So I promised a story.

 There was a small tempest, earlier this week, over at Dani’s blog.
Some Mommybloggers I greatly respect discovered they were included in a Master’s thesis, available online. I was, I admit, fascinated with the thesis, their response to it, and how that response evolved online.

But in my comment to the original post, I alluded to how it all reminded me of a story.
I could relate to the pressures of trying to tie together a paper that really wanted to go in a billion directions at once.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I studied linguistics. This does not involve, contrary to popular belief, and fortunately for me, actually learning a whole whack of languages. Instead, it concentrates on theories about language and languages. I love that stuff.

Anyway, for one of my courses  (I think I was following up on some theories posited in earlier research) I decided to look at gender differences in language – by studying graffiti. Chosing this topic involved some serious short cuts to make it manageable – I’d look only at one set of bathrooms (men’s and women’s) on campus, documenting and reviewing what I found. 

On the walls in there,  I  found a striking difference – men made assertions, women sought community or affirmation. But in the process of trying to winnow down my thesis into something manageable, I really missed any possibility of producing anything generalizable.

Plus, I must say I had a hell of a good time seeing the reaction on faces of students hanging around, observing both my boyfriend and I heading into our respectively gender-designated cans, then coming out some time later, each trying to shake the kinks out of his or her hand. And commiserating with each other about “how exhausting that was” – while being visibly excited to compare notes… Yeah, that must have looked good.

I had enlisted his help to record the comments in the boy’s room, and it took quite a bit of doing to jot down all that he saw. Our hands were worn out from transcribing, folks, transcribing!

Need I mention this was before the day of cell phone cameras? Nowadays it would be a breeze to just nonchalantly photograph the walls of the stall for posterity.

My point being:  I wonder whether the authors of some of those discussions (and I did record some surprisingly personal, lengthy discussions) ever thought their work would be the subject of “academic” review?

Maybe this new media, creating more public space, also creates such a sense of community that it becomes really easy to forget who else can wander by and use your words, draw conclusions about your life, and cast aspersions on your ideals. Made me want to write a couple of theses myself – despite my propensity to dissolve into a puddle of procrastination at the sight of my work being reviewed.  

But hey, bring on the aspersions! That’s what I’m signing up for.

musing on a Kite-eating Tree

Writing this, I’m looking a picture I took more than 20 years ago. I still like it. I have a little in common, in tastes and sensibility, with that young woman who took it. But that girl making that image, enlarging it and framing it for her first home, felt completely grown up, despite not having a career or a plan. She had a husband and was certain that she was as adult as she would ever be.

Three different cities later, two decades and a world away, I don’t feel inherently a different age; I feel like I only just started figuring it out now. I am squinting, sun in my face at life’s downhill slope, aware that I only have so much time, and there is a bundle of stuff I’ll never know. Now, I know I am certain only of change.

How could I possibly have thought I was pretty much everything I would be? What could I possibly have known, then? Would I even begin to believe my now-self, if I could talk to my then-self? Would I be able to hear the advice to be my own person and pursue my dreams more vigorously? Hell, would I even be able to listen to me (now) say that I needed to spend time creating dreams, be a little more inside my own head? If I could have heard this, or could have listened, then, it could have prevented me having to have spent so much time contemplating, later, trying to rationalize what I did since then?

I imagine the lesson from looking back is to apply this learning to looking forward.
Is there anything I can do to sort out what I really want now? How do I create my own dreams for the next few decades?

Right now, I’m working on being a better employee, and a better parent, a better teacher, student  and role model.  But I think the best thing I can model is finding your dreams and living them.

 So, two months late – my “New Year’s” resolutions:

• This year I will be learning French. But I have to reframe it. Not as for my kids, but for me, to prove to myself that I can apply myself and have something work out.
• I will be planting a garden, so that I can show my kids how things grow.
• I will be tending our yard to protect our investment.
• I will work towards some of that time being reflective time, too. I need to be outside more. It refills my heart, so I have more to give.
• I will work at a creative outlet, spending time with what I can develop on my own or in conjunction with others.
• I won’t let my timetable limit my life.

 Fingers crossed!

Really, you mean Outside?

The peace of the falling snow outside is overwhelmed by an overly enthusiastic ventilation system in here.  It sounds like there is a blizzard raging in my office. The artificial wind howls and whines, whistles and rumbles through the ducts above my head, driving thoughts of work far into the outer reaches of my mind.

But outside, the snow is the kind that I love to see, the kind I grew up with, wet enough to coat every tree branch. The whiteness displays the delicate intricacies of each twig and turn.  It took my breath away, this morning, when I rolled down my car window to operate the lock on the underground parking at my work. Beyond the driveway is a small wood, and the seemingly infinite mesh of branches, their outlines traced in white, stopped me for a moment. The abject beauty ripped away my sense of the weather being lately – at best – an inconvenience. The world was out there, waiting for me – in fact it is a part of me I’ve lost touch with.

I have to find ways to make that contact a bigger part of my life. I say this all the time. Perhaps writing it down may assist me to make it actually happen! I have been working hard to keep up some friendly contacts; I know that is key to my continued well being. But there’s more I have to do. I’m going to have to make an extra effort to get outdoors. I can’t wait till spring – I’ve got to get out now!

Ah, yes, non-winter…

Despite the risk of identifying myself, something I’m gently coming around to, I am prepared to tell you I spent the last week in Victoria, BC, at my mom’s.

It is absolutely stunning, coming from the frozen East, to touch down in a land that is green, growing and gorgeous.
I have had way too much fun. I’ve climbed a few hills, walked a few beaches, a boardwalk, some urban stuff, a breakwater, and oh god it all smells so GOOD!

I also attended a conference, and caught up, quite by accident, with my ex husband.  With whom I haven’t spoken for close to 20 years. YIPES! And now he is in essentially the same business, albeit a continent away from where I live. The community of this profession is small enough that we will doubtless run into one another again.

What I found profound was how remarkably unfamiliar he was. I spent more than a decade with him, wherein he was the person I spoke to the most, touched the most, thought of the most, ate with the most… you get the idea. Yet, despite having spent somewhere between 20 and 25 % of my life with him, when I saw him, I felt no connection.

He is a nice, kind man, who has changed not a whit. But seeing him brought home the truth to me:  it all fades. The worries, minutiae and passions of everyday are passing things.
The moment may be all we have.

So I’m grabbing it the best I can.I miss my kids and worry about what I’m not getting done, but I still take time to revel in the beauty, the weather, the season. I can’t quite call it spring, here, but it sure ain’t winter.