Sara and Muriel Help Me Keep Morphing

Twice now I've encountered women in books who have no interest in being married and encumbered with the burdens of being a wife and mother. Both times in young adult fiction. Both times in novels written in verse. Both times in period pieces; in the past. One was a full-grown woman, completely ensconced in her life choice, the other a girl, headed toward her choice and destiny. Both times made me think about being single myself. Both times I was so drawn to these characters, it caught me by surprise.

The first is the character of Sara Chickering in Karen Hesse's novel, Witness. The narrative brings together the voices of multiple members of a small Vermont town in 1924 as they are dealing with the influx of the KKK. Each person's voice offers information that weaves together to tell a story. Sara Chickering is a single farmer-woman who chose to remain single after watching her own mother labor as a farm wife and mother. She has not "ended up" single and her aloneness is not the result of being shunned or not chosen by men. Instead it is a clear choice born in young-womanhood and followed to fruition, although it has made her stand out in her community. She is able, as an older person, during the time of the narrative of the book, to provide shelter through a government program for a recent immigrant and his young daughter.

The second is Muriel, in Helen Frost's Crossing Stones. This narrative brings together the voices of two families in rural Michigan in 1917 as their sons go off to war and their daughters struggle to define themselves. There is an easy symmetry in the families and an assumption that the boys and girls will match up and be partnered, but Muriel finds herself questioning this arranged destiny. "Mother: I have no intention of becoming the Mrs. Norman of your imaginary future. Who I am remains to be seen - and I alone intend to be the one to see it." Muriel tells us this on page 15! So early we learn this young woman in 1917 will not be molded easily. And luckily for her, she has a paternal aunt who is fighting for suffrage.

As the reader gets to know Sara Chickering better through her words and thoughts and deeds on Hesse's page, we see she is as maternal as any woman. Her spinsterhood has not rendered her unable to nurture; her singleness has not hardened her femininity. She cares for (the immigrant daughter) Esther as a parent would. As I have experienced myself, the desire to remain child-free does not necessarily mean one is unable to care for children, just that we prefer not to spend our lives doing so. But many assume there is an intrinsic link. "I am not going to have children," I often say to people I encounter in my life. "But you are so good with children," they cry. Yes. I am. I love them. And they love me. But my ability to be good with children and nurture them does not mean I must use that skill as a parent. I get to not do that if I want. And children will come into my life (and have) in other ways, just like Sara Chickering.

Muriel is still a child herself. At 16, she is already questioning the status quo at school and at home, and her parents, although supportive, are cautionary. They tell her she must learn to mind her tongue, to think before she speaks, to not be too forthright with her thoughts or questions. They are raising a daughter, after all, in 1917. When Muriel attempts to write to her friend (not boyfriend) Frank, away at war, her mother is quick - "I'm not aware I know this rule, until I'm embarrassed to be caught breaking it: The gentleman should always be the first to write, Mama informs me. A lady never writes before she has received a letter." Yet two pages later, Muriel's mother says to her daughter after a bout of questioning: "Maybe you won't rock the cradle, Muriel. Some women prefer to rock the boat."

My own parents raised me with similar seeming contradiction in the 1970s and 80s. They raised me that I could be whoever I wanted and do whatever I wanted. But they also asked me to dress more like a lady (in a pre-grunge and grunge world!) and Mom often asked if it would kill me to wear a little make up. They didn't admonish me so much as gently insinuate that being so opinionated might make the boys not like me so much. More than once, my mother said that chasing boys was not appropriate, and that they should call me first, talk to me first. It being a supposed feminist world at that point, I just told her she was crazy and went on with my life. And today, in a supposed post-feminist world, I sometimes wonder if my habits and choices and refusal to live by these rules has contributed to my singleness.

Unlike Sara Chickering and Muriel, I did not know when I was young that I wanted to remain single. I didn't watch my mother stay home, volunteer on the town's finance committee, found the PTA at my elementary school, cook every night of her life without fail, and raise three kids with distaste. I didn't see any of that as burden. I perhaps looked upon my father's life - two jobs and then a switch to a job he was good at but didn't get any real satisfaction from other than being able to provide for us - with a bit of disdain. All that work. Just for money. How tedious. I knew I was a girl, though, and would be a woman. In my family, with all its gender-based practices, I let myself believe I would follow in my mother's footsteps, becoming a wife and mother myself. It wasn't until high school that I started to realize that I wasn't going to easily fit my little square self into that seemingly perfectly round hole.

As I discussed Sara Chickering in class with my classmates this semester, all of whom were far younger than I, I found myself passionate about her. "But," I argued, "here she is, an outsider in her community because she's single and running a farm on her own, but she's got Esther and Leonora to care for. She probably didn't even allow herself before this to know she was so nurturing!" My classmates looked at me, nodded, and moved onto some other topic in the discussion. As I read the end of Muriel's arc of development, leaving home to head to Washington, D.C. to join the suffrage movement herself and to work as a kindergarten teacher (because she is so good with children!), I shed a few tears. There have always been women who have chosen different paths from the norm and there will continue to be.

As I get older and even less romantically attached than ever (if that is even possible), I keep wondering what this is all about. There are a slew of posts on this blog over the past 5 years on this very topic. The past year though, my thoughts have been less about lamenting this state and more about thinking that perhaps this is what was meant for me all along. Perhaps when my revelation came that I didn't want kids, when I was 24 years old, I just wasn't listening enough to catch the other half - that I wanted to stay single and have my life for my own. Is that possible? Could I join the ranks of Sara and Muriel?

Just over 2 years ago, in the heart-broken throes of another lost love possibility, I screamed at my family "If I stay single I will change and never be the same! I will be bitter and I'm so afraid of that!" I was hysterical that day. Losing myself in paranoia and fear and pain. What have I meant when I've said that? I think I mean that I have always wanted to be in a partnership; to be paired up and have another person with whom to face the world and all its adventures. And if I didn't get to have that, I would be so angry, so upset, so disappointed, I would morph somehow into a different person than I was supposed to be. This is a fair assessment, I think. I've never not gotten the things I want: school, jobs, travel opps, adventures. I dream up shit and then I go do it. But this one - not so much.

I think I'm wrong, though. I think I've been wrong. Because I am morphing. I am changing. And it's not for the better or the worse. It is just change. I'm settling into myself. I am feeling more and more like an adult every year. I'm starting not to miss what I've never had. I'm starting to wonder what my life might really be like if I stay single. I think it might be pretty awesome to keep on in this hedonistic, self-centered paradise I've created.

I make choices based on what I want. I love that I have time for things that most of my peers don't because they are so busy being married or being parents. I love that I rent and could care less about owning a house. I love that I can live wherever the hell I want and who gives a shit how good the school system is? I love that all my money is mine and every dime gets spent on me or on whoever I'm giving a gift to that week. I love that all my decisions are made by me and I don't have to check with anyone before I say yes to a request for dinner or a movie or going zipping on a Sunday in October. I love that only my sicknesses mess up my plans. I love that I don't have to worry about anyone else's eating habits. Or anyone else's family. I love all that stuff. LOVE IT.

Sara Chickering and Muriel were both so sure. I'm not. I'm okay with that. I'm often sure about stuff that ends up changing by the time I'm half-way through it. So no matter what comes along, I'll try hard to listen to the messages and not miss things. As I get older, I listen better, because I'm less scared of what I might hear. I can deal with anything. And so I'll carry on, and I'll keep building my rockin' life.

I can tell you this, though. I'm done wasting energy on worrying about it. And that, folks, is true morphing.

Seeking the Great Perhaps

I'm going back to school! First there was this post from 2008 and then this one from last May. And now there's this one. The one where I get to say: I'm going! I'm starting with my first class in July and then 2-a-semester beginning in the fall. YAY! To honor the moment, I thought I'd post my essay for admission to the program.

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I’m a bit like Miles in Looking for Alaska, and I’ve been out seeking a Great Perhaps for most of my life. I’ve called it different things at different times, but when I recently read John Green’s novel, I got this new vernacular to describe what I’ve been doing all along. Through all the seeking, all the roads, all the choices, all the adventures, and all the work, there’s one central thread. One thing that never changes. Books. They are always there with me.

I did the traditional route. I went to high school, applied early decision to Simmons and headed to the residence halls in 1991 as an 18-year-old who had never spent more than a week away from my parents. I finished in four years with a double major, sociology added to communications after a distressing first-semester-junior-year discovery that I didn’t want to be a journalist after all, having ethical issues with the expectations in the field as I understood and perceived them. I held editorial positions on the student paper, was secretary of student government, and served as senior class president. Through my involvement in student activities and leadership development, I applied to go directly to graduate school for higher education administration and student development. I was admitted to the University of Maryland’s program, the best in the nation, and went straightaway. It was something I understood, something I cared about, and something I convinced myself would be my path for life – after all, that’s what we do, right? We find a career and stick? Recent studies confirm this isn’t so, but in the early 90s, there was still the idea that this was the expectation. Throughout my college and graduate school careers, I made time to read for pleasure, astounding pretty much everyone around me. I knew that if I didn’t read for me, I would lose something essential in my identity. So I made time. My graduate school roommate recently reminded me that she lamented not having time to read in grad school and I suggested she read children’s books as they were less of a commitment, but equally as good. She began with my collection and then headed for the library. She remembers me giving her this double gift – reading for pleasure and discovering children’s literature – during a stressful academic time.

By 1997 I’d successfully completed my graduate degree in the requisite two years and held the distinction of being the only member of my cohort to defend my thesis in time for May graduation. I’d taken a job at Occidental College in Los Angeles and moved across the country to work at one of the most diverse small colleges in the United States. Work was good, life was good, and I was creating programs, teaching leadership courses, building an on-campus ropes course, and advising a seemingly unending list of student groups. It was perfect.

It was here that I revisited Children’s Literature. I’d been so focused on other academic pursuits for so many years that I’d not looked seriously at this area for a while. I was still moving my books around with me – Charlotte’s Web, Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, Harriet the Spy, Phantom Tollbooth, Trumpet of the Swan, The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear, Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Heidi books and more. And I was adding new ones – No, David (signed by David Shannon when I went to a gallery in LA featuring his artwork when the book came out in 1998), Series of Unfortunate Events when Snicket hit the scene, James and the Giant Peach when I realized I didn’t own a copy. I took a survey course at Glendale Community College in 2000. I always knew I liked to read, but I was an adult now, experiencing children’s literature as an academic experience. I had no kids in my life, so I wasn’t reading for anyone’s benefit other than my own. I would go to Storyopolis in L.A. and just browse. I started trying to discern what was good and why.

By the time I took that survey course, the Great Perhaps had already called to me again. Just as it did when I decided to go to a college for women. Just as it did when I moved all the way out to L.A. This time, it took the form of travel. Leaving. Going to see a world I was completely unfamiliar with, having never been further than L.A., assuming Toronto doesn’t count. So I recruited a friend and we planned for 18 months and we headed out on a one-way ticket to Beijing, with the intention to circle the globe in a westward manner until we arrived once again on home soil. The Perhaps got the better of me again when I decided, after 6 months on the road (China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal and Thailand again) to stay on Koh Tao, a tiny island in the Gulf of Thailand and learn to be a divemaster and then a SCUBA instructor. I lived there, in a community akin to a model United Nations for 20 months using my counseling and leadership skills to teach diving to strangers (many of whom were learning in a language not their own) and help run a busy dive shop in a developing country.

While travelling, I kept children’s literature on my radar screen. I bought Adventures of a Nepali Frog by Kanak Mani Dixit in Kathmandu and read the Harry Potter books as they came out (the UK versions, which was great). Books are a commodity when travelling; meeting other travelers is imperative for many reasons, not the least of which is to trade for a new book.

Two things led me to leave Thailand and head back stateside. First, while I cared about my colleagues and students greatly, I was working in a hedonistic paradise with no intellectual curiosity or challenge. I found I was hungry for discourse – about anything, really. Second, I was relatively sure that if I stayed out of my profession – higher ed – longer than I’d been in it to begin with, I was going to lose it. And so I headed home and found a proper job again. One that required shoes. After a while longer in higher education, I translated my skills over to the non-profit world. And a while after that, I went back to higher education in a different capacity.

Because proficiency in another language is preferred the M.A. in Children’s Literature program, I’ll add that in the middle of all this was my pursuit of Spanish. I tapped out Brookline Adult Education on their offerings, spent two weeks in Sucre, Bolivia one summer doing intensive study while living with a host family and then three months in Paraguay doing the same thing. Between 2005 and 2010, I chose Spanish-speaking destinations for my travel with only one exception (Spain, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, and Turkey, the exception). The last time I was orally tested, in 2006, I was high intermediate. I never reached fluency, but I can hold my own in varied situations and places and I can read enough to get a full grasp of what I need to know.

And so here I am, at 37, back in the U.S. for nine years and in Boston for seven, trying to find my way professionally and figure out how all this seeking the Perhaps weaves together and how the constant of books fits in.

In 2008, when Simmons announced the dual degree with Children’s Literature and Library Science, I finally began to think seriously about how to finally make this thread into something. The constant of books and the hum of books for children that had been coursing through my body for almost 10 years needed attention. But I dismissed it after some brief fantasizing as too expensive, too crazy, too late. Here I am in 2011, and I’ve cycled back to it again. It’s not going away. It doesn’t matter how old I get or how crazy anyone thinks I am for knowing about Walter and Gossie and Martha and Katniss and Keesha and Jerry. This is what I’m supposed to do; supposed to study.

For the past six months, in preparation for applying and matriculating, I’ve delved back into literature academically again. I attended the Horn Book Simmons Colloquium on October 2. Because I work at Tufts and have access to free courses, I took Slavery’s Optic Glass, a 19th century literature course looking at slavery through the writing of authors such as Thomas Jefferson, Lydia Maria Child, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frederick Douglass. I am registered for Children’s Literature with Marion Reynolds for the spring semester at Tufts. I sat in on a session of CHL410 with Megan Lambert in October, doing the reading and participating in class. I get the Horn Book eNewsletter. I have read close to 75 picture books and young adult novels in this time, both new titles and classics I’d not read before. I read most of the reading list for the freshmen at Lowell High where my mother works after she passed the list along.

Yes, I will be 38 when I begin. And 40 when I finish. And no, I don’t know what’s next after I earn a liberal arts masters. That’s part of what excites me. What could I discover? What might I find out I care about that I don’t even know exists right now? What talent might emerge that will surprise me? What internship might I try out that scares me? As a life-long seeker of the Great Perhaps this kind of unknown is okay with me.

This essay is meant to be partly about how this program fits into my professional goals. I did some math. Let’s assume I will work until I’m 70. (This seems increasingly common, and I’m single and healthy.) That is another 32 years. And I’ve already worked 14 (not even counting graduate school). That’s a total of 46 years for my working life, of which I’ve worked 30 percent so far. That, of course, means that I have 70 percent to go. When I figured this out about 6 months ago, I was first horrified because I wondered how would I ever make it through the rest of my work life with no real career path or clear focus– the state I’ve been in for about 3 years now. Then I was elated because this was the justification I’ve been looking for to make pursuing another degree at this stage in my life less crazy than one would think.

I want, in the end, for books to be not only my center thread, but my career. I will better understand them; be an expert in them. I will work in publishing, or buying, or an agency or somewhere I cannot yet imagine and will work with other people who share my love. I will not be the weirdo with the book in her bag or talking about some book she just finished to a bunch of people who could care less. I am tired of saying “I love children’s books.” Who doesn’t? But, loving them versus making them my work and my passion and my Perhaps? Those are two very different things, and this degree will act as my bridge from one to the other.

I will give Simmons and the Center for Children’s Literature everything I have. All my focus, all my brain, all my heart. One thing about me as a seeker, I’m not a lazy one. I set my mind to things and do them, and do them well. I am a fantastic colleague and classmate and am a thoughtful and dedicated learner. I am organized and interested. I make mistakes and learn from them. I write what I think is a great paper and get a B- and diligently work to understand what happened and improve the next time. I get frustrated sometimes, and disappointed, but filter that energy as positively as possible and inquire to figure out how to avoid it in the future. I know and care about Simmons; I started my intellectual and professional career with you and hope Simmons will help me continue that journey.

I believe strongly in the idea that “when you want something, the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it,” a theory I’ve appreciated from Cuelho’s The Alchemist for many years. I also believe that …”when you really love something, it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love,” one of Phineas’ theories in Knowles’ A Separate Peace. I am sure that today, as I write this, the universe is telling me it is time for me to seek the Greatest Perhaps and to honor the love affair that children’s books and I have been having for many years. I can’t wait to get started.