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Hemlock

During the arduous months of preparation for my junior poet presentation at University of Dallas, way back in good ole 1997, a few things stand out.  One, Enya's album Watermark.  I must have listened to that CD 100 times as I tried to decipher the meaning of over 100 poems, so that I could somehow spout this information back out to a roundtable of professors, some whom I had never met, in a somewhat coherent fashion.  I am very proud of myself, of course, because I passed. 

Looking back over the years, though, I occasionally think about what I could have done to improve my presentation.  I've come up with a few things.  One, I would have gone back in time and gone to UD my freshman year, so that I would have understood that Jr. Poet had a placement, purposefully set forth by the founding faculty for the junior year of study, for very specific reasons.  As it was, I transferred in my junior year, and did not have the advantage of having taken two years of literary tradition to prepare me for this frightening project!  Two, I would have tried to find a silent place in nature to soak up all the information, instead of listening to Enya in a tiny apartment that I shared with two other people :). 

Those two things aside, what did I learn from this experience?  Well, like many things in life, especially academically - related ones, the real learning happens after the event.  While you're going through it, you are just trying to stay above water.  Get through one day at a time, learning as much as you can, like the brain of a spongy three year old.  Then, you spout out your non-processed, massive amounts of knowledge to a group of people who are much more knowledgeable than you are on the subject, come at it from a completely different angle, and are expecting you to defend your teetering position.  I managed.  I survived.

Since then, my enjoyment of Robert Frost is now at an all - time level of appreciation.  The man who stated that "good fences make good neighbors" knows what he is talking about.  Every day I look out my window at my neighbors' homes, staring me back squarely in the face, and think how right he was.  Frost's love of nature and peace stirred something up inside me that I've never quite been able to quell - that longing to live off the grid.  I love that his poetic philosophy was that "all poetry is a reproduction of the tones of actual speech;"  that identifies with my insatiable need for practicality in all things - even poetry. My husband Joe always says he isn't a fan of poetry.  In return I always say, "good poetry is not flowery speech without intent; it is saying what you mean and meaning what you say - with elegance."  That, to me is Robert Frost.  And that, for me, is what I took from my Junior Poet Project.

My dad and I once found a hemlock tree on the island, up in the hills and west of the s-curves, where we posted a copy of the following Frost poem:
"The way a crow shook down on me
The dust of snow from a hemlock tree
Has given my heart a change of mood
And saved some part of a day I had rued..."

And that is putting love of nature into intentional elegance.

Ever wonder why people always say "staying home is THE hardest job" and try to make it sound like a compliment? That's because they're thinking "I would never do this no matter how much you paid me." I actually agree with them, because it isn't actually a "job" in the sense of a career, or the place you're at 8 to 5 Mon-Fri. I think they're sort of trying to compliment you, but given my sometimes uncanny sense of reading between the lines, I am totally reading that they respect it, but they just don't get it. And worse, they look down on it. I mean, why would any woman become a slave to multiple human beings?

When I had my first baby, I began staying home for the first time. I had always worked, because that's what people do. But all it ever was to me was a paycheck. I got very little satisfaction out of any of the jobs I had, and looking back, when I did, it was only within a context where I was using maternal skills that made me feel like I was making a difference. And the interactions were brief, and the people's lives I touched, I never got to see any long-term results.

I suppose that in this day and age the pursuit of making other people happy is not considered a valid career choice. Well, that's because it's not a career at all. It really is a vocation. But how is a person happy at it? Famous persons, including Ghandi, Helen Keller, and several others, define happiness as doing something outside of themselves; in essence, as Mother Theresa did, make a life out of caring for others. What?

This is in essence what a stay at home mom does, if she does it right. This is a crazy notion by most women (and men's) accounts. But what's in it for the almighty me? The self. Love of self. This is the crux of our social issues today. Looking at yourself first in all you do is the single-most destructive thing a person can do in their lives. For any person, single or married, this means the pursuit of pleasure constantly. The "what's in it for me?" mentality. It stifles relationships and breeds boredom, because though it is our instinct to be selfish, it doesn't bring happiness. Not TRUE happiness. Just temporary pleasure, which is not the same thing. Happiness doesn't mean you walk around all day with a big grin on your face, and never have a bad day. Happiness is more like peace - the peace you feel when you do the right thing. Sound familiar? Even though I have learned this through my Catholic faith, everyone has heard it in one form or another.

Now apply it to motherhood. I'm not in it for me. I'm caring for others to make them happy, and guess what? This makes ME happy! Huh? Doi? Ooga? Yep, you heard it right. I can't call that a "job!" It is a calling, yes, and in my faith understanding, a "vocation." (such as the priesthood or the monastery, only it's a vocation to motherhood). This is a completely foreign notion to our society. By society, I mean the rude woman at the grocery store who counts your children in front of you and says "did you mean to do that?" and the barista who inquires not so nicely, "are these ALL yours?" They don't get it. All they see is a woman drowning in children who looks like she got into this situation accidentally. Of course I've been that frustrated woman at Meijer and the tired, irritated mom in the line at Starbucks. But it simply isn't fair for someone to look at me when I'm caffeine - depleted and judge me. It just looks worse when there's children around the mom for some reason. Children call attention to themselves, and therefore to the mom. It's a strange cross between trying to live a quiet life while constantly in the spotlight. I don't wish for the spotlight. It would be easier to care for someone in front of the same people every day, such as in a nursing home. Instead, I have a constantly roaming audience and I never know what the response will be. From myself or from them. Moods can alter the response. I wish I were one of those people who came up with the right response that fit every situation. Usually, I'm armed with some mean old spiteful comment and the woman says something kind about my children, so I have to change tactics. Just about the time I've decided that the whole world is kind and everyone loves children, someone says "I see you had a third since you're second was a girl too." This comment doesn't deserve a response. I suppose my charity has a limit. Rather, it has days with limits. But the peace within my soul from knowing I'm living the life I was called to live helps me to get up again the next day and face the mob again, and hopefully, with a little more charity than I had the day before:)