I have studied language for about thirty years, and there are two things I know about it: 1) it is exuberant (says more than one wants it to say) and 2) deficient (cannot express all that one wants to say). This simple but remarkable insight came from sociolinguist A.L. Becker, whose work has influenced my views and understanding of language. I have also been writing academic work for the past couple of decades, and this site has been liberating because in academic worlds, I struggle to stay within a certain set of conventions, editorial comments and well researched claims and arguments. If not for publication, then I write for "public" professional situations in the form of reports and proposals, which are necessarily constrained to a "professional" voice.
I have diaries, but this work is different from those entries, which tend to be stream of consciousness details of daily thoughts, feelings and occurences. With a diary, there is an expectation of privacy. With a blog, there is an expectation of interactive responses. I have never written a blog before, so this is an experiment in writing what is true while being conscious that others may read it. That means I want to find the necessary sensitivity, thoughtfulness and care in it when there is a potential "audience" out there. I have given very few people this address with that in mind. And unlike other peoples' blogs, I am not hoping for a wider readership, but only for readers who are genuinely interested in what I would like them to know about the soul (and writer in me that is part of that soul) that guides my choices.
This writing process is far bigger than me. It is like a painter who cannot live without expressing him or herself on a canvas. The difference is that a different medium is used--paint, colors, shapes, lines, perspectives. My canvas is a blank white page and my medium is lived experience, language and some formal training. No painting is ever quite "finished"; the painter needs to cover something up, add something else and at some point, temporarily "arrest" what has been done to call it a finished product. When I write, the process is similar in that and I don't "write" as much as "experience writes me", and at some point I have an intuition to stop-for now. It comes out of deep places, old and new but the language channels where it needs to go, so writing is surrendering to a flow of truths that are being or have been lived.
Throughout this process I am making edits--taking words away, making conscious omissions, and leaving in other things that I believe are necessary for one sentence to work its way into the next one. This blog is more about an important process that is greater than I fully understand or can explain. It is much less about informational content than actually "doing" it. I have heard poets say that they don't write poems, but the poems "write them". I am trying, however inadequately to distinguish what I am doing here from writing a gossip column or "only" going through some kind of catharsis, regardless of how it affects others (I save that for my diaries, which my daughters can read when I'm dead and gone).
I am hoping to say serious things about marriage, womanhood, motherhood, tough choices, survival strategies and negotiating a professional life in the midst of maintaining those roles. I do not expect to get it all "right" every time, but do hope to post things that are as true and nuanced as life itself is.
No human being gets through life unscathed, without having made mistakes, experiencing regrets, great joy, or misfortune that is not anybody's fault, but simply a challenge that God has placed before us. I and others strive for a kind of goodness and integrity where who I am is consistent with what I do. But anyone who is human will always fall short of perfection. If I don't take the time to relect on my own shortcomings--especially with writing, then I may cause harms that I don't notice, are unintended and/or show up as blatant neglect of others' sensitivities. I am most vulnerable to those who matter most to me. I live in a world of about eight billion people, and it is clear to me that I am no more or less important than any other person.
Here, I have tried to focus on a "present" defining moment, this empty nest, and other definining moments that guided me into a life in academics while negotiating parenting and womanhood. I am trying to write this life in a way that is sensitive to others while still telling the truth. I am finding that this is a hard line to negotiate. I could do "creative writing", drawing on fictional characters grounded in life's experiences, but as I have gotten older, I find I get more out of documentary films, biographies and "true life". I could also write only of happy times, but we only know light because it is sometimes dark, and only know happiness because difficulties arise that prove to create unhappy or unjust outcomes, depending on whose point of view is at stake.
All I am asking from anyone who chooses to enter this space is thoughtful reading, patience and understanding. In return, I hope there is some gift of insight, identification with an experience, a reader's location of meaningful memories that had long been forgotten, or some human lesson taken from details that "ring true" and can be shared, ultimately connecting one's humanity to another's.
None of this may square with people who know me "live"--yet I am this person--serious, inwardly guided, constantly thinking, and that one, too, whomever you think she is. My life has been bigger than me, more far-reaching than I have been able to make sense of, and burdened with self-doubt, detailed memories, and painful mirrors of silence that speak loudly of a need to be recognized and acknowledged in ways that others may not be able to imagine.
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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.
Great metaphor for blogging. No one tells the artist what they can and cant paint, same should be for a blog.
ReplyDeleteWell, hon. . . I'm trying to make it "mine" while being sensitive to others in my life. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone, mine or anyone else's relationships. But honestly, once I start the words just go on the page. I could do this 24/7 if I didn't have to live and work. But I do, and it's probably good to take breaks anyway. Believe me, I DO edit while trying to tell the truth. It IS a hard line. Thanks for responding (and understanding) honey. Love you. Mom
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