My posts are leading somewhere, and tonight it is toward the blessing of what it means to be "known" and recognized in a way that is consistent with things I know about myself, but also that I may not be able to see. It's like trying to look into your own ear. It can't be done without a mirror, and even then only from a particular angle. Other people become that source of reflection. I don't mean to sound self-important, but the greatest gifts I have received in life have come from people in whose eyes, voices and actions I recognize myself.
In other words, they "see" "me". Amy tells me the truth no matter how frank or critical her comments might be. Dad "gets" me. Steffie loves me anyway. Shawna sees her future in my past. My teaching mentors saw more capability in me than I ever did. My students see a "professor," (I think) but not the mousey little housewife that walked into Dr. Freeman's office in 1985 saying "I think I might want to go to grad school".
Kwame sees everything about me; he has an artist's eye that finds beauty in the darkest and most human places where past sufferings live. Neville sees a "bossy" woman who enjoys life (Jamaican "bossy" means a woman who carries herself well and tastefully.)
Jodi sees me as auntie, sister, mother of her nieces, alike and unalike as we are--taking our respective places as strongholds of our families, looking above at the generations that produced us and below at the offspring we have worried over, cared for, been proud of and guided in dedication and genuine intention.
My girlfriends of earlier times know me as Bam, the slightly wild one who streaked through a park in the middle of the night at Dana's slumber party and threw up those five tall Coors I drank. The boys saw me as "Bam", Mike's sister who looked too much like him to kiss.
Gary saw me as his wife, the mother of his daughters and as part of a loving family. We have returned to that good place where I feel "known" by him again, appreciating his respect and acknowledgement. My mother sees me under flourescent lighting--a bit harsh but loves me under the soft light of daybreak, bosom to bosom in comradery and understanding founded in motherhood. I am unsure how Amanda sees me. It is possible, likely and even natural that she sees in me things she wants to change for her daughter--to do better, differently and in ways that suit her worldviews. I admire her courage and aspiration, even if it sounds paradoxical. She knows the goodness in me and as well, how it feels to live under the harshness of flourescent lights that mark a first daughter's upbringing. In equal measure, those lights are reflected back to me in flashes, stares, words and inconsistencies that are the cruelties of growing into adulthood as your child helps you do it out of pure and substantial need.
It is never clear what events, doings and sayings will mark memories and which will be forgotten. There is some predictability in foresight and a leap of learning in afterthought. Yet being "known" in the fullest light, and "seen" with generosity, humor and forgiveness is the greatest gift in time.
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Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
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