Pause

In church this morning (I know…my blogs have never started with these words…bear with me, please), the pastor gave a sermon on imperfection, greed, and dishonesty; on the impossible world we live in and how difficult it can be to do the right thing and how sometimes doing the wrong thing isn’t always such a bad thing (apparently Jesus did it, too).  Now I don’t go to church often, and I’m currently in a stage where I’m deciding whether church is the right place for me right now, but today it was like the sermon had been hand-crafted for me and where I’ve been these last few weeks. 

Since I turned 25, I’ve been on a bit of a spiritual journey.  Something about hitting that number made me realize I needed to have more to my life than stories about foggy Saturday nights spent with too much wine and I’m-not-sure-what-his-name-was-but-he-made-me-laugh.

So for the last few years I’ve attempted (strong emphasis to be placed on the word attempt) to begin making healthy-life-choices, like “I really shouldn’t smoke that cigarette, even though I’ve had enough booze to sink a ship” or, “I should totally get the garden salad WITH the cheeseburger ”.  "Does running away from the police count as exercise?" Or, “No, I really need to pass on the birthday cake.  I’ve had three donuts for breakfast already.”  Somehow, I feel these choices redeem the thousands of bad ones I’ve made since I turned 18.  I get the salad dressing on the side, don’t I!?

In line with such healthy living, I’ve had this sneaking suspicion that I should find a spiritual community, too (which is not to say that when my girls and I have had enough to drink that we aren’t about as spiritual as it gets), but I'm talking about a community that can help me continue to make these healthy choices.  And I can’t lie that I have another reason for seeking a church community:  maybe I’ll find a nice young, independently wealthy church-going man who likes children, folk art, and wine and who wants to let me volunteer professionally and sit on committees and boards for the rest of my life and spend all of our winters in Africa (Jesus made wine out of water, people, have some faith). 

I’ve been church-hopping for a few years now and I've struggled to find just the right congregation for me—somewhere that feels comfortable, and safe.  Somewhere that supports my diverse lifestyle, and the lifestyles of my loved ones (read: a lot of my friends are really, really gay and I really, really love them and really, really lack the tolerance I need to be around people who are intolerant), and a church that focuses on peace-making and justice.  And that's not to say that I haven't found churches that I like.  I’ll find a place that seems nice enough, but beyond a powerful sermon or two, I find there’s really no one like me there—someone who believes the same things I believe and who even begins to understand what I do for a living (which I can totally understand, because I can barely explain it myself). 

Partially, I wonder if this lack of church success is because I can’t seem to decide what I actually believe these days.  And despite everything I’ve seen, and everything I’ve done, I feel like I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what exists out there for me.  So church has been low on the totem pole.  And it doesn’t help when there are crazies out there burning religious texts in the name of “God”.  I know they’re only about 40 people deep, but 40 people deep too many, I think.

These last few weeks have been challenging and exhausting and at times, painful.  I’ve been working impossible hours and facing pretty impossible to-do lists for just one person.  I truly love my job, but there are weeks when there are never enough hours and certainly not enough hands to actually get what we need done.

A pretty horrible tragedy happened last week, too.  One of my dearest friends and colleagues L. lost a close friend, C., suddenly and tragically, at the hands of a domestic dispute.  Though I didn’t know C. well, I had met her a few times through L. and I can’t help but feel devastated by the loss, not to mention the loss for this woman’s children, family and friends.  Domestic disputes should never lead to the death of two parents—regardless of who was responsible.  It’s eerie to hear the news and know the people that they’re talking about.  One would think that I'd become immune to the tragedy of everyday life, when you deal with it as much as we in Baltimore City do, but it never stops hurting.  Or stinging.  Or biting.  It forces you to pause and take a deep breath, even when you haven’t allotted that pause and deep breath into your schedule for the day.

Death is never something we’re truly prepared for, and even when we know it’s coming, it stings hard and shuts down life temporarily (and sometimes a bit longer than temporarily).  I know because I’ve grieved for friends and grandparents, students and mentors.  I’ve felt the sting.  The sinking stomach.  The numbness.  I started writing this blog about this time last year because my grandmother was dying.  I used this space, and you, my readers, as a way to cope with what didn’t make sense.  And in the process, I rediscovered a voice I’d lost over the last few years of academic writing and grant writing and all the writing that had nothing to do with me. 

And a year later, I’m still using this space to process the things that don’t make sense and to celebrate the things that work and to share the things that don’t work.  And this public stage is refreshingly raw and revealing.  There are times where I hesitate to write what I’m thinking because I wonder how it will be received, or who might read it, but I generally push forward and think, “if not now, when?”  And what is it that causes the hesitation?  What kind of super human expectations do we have on ourselves if we can’t be true to ourselves?  If we can’t be honest with our friends and families about our stories?

I’ve written a lot about expectations in the past—expectations that sometimes feel unfair and that confuse me and that overwhelm me.  Expectations that cause me to wake up at four in the morning and pace and write emails (and sometimes online shoe shop or bake muffins).  Expectations that we women weren’t told about when we were whispered stories by our mothers about someday being Wonderwoman.  The things they didn’t tell us when they taught us to idolize the suffragists and to become good feminists—to raise the bar for ourselves and to destroy the glass ceiling.  I mean, I almost hesitate to compare our lives now, as modern women, to the lives of women one hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, but I can’t help but wonder if the expectations now are almost too high.

The things we women are expected to want to do—don’t you want to pump your breast milk with your automated breast pump in your $600 tailored suit in between meetings?  Don’t you want to be expected to want children but to also want a career, too?  Don’t you want to have the burden of figuring out how to fit it all in—the growing up, the going to graduate school, the finding of someone who isn’t a total freak and/or apeshit NUTS that you actually want to share a life with (and then the follow-up dating that needs to happen), the marriage (the planning), the birthing of babies, and then the subsequent raising of said babies, while not giving up on the education you spent $200,000 on (okay, you, your parents, that bitch Sallie Mae, and the federal government)?  Don’t you want to have a conference call on your iPhone while you’re waiting in the carpool line?  And we're supposed to do this in high heels, something gracefully feminine, without ever looking tired, and without ever falling victim to the all-day-yoga-pants and arch-supportive-shoe.  Or without going into debt.  Or without getting too fat.

These last few weeks I’ve been running around at breakneck speed, zooming in and out of meetings, eating lunches out of plastic wrappers, working fourteen, fifteen hour days and planning every minute of my day, down to the exactly three times I’ve allowed myself to pee.  My dog has been so mad at me that she pooped in the house twice last week (and I admit, I’m jealous that I too can’t take out my anger by pooping in the middle of someone’s floor) and she keeps giving me this look that screams, “go ahead and leave again.  I’ll just be here at the house.  Doing absolutely nothing while you’re gone.  All day.”  My Blackberry has become my best friend.  My confidant.  And my accomplice to this messy lifestyle.  She never leaves my side, even when she's been silenced.  Sometimes her little red blinking light is like my very own personal lighthouse. 



And a part of me feels so accomplished when I survive these weeks.  This is, in part, what they wanted, I think.  This is what those women, for so many years, fought tooth and nail, so that I could run around with a Blackberry, saying the things I’m supposed to say in meetings, looking the look, with that ease that says, “oh hey, yeah, I made these muffins from scatch at three a.m. when I couldn’t sleep.”  I’ve conquered not only one domain—but TWO.  I can work AND bake.  Hand me a breast pump.  I’m a modern superwoman.

But theres the part of me that hates it too, and hates what it does to me.  The me who doesn't ever want to be like the women in Sex and the City or the women in a bad Bravo reality series.  The me that hates that we're expected to pull all this off; to be smart and feminine, sexy and maternal, nurturing and understanding, successful and yet, still simple, and low-maintenance.

But then when we're forced to pause, when the cycle gets disrupted, we're allowed a finite window of time in which we can really evaluate our lives.  We can challenge our own truths and be critical of ourselves:  Am I doing the things that make me happy?  Am I doing the things that fulfull me?  That enrich me?  That propel me forward? 

This morning we talked about a parable in Luke that deals with a shrewd manager and a greedy landowner.  The sermon went deep into the story, theorizing all the ways it could be interpreted, but more importantly, discussing the many, many ways in which our world is imperfect.  That we’re guided towards choosing wealth and greed because we’re supposed to advance ourselves and grow our bank accounts and 401Ks and become someone.  But that Jesus tells us that we need to get in the habit of making choices for the good, even when what’s good doesn’t seem clear.  This, of course, led us to a discussion about how to even know, or understand, what good and bad means anymore.  The many, many ways in which we’re expected to make smart choices when there actually aren’t always smart choices to be had among the handful of choices we’re usually being asked to decide between.  We make the best choices we can, with the best of intentions, and hope that we’ve done the right thing.  And ideally, the take-home message for someone like me is that the expectations I’ve put on myself for anything above and beyond just doing the right thing shouldn’t consume me anymore.

I laughed inside because I’ve spent so much time convincing myself that there is no place for me at church, and here I am, at church, feeling like the sermon was written for me.  Feeling like the sermon was written for C. and for all the women around me who are expected to accomplish the impossible, everyday.  For all of us who keep ourselves awake at night, worried that someone will punish us for having made the best choice out of the choices we were given, even though it might have been the wrong choice.  That someone will pull the tablecloth out from under us and surprise us with a mandated "stay-at-home-and-bake" day and secretly give our jobs away.

Which causes me to pause.  And think.

Two-headed monster

Sometimes after I’ve been on vacation for a while or, say, I've spent two weeks in another country (or on another continent), I have this sobering re-entry into the real world.  Into my real life.  For the short amount of time I’m away from my daily life, I disconnect just long enough to remember what life can be like when it isn’t a total bat-shit crazy race.  I’m reminded of another kind of life that exists—“Island Life”, I call it.  And I lust for ways to integrate island life into my Baltimore life.  My noisy, has-and-wants-too-much wandering life.

When I was in college I’d sneak away to my quiet, picturesque mountain town during holidays and breaks and I’d so quickly fall back into my old patterns.  I’d hang out with the people I’d known since toddlerhood, cracking the same old jokes since 1985, and falling into a kind of lazy comfort that only comes from years and years of life shared with friends and family.  I’d drive the long way home just to see the sunset over the mountain ridge.  I’d leave my house and take my ancient Honda station wagon, covered in liberal, peace-mongering bumper stickers, “up in the forest” (which is what we’d say when we’d take the windy road up into the mountains and into the national park that covers a large portion of the county) and park my car along the side of the road.  There are hundreds of spots where you can just wedge yourself between the trees and the river and listen to the noise it all makes when you’re quiet.  And I would sit, often stunned, next to that river, comparing my two worlds.  The noise of the water just loud enough that I was comfortable thinking whatever I wanted—no one else could possibly hear it.  Here was this life that was really quite charmed—safe and secure, nestled between the river and the valley.  I knew everyone I needed to know—and they knew me.  I didn’t have to prove much to anyone anymore because they’d known me since I was in diapers.  They knew what I was capable of (and they knew my faults, too).  Life, in general, was pretty quiet and slow.  Things happened gradually.  People lived pretty simply.

Then there was this new life I’d discovered in this bizarrely large city called Baltimore and this small, wooded, suburban college campus.  I could never find my way anywhere (accept around the one loop road that outlined my college), the city roads made no sense to me, the drivers honked and drove too fast, and these “beltways” that wrapped themselves around Baltimore and Washington, D.C. felt more like boa constrictors than highways, slowly choking the life out of the communities they “belted”.  But there was this group of people I’d met who were so much like me it scared me (because that didn’t happen often in that small town of mine).  They were liberal and progressive and snarky and thought the same weird things I thought were funny to be funny, too.  There were things in this city that were wholly new to me—things that scared and excited me, equally.   I encountered people and situations I thought only existed in movies (uhh…lesbians are real!?).  I made all kinds of messes.  And mistakes.  It was exciting and shiny and new and I had to work, for the first time in a long time, to have an identity—to find that same “comfort” I’d had in my cozy little hammock of Western North Carolina.  Oh and did you see The Wire? Yeah.  It was like that, too.

I’d take the flight, or ten hour drive, back to Baltimore, fretting over the transition that would inevitably happen in the coming days.  The giving up of what I knew for the gnawing discomfort of the unknown.  The speeding up of life.  The loss of my sweet, subtle southern accent.  The lack of understanding people had about where I was from and what real life could look like without giant shopping malls, access to designer anything (because we had Sky City and Wal-Mart…take your pick), or anything too complicated, really.  Not to mention there was this charming naïveté I’d come to love about the people I grew up with.  It couldn’t be more different from the cynicism and biting commentary I was growing to love from my new Northeastern friends (although I wasn't entirely sure I really liked it just yet).  I almost felt like the two worlds couldn’t possibly share space in my identity.  It was too exhausting to go back and forth.  It was basically culture shock, every single holiday and vacation.

And I’ve discovered, for better or for worse, that gradually, I’ve shifted my identity.  I’m still from that small mountain town and my childhood is an inescapable part of who I’ve become—but I’ve modified my home base.  I’ve allowed a lot of complication into my life.  It’s messier and noisier than I ever expected it to become.  I care too much about the brands on my feet and the realness of the pearls in my ears.  I still fall in love with all the wrong people (and some of the right ones, too).  Baltimore has become my home, without asking (rude), and while I’ve come to love the noise and rats and quirky appeal of Charm City, there is still something wonderful about getting away.  About sneaking out at the crack of dawn and watching the harbor fade in the distance as I head south (or just out).

It never fails, though, that the getting away triggers all these questions and leads me into this deep, dark journey into the “person I’ve become”.  And it awakens the Piscean gypsy in me that feels uncomfortable with being so settled—so embedded in a lifestyle that I can’t quickly pack up and leave from without a moving truck and at least a month to do laundry and buy boxes.  It makes me think questions like, “Have I become the asshole I never wanted to become?” or “Would I like me if my high school me met me now?”

There is no doubt that Baltimore has changed me.  Working in a low-income urban community in an inadequately resourced public school system will change your life.  It changed the way I think and the way I talk and the way I see the rest of the World.  It changed how I think about systems and education and accessibility.  In fact, it changed my whole path.  I never intended to stay this long.  I had a one year plan.  This turned into a five year plan.  And it looks like it’s quickly become a ten year plan.  I think I suck at plans.

And the timing of this internal babbling is pretty spot on.  For those of you who work in higher education, you know what the months of August and September are all about.  It’s like our January.  Our spring.  Our Easter.  Also, our living hell.  We are reborn into a new academic year with a new freshman class of students, so wide-eyed and brimming with excitement and fear and all those feelings of being torn between their old life and the new life they’ve yet to realize.

These last few weeks have also been trying, to say the least.  These are the weeks where we all cuss under our breath, all day long, wondering why the hell we pissed away June and July with retreats and half-days and week-long vacations (although if I recall correctly, my summer wasn't particularly quiet, either).  These are the weeks we work 10 hour days and weekends without even realizing it (what day is it, anyway?).  These are the days we deal with hovering parents and toxic levels of anxiety and lots of tears and lots (and lots) of whining.

But these are also the days where I find myself questioning, just like the first-year students, "Where have I come from?" And "where am I going?"  Sometimes the motivational talks and speakers and events continue to reach me, and to move me (perhaps more than the students?).  The messages of "explore with wonder and awe" and "challenge yourself to grow" are messages I have to remind myself every morning.  Because it's easy to become okay with the mundane routine.  It's easy to get caught in the cycle of blah and to forget that a part of living life is actually enjoying it.

As I've been readjusting to a new semester, a new year, and frankly still trying to process all the things I'm thinking and feeling about this last trip to West Africa, I'm feeling contemplative and like I'm just on the verge of some new breakthrough--some new insight into my world. 

When I'm traveling or headed home, I often don't look at a watch.  I try my damndest not to have a schedule or a plan.  I try my best to go with the flow (although the "work" me has been so well trained that it often takes days to really slow down and disconnect).  But coming back is like a slap in the face.  My inbox has piled up, I've forgotten just how mean people really are, and the soft, quiet, subtlety of not really caring what happens is replaced by the loud, blinking, anxiety of my working life. 

This week I've been having lots of long talks with friends and colleagues about the nature of life and the nature of our work in higher education and in the community.  These have been deep, philosophical conversations that ebb and flow somewhere between, "why are privileged white people so stupid!?" and "does the work we're doing even really accomplish anything?"  And somewhere in those discussions, too, is this private battle of mine between these two people inside me, like a two-headed monster; the "Baltimore" me who has become hardened and bold; the small town girl who still remembers what the frogs on the pond sound like at night and how the dew smells first thing in the morning.  The girl who empathizes with the urban poor and all the issues wherein (and has become pretty vocal about it, too) and the girl who understands small-town values and who wasn't shocked when George W. Bush was elected again.  The girl who has spent months of her life in places like Ghana and Benin, experiencing new cultures and religions and tastes and sounds and people and the girl who remembers being afraid to drive to the other side of the county because it was too far away.  The girl who still smiles anytime she smells honeysuckle and the girl who doesn't even notice anymore when a rat darts across her path in the alley.   

The girl who is still trying to figure out how to have the best of both worlds.  And how to be happy about it.