This past weekend, we made a decision as a family (I'll keep the details vague for now) that turned out not to be a good decision. A very large part of the reason why it turned out not to be a good decision had to do with the fact that, while I was very clear about the commitment of time and energy that came along with our decision, I hadn't factored in my (new, not-so-improved) stamina levels. It was one of those situations where a limit that I didn't know I had came and smacked me right in the face.
It sucked.
I spent quite a bit of time telling myself that I could gut it out. When the sane voice in my head says, "I can't do this", that voice usually replies, "Of course you can!", which is technically true. But this time, that small, sane voice in my head agreed that yes, I could, but then asked: what would I have to give up in order to do that? Because I would. My energy levels are not inexhaustible. I mean, they never were, but the limit used to be a lot further out, and it also used to be the case that I could run on reserves for a while and then catch up later. I don't have the same level of reserves, it turns out.
So we reversed our decision. And that also sucked.
In all of that, while I did give myself permission and grace to cry uncle rather than gutting it out, I have also done a whole lot of self-denigrating blame. I haven't given myself much grace. Other people have stepped in and offered me the grace that I'm struggling with, and in so doing have also offered me a template for what it looks like to think about this through that lens.
In this sense, I think that this autoimmune diagnosis offers me a chance to (read: insists that I) come to grips with something that I have largely preferred to deny: that life is messy, I make mistakes, I am not in control of everything that happens.
Which also sucks. But it turns out that living as if those things weren't true comes with its own very particular sort of misery. The freedom of looking back at this last weekend, and, instead of thinking "man, am I an idiot", getting this tiny glimpse of, "well, life is messy and I didn't see that coming" - it's a very spacious sort of feeling. (Before my critical voice jumps up and down and insists that I damned well ought to have seen it coming!) Spacious is good. Spacious does not suck.
Grace.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Day 47: Lacuna
Read: I actually had a quick post I meant to get up here yesterday, and then the day totally got away from me, and when I got home after walking in the morning, working all day, and then having a riding lesson, I fell over on the couch and stopped thinking. I need to work on that. I'm back to work full-time this semester after three semesters of a 20% medical leave (as in, I was working 80% time)(as in, honestly, I was working nearly full-time, but funding my outrageous amounts of service work by using medical leave to teach one fewer class). I don't think I've found my balance yet.
Monday, August 26, 2019
Day 46: First day of classes
I taught six hours today. In the same classroom. Which wasn't sufficiently air conditioned.
My classes are kicked off. They are: English Grammar and Syntax; Introduction to Linguistics; Language and Gender.
My older daughter wants to audit my gender class. I let her come today. It is interesting to have one's child in one's class. Not sure yet the balance between good interesting and awkward interesting.
I have survived. That is all.
My classes are kicked off. They are: English Grammar and Syntax; Introduction to Linguistics; Language and Gender.
My older daughter wants to audit my gender class. I let her come today. It is interesting to have one's child in one's class. Not sure yet the balance between good interesting and awkward interesting.
I have survived. That is all.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Day 45: Pool drain update
So, I finally asked Rick about the pool drains. (He's a hydrogeologist; it's kind of in his wheelhouse.) I'd kind of thought the answer had to be pumps, and I'm right.
Just in case any of you were actually perplexed by the whole thing, or were worried that the pool was going to drain while I wasn't looking.
Just in case any of you were actually perplexed by the whole thing, or were worried that the pool was going to drain while I wasn't looking.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Day 44: (Mis)representation, Part 3
At the end of Part 1, in which I shared the true confession that I really believed that roadrunners were emu-sized, Ellen commented, simply: Misrepresentation matters.
Yes! Exactly! That is exactly it. This is the other half of my Day 29 post, representation. Representation matters, because it reminds us that our way of being and seeing the world isn't the only way. It offers us another standard for normal.
And misrepresentation matters, because we form our ideas of how the world works based not only on our own experience, but also on the stories and images that we hear and see. We experience those, too. In many cases, these pervasive images and stories about people become more powerful than our own experiences. And then, in turn, we interpret our experiences through the expectations that come from those images and stories.
Let me give you an example. One day many years ago, when I was a student in the Bay Area, I was driving somewhere in Oakland, and I got lost. This was well before cell phones, so I pulled over to get out my handy dandy Thomas Guide, and two guys came up to the car to see if I was lost. They gave me directions, and I thanked them, and I got where I was going.
If you know the demographics of Oakland, you know that the chances were good that these two young men were African-American (in fact, they happened to be). At the time, Oakland had a very high crime rate. And representations of African-Americans were (and still are) often of urban youth, portrayed as gang-involved, dangerous, etc etc. When I told someone about my experience - feeling grateful that these guys had been able to help me - her first response was, I can't believe you talked to them, they were probably planning to carjack you.
Now, here's the thing. If it had been her, and she'd pulled over and been approached in the same way, she would have double-checked to be sure her doors were locked, pulled away, and told people (and believed) that she'd narrowly avoided a carjacking. Her experience was interpreted through a lens that she already held, and then reinforced that lens and made it real.
We often suggest that if people could only meet one another, they'd understand that their stories about The Other aren't true. But I think what I'm saying is that it isn't quite that simple. If we interpret our interactions with other people through powerful preexisting lenses that are informed by pervasive misrepresentations, the chances are high that we will interpret what we see in light of our beliefs, and we'll end up reinforcing those beliefs, rather than disrupting them. I'm not saying that it's not important to create many many opportunities for people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, and so on, to interact. But I am saying that it isn't sufficient. And I am saying that we need to think carefully about how people are represented. We often mock or roll our eyes at folks when they call out problematic representations - but they all matter. It's not about being politically correct - it's about realizing that all those "little jokes" and "mistakes" add up to something really big and intractable.
Because it's not just about thinking that roadrunners are emu-sized, or that rabbits hatch from eggs. It's about thinking that a young woman who gets raped after having several drinks or while wearing something revealing was asking for it. Or that she actually wanted it, but then was too embarrassed to admit it, and so made a false accusation. Right?
Misrepresentation matters. Amen.
Yes! Exactly! That is exactly it. This is the other half of my Day 29 post, representation. Representation matters, because it reminds us that our way of being and seeing the world isn't the only way. It offers us another standard for normal.
And misrepresentation matters, because we form our ideas of how the world works based not only on our own experience, but also on the stories and images that we hear and see. We experience those, too. In many cases, these pervasive images and stories about people become more powerful than our own experiences. And then, in turn, we interpret our experiences through the expectations that come from those images and stories.
Let me give you an example. One day many years ago, when I was a student in the Bay Area, I was driving somewhere in Oakland, and I got lost. This was well before cell phones, so I pulled over to get out my handy dandy Thomas Guide, and two guys came up to the car to see if I was lost. They gave me directions, and I thanked them, and I got where I was going.
If you know the demographics of Oakland, you know that the chances were good that these two young men were African-American (in fact, they happened to be). At the time, Oakland had a very high crime rate. And representations of African-Americans were (and still are) often of urban youth, portrayed as gang-involved, dangerous, etc etc. When I told someone about my experience - feeling grateful that these guys had been able to help me - her first response was, I can't believe you talked to them, they were probably planning to carjack you.
Now, here's the thing. If it had been her, and she'd pulled over and been approached in the same way, she would have double-checked to be sure her doors were locked, pulled away, and told people (and believed) that she'd narrowly avoided a carjacking. Her experience was interpreted through a lens that she already held, and then reinforced that lens and made it real.
We often suggest that if people could only meet one another, they'd understand that their stories about The Other aren't true. But I think what I'm saying is that it isn't quite that simple. If we interpret our interactions with other people through powerful preexisting lenses that are informed by pervasive misrepresentations, the chances are high that we will interpret what we see in light of our beliefs, and we'll end up reinforcing those beliefs, rather than disrupting them. I'm not saying that it's not important to create many many opportunities for people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, and so on, to interact. But I am saying that it isn't sufficient. And I am saying that we need to think carefully about how people are represented. We often mock or roll our eyes at folks when they call out problematic representations - but they all matter. It's not about being politically correct - it's about realizing that all those "little jokes" and "mistakes" add up to something really big and intractable.
Because it's not just about thinking that roadrunners are emu-sized, or that rabbits hatch from eggs. It's about thinking that a young woman who gets raped after having several drinks or while wearing something revealing was asking for it. Or that she actually wanted it, but then was too embarrassed to admit it, and so made a false accusation. Right?
Misrepresentation matters. Amen.
Friday, August 23, 2019
Day 43: Lingering childhood misperceptions, Part 2
(Not my misperception this time!)
Imagine the scene:
A ten-years-younger me, more energetic, svelter, in front of about 35 students, in an aging classroom with blackboards, big windows open onto a quad. I'm leaning against the desk up front, leading a discussion about I don't remember what - something incredibly insightful and educational, for sure. Students are lively and engaged (except the dude in back who was attending carefully to his fantasy football picks, but there's only so much I can do), asking questions, offering answers. Basically, your standard college classroom.
A student raises her hand and asks, a propos of I can't remember what, why the symbology of Easter has all those rabbits and chicks and eggs and things?
An aside: my students know about my magpie brain. They know that I delight in finding lovely shiny thought-objects and taking them home and turning them over and poking at them. They also know that I can be easily distracted by a new bright and shiny object, like an interesting question. And they know (because I tell them) that I think curiosity is the number one hallmark of a lifelong learner, and that I really want them to be lifelong learners even more than I want them to be linguists. So they ask random questions, and I answer them. The one thing that saves me and them is that I tend to be unexpectedly excellent at relating apparently-disparate bits of information - so whatever distraction they think they're offering almost invariably leads us right back to whatever it is that we're covering in class.
So, student raises hand, asks question, and I take it as a totally legitimate turn in the conversation and hop up to sit on the desk and start talking about spring and the return of life after the winter and Eostara and fertility and how this relates to resurrection in Christianity and in other religious-symbolic systems as well, etc etc. As you do. And then I say that nothing really symbolizes fertility like rabbits (which, I point out in an aside, breed like, well, rabbits) or like seeing a little chick hatch from this seemingly-lifeless oval rock-like lump.
And this young man in the front row, right smack in the middle, gets this dawning look of horrified enlightenment on his face. He may even have made a sort of mumbling oh no really sort of noise. All I know is that his neighbors and I all looked at him, and I asked him what he'd just realized. And he, in tones of embarrassed misery, says:
"I always thought the rabbits hatched from the eggs!"
People, you'd be proud. I did not laugh. I didn't even snicker or make smirk-like motions with my mouth or eyes. I did say that no, rabbits are mammals - and that they aren't echidnas or platypuses, so no body-external eggs involved in their birth.
And then I went home and promptly ensured that both of my daughters knew very clearly that rabbits didn't hatch from eggs.
Because, of course, I totally know where he got that idea - from the Cadbury egg commercials, right? And all the Easter bunny delivering eggs stuff. And he just never revisited it in light of later information (like, mammals bear live young - barring, as I'd mentioned, the echidna and platypus). It stuck around there, in the recesses of his mind, until the dawning light of a random classroom conversation got him to put two and two together.
I suppose one moral of this story is that my willingness to entertain apparently-random questions has broader educational implications than I give credit for.
Other morals to this story will be addressed in Part 3 of my little narrative.
Imagine the scene:
A ten-years-younger me, more energetic, svelter, in front of about 35 students, in an aging classroom with blackboards, big windows open onto a quad. I'm leaning against the desk up front, leading a discussion about I don't remember what - something incredibly insightful and educational, for sure. Students are lively and engaged (except the dude in back who was attending carefully to his fantasy football picks, but there's only so much I can do), asking questions, offering answers. Basically, your standard college classroom.
A student raises her hand and asks, a propos of I can't remember what, why the symbology of Easter has all those rabbits and chicks and eggs and things?
An aside: my students know about my magpie brain. They know that I delight in finding lovely shiny thought-objects and taking them home and turning them over and poking at them. They also know that I can be easily distracted by a new bright and shiny object, like an interesting question. And they know (because I tell them) that I think curiosity is the number one hallmark of a lifelong learner, and that I really want them to be lifelong learners even more than I want them to be linguists. So they ask random questions, and I answer them. The one thing that saves me and them is that I tend to be unexpectedly excellent at relating apparently-disparate bits of information - so whatever distraction they think they're offering almost invariably leads us right back to whatever it is that we're covering in class.
So, student raises hand, asks question, and I take it as a totally legitimate turn in the conversation and hop up to sit on the desk and start talking about spring and the return of life after the winter and Eostara and fertility and how this relates to resurrection in Christianity and in other religious-symbolic systems as well, etc etc. As you do. And then I say that nothing really symbolizes fertility like rabbits (which, I point out in an aside, breed like, well, rabbits) or like seeing a little chick hatch from this seemingly-lifeless oval rock-like lump.
And this young man in the front row, right smack in the middle, gets this dawning look of horrified enlightenment on his face. He may even have made a sort of mumbling oh no really sort of noise. All I know is that his neighbors and I all looked at him, and I asked him what he'd just realized. And he, in tones of embarrassed misery, says:
"I always thought the rabbits hatched from the eggs!"
People, you'd be proud. I did not laugh. I didn't even snicker or make smirk-like motions with my mouth or eyes. I did say that no, rabbits are mammals - and that they aren't echidnas or platypuses, so no body-external eggs involved in their birth.
And then I went home and promptly ensured that both of my daughters knew very clearly that rabbits didn't hatch from eggs.
Because, of course, I totally know where he got that idea - from the Cadbury egg commercials, right? And all the Easter bunny delivering eggs stuff. And he just never revisited it in light of later information (like, mammals bear live young - barring, as I'd mentioned, the echidna and platypus). It stuck around there, in the recesses of his mind, until the dawning light of a random classroom conversation got him to put two and two together.
I suppose one moral of this story is that my willingness to entertain apparently-random questions has broader educational implications than I give credit for.
Other morals to this story will be addressed in Part 3 of my little narrative.
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Day 42: Roadrunners
True confessions time. I never saw a roadrunner in person until after we'd moved down here. One day, soon after we moved into our house, I looked out the window and saw this bird walking up a tilted tree trunk. My first thought was, literally, that looks like a miniature roadrunner! Because there was no way that a real roadrunner (per the image in my brain) could actually get up into a tree.
Which really tells you all that you need to know about my understanding of roadrunners.
I can't possibly be the only one who only ever thought of roadrunners in the context of Wile E. Coyote. And folks, in that cartoon, Coyote and Roadrunner are very close to the same size:
I mean, that Roadrunner is, at minimum, up to mid-Coyote's chest, right?
Not right. Coyotes (which I see a lot) are about medium dog sized, with longer legs, proportionately, than most dogs. Roadrunners are not - I repeat, not - about 2/3 the size of real-world coyotes. If a coyote stood up on its hind legs, a roadrunner could not (again, I repeat - not) look it in the eye. Greater roadrunners are maybe 20-24 inches from beak to tail. And that's pretty big, based on the ones I've seen around here.
(Not my image). They do, though, actually stand around with their tails straight up, like Roadrunner does above. It's very distinctive, and it's why I immediately classified that bird as somehow being roadrunner-adjacent. The only reason I couldn't actually get my head around the idea that it really was a roadrunner, is that I truly expected roadrunners to be (I hate to even write this, it's so embarrassing) sort of more, well, emu-sized.
FYI. They're not.
Which really tells you all that you need to know about my understanding of roadrunners.
I can't possibly be the only one who only ever thought of roadrunners in the context of Wile E. Coyote. And folks, in that cartoon, Coyote and Roadrunner are very close to the same size:
Not right. Coyotes (which I see a lot) are about medium dog sized, with longer legs, proportionately, than most dogs. Roadrunners are not - I repeat, not - about 2/3 the size of real-world coyotes. If a coyote stood up on its hind legs, a roadrunner could not (again, I repeat - not) look it in the eye. Greater roadrunners are maybe 20-24 inches from beak to tail. And that's pretty big, based on the ones I've seen around here.
FYI. They're not.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
