My friend Amy A. said to me one day, "you're cracking yourself up, aren't you?" It made me laugh because I was finding some kind of amusement in the smallest of things--so small that I cannot remember what it was, but I do remember Amy's words. She has been my faithful friend, comrade, partner in parental misgivings, and surrogate auntie to my daughters and many other young people. Things in life ARE funny, people ARE funny, I am funny--not in the way of a comedian--my sister Jodi takes THAT prize, but in a way that I am probably very attuned to my own foibles. To me, that is a precious key to the humility I aspire to embrace.
I have been told by mentors that I don't take myself seriously enough and that they are suprised when they try to connect the gravitas of my writing to the person they know. Most of the people I love have reinforced an ethos of never being too full of myself. Trust me (and if you have read any of my posts), I will be constantly subject to a generous skepticism that I think everyone needs. Oscar Wilde wrote about "The Importance of Being Earnest" and the title speaks for itself. He was one of the most clever and humorous writers of his time. While I cannot match dandy Wilde's talents or longevity, I do believe that earnestness is impossible without seeing the funny sides of life and having enough humility to laugh at oneself.
I laugh heartily every time I speak with my family members. It was the bloom in our household that has carried us through everything. It is the glue in my friendships and almost as important as my faith in God. You know, the Almighty has his own sense of humor too. I remember telling a priest I work with, "God's a funny guy." I think I know what I ought to pray for or do and he surprises me, trips me and gives me what I really need at that moment. I would like to have that kind of omnipotence, but I guess that amusement is the byproduct of not being so.
I've taken silly facebook quizzes, including ones that have asked the question, "if you could have a superpower, what would it be?" If the option is there, I check the box that says "read people's minds". I suppose I landed in my profession out of two sources of inspiration:
1) people are fascinating--humorous, interesting and a driving source of curiosity. I am not driven to "know" Angie and Brad's latest moves or silly office gossip, but to "know" the commonalities of humanity. What parts of anothers' life story resonates with mine, what can I learn from it, or how, in earnest, can I feel more humanly connected because they "get it" or have experienced that. I have always been taken aback by people who are inspired to do something for seat belt laws or other civil rules because they have experienced some tragedy in their lives. I don't want to diminish others' grief, motivations or the good work done because of it, but why not do those things BEFORE one is personally affected? No one can do good for every cause or campaign, but to me it's an important part of being human to live that golden rule (that my mother generously and consistently spoke of)with each new sunrise.
2) I grew up in a family of people who all talked at once and there was always a question if anyone was listening. I mean this with the greatest affection, but it's true! Somehow, people knew things, understood each other and laughed together through that cacaphony of banter we habituated as "communication". I've spent my life studying it because sometimes with all the fine details of things that affect communication practices, we all continue our relationships with at least an illusion that we've been heard. How that happens is a topic for another day because this lady needs a chinese massage from Ruby or Lulu or Lisa, who have their own ways. They enter and exit the room, arguing in Mandarin about whose client I am. I lie there amused because I know I belong to all of them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment