had my aunt look it up on Amazon. In any event, the unusual tricks for gardens book I received was the result, and it is quirky and handy and fun. We love it. I'm sorry that my thank you note is a few weeks late. I forgot to write it in a more timely manner--I hope you knew how thankful I was for your gift and how much I loved it, even if I neglected to put it in ink. Next year, we'll make sure to implement some of those wacky tactics, and maybe our tomatoes won't get blight. I wish I could share them with you.

Love always,
your granddaughter

The Dangers of Ambition

Sometimes, it is difficult for me to ascertain whether it's the Christian or the woman part of me that causes my ambition to be question and squelched.

Contentment with your position is valued above all. If you love God, then you should be content with where he has led you. If you are a woman, you should be thankful that you are being respected or paid well at all, especially since it might not be a long-term investment in you, being a baby-maker and all.

Sometimes, this is communicated overtly, sometimes covertly.

The contentment issue, though, is not. Be thankful, they say. Be thankful that you have a job and a good community.

However, what I am wondering is if ambition and thankfulness are maybe not mutually exclusive things. I am thankful for my job. I am thankful for my workmates and for the community of really wonderful people that I work for. I am thankful for the consistent grace and pay and 4 minute commute. I am thankful for the beautiful grounds that I can walk briefly every hour. I am thankful for the luscious autonomy I enjoy after being in my position going on 6 years. I am thankful.

Does that mean I am not allowed to want more? Where is the line between greed and drive?

I've been told that I shouldn't desire more rungs on the ladder.
I've been told I should be happy.

What if I could be happy going through several different doors instead of just the one hallway? What if there's another option for me that could potentially lead, not just to my happiness, but potentially to the happiness of another group? Shouldn't utilitarian principles outweigh?

I'm currently sorting through a very full plate of thoughts, and it feels confusing on a host of levels: loyalty, community, family, purpose, future-thinking, sentimentalism, ambition.

What if ambition were re-framed as "growth". Would it be ok then? Would it be kosher to express that, while thankful, you desire a bit of a change so that you can continue to grow and flourish? But what if that choice hurts your team? Or perhaps ambition, or even growth, is always a two-edged sword. No one grows without destroying at least a part of their past: a seed discards its shell as it sprouts. At the end, though, you get a zucchini. Unless, of course, a groundhog eats it.

Dear Seamus, thank you.

Within the first few weeks I lived in Belfast, I visited the Linen Hall Library, which is beautiful and old and makes you feel that creativity lives all around you and literature is alive and breathing and you, too, are alive and breathing and creative. Seamus Heaney had died not a month before and upstairs, at the top of the flight, was a memorial book. I felt the weight of the moment—of course I want to write in a memorial book for any writer I had ever heard of in the upper hall of a library I was enthralled with. I knew of Seamus from his translation of Beowulf, a book I hated in a class I found no purpose in during undergraduate school. I can’t remember what I wrote—I’m sure it was neither impressive nor meaningful. I didn’t know him.

I know him now.

Each time I teach English II, I teach through his entire Field Work collection with my students. We start small with “Oysters”, and by the time we reach “Ugolino”, my students are fiery and on my level in terms of general obsession for the Northern Irish Troubles and for Seamus Heaney’s heartthrob for his people, for reconciliation, and for the willingness of the divisive groups to listen to one another—if only they would listen to one another.

They move from essential non-knowingness (like I did) to being able to describe the man by his themes, his loves, and his heart. They begin to understand his poetry (very hard for people in general) because they can hear his voice and feel the pull of his motivations.

This is when my class starts to shift. We get political. We get real. We talk through the difficulty of listening, of sorting through the hard stuff when divisiveness and fake news surround us. We talk about how bad people can be good, how good people can be bad, and how God is there, swimming around in all of the midst of it, even when we might not even mean to invoke him.

Seamus Heaney loved his wife and he loved his country. He speaks of wounds from their Troubles as though they were imminent and eternal and yet, he spoke through his pain with hope. Together, we feel the pulse of humanity and take that energy into our next two series before the semester’s end.

Were he alive, were I able to meet him, to thank him, I am not certain I could do so without a gush of hot tears, thankful for someone who could create such beauty and such vulnerability and such accessibility and help snotty teenagers learn to open their hearts and their ears to love and care and feel compassion for a situation they could care nothing for beforehand, since they had no heart in the game.

You made them care. You draw us, one another, in and help us to hear in a way we couldn’t before.

Dear Seamus, you planted goodness and hope where we could only see blood, see walls, see bombs. You helped us dream toward a better tomorrow, of white-washed rooms with elbow room, of the smell of saltwater inthe air, and of young women with baskets of green cabbage, new potatoes, andfresh carrots with mould still on the tops of them.

27 is Okay

I turned 27 after two months of fear and anxiety over the health of my grandparents.

I didn't find much to discuss--I just wanted to sink into a deep hug with a crazy old woman and let her love me and be near her.

The year leading up to 27, though, was filled with adventure:

• the year started with beauty and friendship in Perth, Australia 
• I got my first tattoo
• my cat Ootzyde was stolen 
• Julius's dog Ginger died
• Julius worked on his Master's degree, and I worked on mine
• We gardened, excessively
• I travelled to beautiful Vancouver with my team from work for a conference 
• I saw Kesha live in concert with Julius and our friends Jill and Michael
• Spent some wonderful family time at Odomfest
• Won best new poet in a town poetry contest
• Traveled to Arizona for my cousin Kenzie's wedding 

It was a good year full of plants, travel, and preparation for the next to come.