Girls and Their Bodies

Previously published on Grown and Flown 

I screwed up this weekend.  My daughter told me a story, and all of my learning, all of my grownupedness, all of my feminism went out the window, and I was a teen again, living in my insecurity. I know better than that. I expect better than that. She deserves better than that.

The story: My daughter is 13 and went to the town center to hang out with a friend of hers.  While they were walking around, a group of teenaged boys (according to her, much older) walked by and one said, "my friend thinks you're cute," laughed and kept walking. Here's the part where I screw up: She was clearly upset, and I said, "so what, that's nice." Oof. The look she gave me. I could see my failure as a parent, as a woman, in her eyes. It wasn't until later that I understood where my comment even came from.

Like most girls, I was hugely insecure in middle and high school. I hated my looks. In middle school, I looked like a child, while other girls were already womanly. I was tiny (not even 5 feet yet), and flat and strait, and my hair wouldn't perm and my nose was too big and my eyes took up my whole face. In high school, I suddenly grew curves and a C cup and thank God grunge was in and I could hide it all under huge shirts. No one could want me. I was sure of it. 

None of these thoughts are or were unique to me. 

And then I got a boyfriend and suddenly found my body and saw it was of use, and it became my everything. It was the thing that was attractive about me. Because it couldn't be my mind, or my ideas. Those hadn't changed. My body had. So I lapped up the attention. I broke up with boys and dated others. I laughed when men made comments on the street. I wore tight tops, and hoped for comments, saddened when they didn't come. I put all of my hopes in that body of mine. My mistake came in thinking my body had given me control. 

But I gave that body away so easily. To their comments, their leers, their wants and needs. I thought by giving it up, I would gain something, though even then, even now, I can't tell you what. I starved that body. I worked that body into shape. I dressed it up and put it out for show as though the rest of me was useless. I thought that if a boy or a man loved my body, it meant he loved me. So I gave it away again and again, looking for love.  But when I finally met the man who would be my husband and the father to my children, I had put that girl behind me. I had put my passions toward teaching and theater and friends. I had grown tired of separating body from mind, and had found a way to work them equally, to sometimes even like them both.

When I was pregnant, I became terrified that I would have a girl. How could I, with all of my past harboring squatting rights in my heart, raise a daughter? How could I strengthen her and keep her safe? How could I let her know her beauty without making that beauty all important? There are so many mine fields. How would I avoid them all?

Now that very daughter is going to high school next year, and she looks just like I did, and God, she is beautiful, and strong, and funny, and insecure, smart, and so much more worldly than I was at 13. And I am terrified. But I have brought her this far. We have almost finished middle school, and I have walked that fine fine line just above the minefield, only occasionally setting one off. But there is no right answer here, as much as I want to have one. I will make my mistakes, and she will make hers. And we will keep walking that line, hopefully together, for as long as we can.

She and her friends, her generation, have a different relationship with their bodies than I did, as a child in the 90s. They wear sports bras to school and show off their midriffs, but it is not for the boys. I believe her when she tells me that. She is comfortable with her body, in a way I never was. She thinks it's gross that a boy, 3 years older, would look at her, or say she's cute. Her body is not for him. It's for her. She is already so far ahead of where I was, and while it doesn't mean I have nothing to fear in the future, she's certainly starting in a stronger place. I think that's all I could ask for. 

A Valentine for My Daughter

I bought some plants the other day. Everyone scoffed because plants come to my house to die, but every so often I try again. I watch as they grow tiny buds, confident in their own regeneration, and bend toward the light. I breathe in their hope and their resilience. I tell myself that this time I will water and watch. I will sustain them. I will not let the weeks slip away as I have in the past. This time they will grow.

The other night, when you asked me to help you fall asleep, I could have lived in the moments we spent together forever. I was so tired from my perpetual insomnia, and my COVID cough that lingers. But you gave me the gift of your gaze and we laughed and cuddled under your blanket and looked up at the lights dancing slowly across your ceiling, and my shoulders loosened and I could pretend that the rest of the day was nothing, erased, subsumed by the now. We were both so completely there. Just us. Just me and my mini-me. There was no fear, no judgment or anger at our helplessness in the face of the everyday. We were right where we belonged, in our small cocoon of time. It was perfection. But my body insisted I kiss you goodnight, break the mood, separate from you, even as my mind remained. Know that those moments will sustain me. I hope you hold them as close as I do.

It is so easy to let the world hurt you, my love. What starts out as a tap on the shoulder, becomes a warning shove, and eventually an assault. Stand straight when you can, but falter when you must. We can not be strong forever. Our bodies know the difference and we must listen. You told me yesterday that a girl can’t do anything, can’t love anything, without judgment from another. I have thought of nothing else since you said that. Who is judging you? What are they saying? I could only sigh and remember how I thought I could never measure up.

When I was in high school and even into college, I was sure that I was forever just the sidekick. People befriended me because I was friends with someone for whom they actually cared. I was Christina’s friend, Joanna’s friend, Jaime’s friend and so I had other friends. So I was surrounded by people, but not because of me, of who I was. I couldn’t imagine anyone being drawn to me. I saw myself as nothing, worthless. My worth came from finding the right person to align with. I was good at that. I don’t know when I realized that people were, in fact, drawn to me. That I had light. That I was smart. That came later.

I built so many walls around my heart. But when it came down to it, I was never a very good engineer. There were cracks and crevices in those walls. They were forever breaking down. Water is stronger than you’d think and my tears could wear away my best defenses. I found sarcasm early on and wielded it as my strongest weapon. It was most useful against myself. If I mocked my weaknesses no one else could mention them. If I pretended strength, then that’s what people saw. I cried in the silent spaces, in my room, in the dark. I still can’t cry in front of others, even those I love. It reeks of weakness, and I must be strong. The generations of women in our family taught me that. They are and were the strongest people I know, yet sometimes I believe it is what holds me back the most. You are allowed to falter. Know that. As in all things, let balance be your guide. Too far toward strength, and you will push the world away, too far toward weakness and you will fall beneath its feet.

Know that your body is everything it needs to be, and treat it so. I have watched as you grow into it anew each day, as you play hide and seek with who you are and who you want to be. You try on new styles and ideas, you give up leggings for jeans, skinny for wide legs, full length for crop tops. You don’t ask me anymore what matches. You have realized by now, I am not the one to ask. You are finding your flair, and with it your swagger. Your body too will change and morph and grow and shrink. You will find the parts you love and loathe, and those will change as well. But, let it always be you who fashions these labels. No one else should ever lay claim to your body or your mind. They are yours alone. Your body must be listened to intently. There are so many other voices competing to drown it out. It is so easy to listen to them all instead. But your body knows its hunger and needs. Let it whisper them to you. Feed your body when it asks and you will have the space to feed your soul.

And baby, feed that soul. Find the thing that fills you up. That challenges you to push and work and glow. You are fire, sparked and ready to light up the world. Don’t be afraid of your heat. Use it and we will all be better for it. Strut across that stage and sprint the field and fill your brain and laugh and laugh and laugh.

And know that I will be there, always waiting for your gaze to find me in the crowd, always ready to provide the light you need.

COVID

 I've never had the flu. My husband has. My son has. But I have never had the flu. When COVID found me I was woefully unprepared. It hurt. My throat, my head, my muscles, and my skin. My skin actually hurt. And I have been tired. So very tired. I can't shake it. All of my other symptoms have gone, but I am still so very tired. Yet, I know just how lucky I am. My whole family became positive because of me, which was unsurprising. My daughter (as she mirrors me in most things) has echoed my symptoms. She is the only one. She started with the sore throat, progressed to a fever and overall heaviness and cough. Hopefully in three days, her symptoms too will pass, leaving her with fatigue and a cough, but nothing else. Hopefully. 

When the Connecticut Department of Health called me today, I was more than ready to answer all of their questions, and was humbled when they asked me about any and all help I might need. Did I need help accessing healthcare? No, my job has provided. Do I need help with rent or mortgage assistance? No. I can continue to pay my way. Am I concerned that I can not care for my loved ones? No. We are able. We are able. We are able. We are so very blessed. But for all those who are not in my position, I'm glad that we are counting. I'm glad there are people (even on the weekends) who are taking names and numbers. I'm glad that they are asking the right questions. And more than anything else, I am glad that there is someone in power who will listen to those data points. I am glad science and education are back in the White House. 

For those who question, teachers are getting COVID. There are lots of us. There is mitigation of course. Masks and space and dividers help. But teachers are getting COVID. I could not teach for most of last week because of the weariness in my very bones, because if I sat up for too long I got dizzy. Because my fever made me cold all the time under layers and blankets. Because everything hurt. Because it hurt to talk. But I wanted to teach. I felt guilty not teaching. I felt like I was failing my students. There is an AP exam on the horizon. My twelfth graders are working on presentations. I still responded to their emailed questions. I still checked their progress. I still got paid, and I am ever thankful for that. But I also still felt like it was not, could not ever be enough. But as teachers, we often, if not always feel that way. We are never really enough. 

My own kids were still working this past week, as well. Quarantined from school, they continued on. My daughter livestreamed into her classes and did her best to keep up. My son had asynchronous work, and livestreamed in for the read aloud at noon. They kept up. They pushed. They asked me for help. We fought over reading (for one) and math (for the other). But we pushed. We kept on. 

Tomorrow I will livestream in and teach my classes. I am still in quarantine. I will do my best for my students, as always. I will be honest about my health, about my son (who will be by my side as he always is when I am home). I will check in on them all, their stress levels, their anxieties, their day to day well being. But I will do so with a new perspective. COVID is exhausting. I didn't know that weariness until this past week. I didn't really know what many of my students have known, have witnessed, have felt, until just now. I know it now. 

It is a good reminder that frailty is always just a breath away. We do not know what is to come, or how we will withstand the moments of our lives. But we are able, more than we might know. We are blessed, and we are able. 

I'm fine

Last night I lay with my son. Nightmare after nightmare rolled through him like seismic waves. I stayed with him all night. My alarm went off in another room and bleary eyed I crawled away. He did not notice me leaving. 

And then in minutes, lunches made, and backpacks packed, I was walking out the door. We yelled our goodbyes across the house and my legs walked  to a car I barely saw. My mind still in his room, my body still feeling his body, wiry and warm curling into mine. 

It is dark outside, and pouring. My breath trembles within me and I am close to pulling over, turning back, calling in. I am tired, and this is all just too hard.  But I press on. Slowly through the backsplash of the truck in front of me, slowly rounding the curve almost blindly, thankful that it is 6:30 and there is no one on the sidewalk or close to the curb. 

I am there at the school, smiling beneath my mask as I listen to my colleagues, my friends, as they exhale their anxiety. I am an ear and a laugh. I am anything but the hug I used to be. I am my hidden smile. They ask about me, and I am fine. I am always fine. I share my night but lighten it, always. It was fine. I got some sleep. Tonight will be better. I am fine.

There is a boy outside my room. He is a teen, but now a child. His shoulders are up and he is tense. I chat about nothing and open the door. We talk about his college essay. We do not talk about his mom. The pressure. We talk about words written on a page and he relaxes. Then there are more. They trudge in, silently, and I think of every other year, of every other class that has never been this quiet. That has never been this still. They stare at me, at the wall, at nothing at all from behind masks. I call their names. They do not answer. I have seen them and they feel no need. They know I know.  I stop. I breathe.  I tell them that I see them. I cut open the gash that is festering. I let in the air. We need to talk. So they tell me. They speak their every pressing needs. We do not worry about the work. We will get to it.  First we talk.  They talk and I listen. I laugh and smile and tease. 

I tell them about my night. I tell them about my beautiful daughter and how she sits there hour after hour staring at a screen, reminding her teacher in a classroom just a mile away that she is present, that she is more than just a voice. I share with them that since the start of the pandemic I have become obsessed with trauma shows. I have no time for funny. I want to feel, like there is not enough drama to fill the world from my small life alone. I am binging heartache so I don't feel my own.

I tell them I want a dog. I know that it might kill my husband, but there is a hole in my heart that has widened since COVID and the only thing that can fill it is a helpless furry creature who loves me and only me. I will not allow it to love anyone as much. That is where I am right now.  

And as I share, I feel the lightening of the room. For a moment, we are all face to face, nothing in between us but the oxygen we share. For a moment we are back to what we were. 

And then a hand goes up and the question is asked about the essay, about the word count about the due dates, and we are back. Reality closes in.

For now, I will live in that moment that we had. That moment where we all forgot the present.  That will be the moment that gets me through the week. Because when you are the person that other people turn to, it's easier just to say I'm fine. I will sleep tonight. I know it.

Teaching in 2020

My birthday just passed.  I am 44. I realized this morning that I have been teaching for half of my life.  That is a weighty truth. Thousands of students have passed through my classroom in that time. Thousands of beating hearts heavy with the anxiety of growing up. I have been a part of that and them for a year and sometimes two. Some have become friends on social media and I get to watch them build their lives. I have been lucky. I have been lucky enough to have a job that is emotionally and intellectually fulfilling for 22 years. I have been lucky enough to work with teenagers who are curious and snarky and funny and exploding with personality (and hormones) for so long. I have been lucky enough to work with friends and colleagues who match me in intensity and excitement and who believe so much in the work we do that they have stuck it out in this ever changing, seismically shifting career of ours. I have been lucky.  But this is tough. This is not like anything I have ever done. And yes, I know that this is true for everyone everywhere in every job.  But most people do not have my job.  Most people have not been that lucky.  

My job, my career, is meaningless if the kids don't show up. But these days I have only shadows of kids. I have students whose masks have subsumed them.  They have been overwhelmed and overcome. The masks cover their anxiety, blanket their trauma, and destroy their joy. I see few smiles, and hear less laughter. I am teaching to breathing avatars. Oddly, they are more alive when they are virtual, but barely. Without their joy, and candor, without their tears and hugs, without their arguments and drama, I am nothing but an automaton speaking into a void. I am exhausted. 

After years of witnessing my students think critically about ideas in every form, I am standing in front of 15 pairs of glazed over eyes, who robotically take notes. After years of pacing around my room, bending down at desks, kneeling down in front of pairs and groups sprawled out in the hallway, I am a droning lecturer in front of neat rows of teenagers all facing front terrified to turn their heads to speak to the student to their left. Discussions fall flat. Relationships are strained if built at all. This is not my job.

And I am trying. Other teachers tell me, it would be better for me if I stopped caring so much. Don't worry that I won't get them to write as much, read as much, talk as much, think as much. Don't worry that they are getting shortchanged ever so much. It is out of our control. But I am not those teachers. If I become those teachers I fear I will never come back to me. Yet I know they are right. If I could leave my job at 2:15 and switch my brain to being a mom and wife, if I could leave my job at the door, I might feel better. If I could stop myself from volunteering for every committee that I think might make a student's life better, if I could just say no instead of always yes, I would have more time, more clarity, more sleep. But then I would truly be stuck. 

I have been teaching for 22 years. I have another 13 years before I can retire, and I am too old, too centered in my life to leave. So I must find a way to love this job that I have been lucky enough to love until now. I must find a way to make my students smile through their masks and to keep smiling through my own. I must keep pushing myself to remember how lucky I was and how lucky I will be again. Because 2020 is not life. It is just one year. One year out of 22. I have to show up, if only so that my students will sense the fullness of my presence, and come out of the shadows to find their own. 

graduation speech 2020

To the graduates of 2020, the year the world stopped.

I'm not sure about the world we're giving you. But I am sure about the generation to whom we're handing it off. I am sure about you. We have done a lot wrong here. We have remained passive when we desperately needed to act. We have watched as the rhetoric got angrier, and more hate-filled. We have listened to scientists tell us about climate change, and we have nodded and done nothing. I'm not so sure about us. But I say again, I am sure about you. 

I have watched you grow. Some of you, I have taught for two years, but known for longer. Some of you, I just met this year, and some of you I only know to nod in the hallway. But I am sure of you. You are crusaders. You are passionate in your anger and your love. I have listened as you told me that the language of a book hurt your ears as well as your heart. I have listened as you told me that you wanted to see change in our classes, across the board. That there are not enough brown faces in your AP classes and your ECE classes. That there are not enough brown faces in the front of your classrooms. You have not held back when you cried out your worry for your LGBTQ classmates, who still, and always suffer the most from cyber bullying, from the type of bullying your teachers and adminsitrators don't hear. I have listened when you told me that that was all you wanted, someone who would stop, put their own stresses aside, hard as that might be, and listen. You told me about your relationships with friends being torn apart this year, and the questions you had about how you were dealing with your own relationships, and from this I know that you are asking the questions before we ever did. All of this is why I am so sure of you. You are identifying your weaknesses, so that you might learn from them. You are recognizing our weaknesses so that we may learn from them. You are growing and helping us to grow, and we are lucky for it. 

You have weathered what we never had to. You lost your prom, your senior skip days, your senior prank and yearbook signings. These are not small things, though people may tell you they are. Ignore them. They are your rightful transitions, and you have lost them. You deserve to grieve them. Believe me, I have grieved them right alongside you, because I have lost my chance to witness you living those rites of passage. I will not get to sign your yearbooks and hug you goodbye, sending you off with a bit of my strength and hope for you. But know that I am sure of you. That I have every confidence that you will change our world for the better. That because you question everything, you will continue to grow and force the rest of world to grow with you. Your need for answers, and your belief that every one of your classmates deserves an equal chance to grow into this unfathomable world, makes me sure of you. You will vote, because you are sick of no one listening to your voices. I have heard those voices and they are strong. You will push and pull until our government represents all of the colors and languages you see everyday in Conard's hallways. You will be the teachers who change the face of our classrooms, and the lawyers and doctors and politicians and welders and plumbers and service men and women who change the face of our world. 

We may not be handing you the best of all possible worlds, but you will go into it with a confident stride, and make it your own, and we will all be better for it. I am sure of that, because I am sure of you.

Transitions and Corona

The other night, I lay with my 7 year old son, as I listened to my husband and daughter fight about bedtime. She had asked for ten more minutes, and he had come up after eight. They were fighting for twenty minutes about two minutes. But it was never about two minutes. When he reached his limit and we both let her simmer down in bed, I went to talk to her. With tears in her eyes, she asked, "How fast will I have to speed walk to get to my classes next year?"  I couldn't help but explode with laughter and hugs for her. She could have asked me anything, been worried about any number of things, but she was worried, at that moment, about whether she would get to class on time in middle school. I calmed her down, and told her she could call her cousin to talk all about it tomorrow, and we all went to sleep. But it made me think in a new way about all of this.

  My daughter won't finish fifth grade with her class. This means that she won't take a trip with her classmates to see the middle school and walk the hallways. She won't be able to say her goodbyes to the only school she's ever known. Her friends will go to different schools (some magnet, some private), and they won't get together on a school trip first to sign yearbooks all as one. These moments may seem small in the scheme of things, but each one represents one step in the huge transition from elementary school child to middle school tween.  We have been so caught up in the day to day, that I had no idea that she was worrying about next year. 

  It also made me think of my seniors. I teach twelfth grade English, and talking to my daughter made me realize the extent of what they must be going through on a whole different level. Their transition time has also been cancelled. They will not have "Accepted Students Day," before they commit to colleges. They will not have final bonding days and weekends that are so important as they say goodbye to friends they've known since elementary school. No prom or senior trip to blow off steam and energy that has been building toward these moments for so very long. They will not wander the schools with their yearbooks, lining up at teachers' desks asking for words of wisdom. They will not get final hugs from adults with whom they've shared questions and emotions and breakdowns. These are not small things. These are holes, that if filled would allow them to move to new places feeling ready and secure. I can see (when they check in with me virtually) that they are feeling neither of those vital emotions. And I worry about them. I worry about how this strange time will affect next year for them. How you leave a place and time is so important to how you enter the next phase.

  A few months ago, I mentioned to my teacher friends that my twelfth graders were going through the anger phase of leaving. They were blowing up their friendships with extraordinary intensity. They were shifting alliances and pushing each other away, and as their teacher, I found myself telling them how normal this is. They are getting themselves ready to leave. But I had the expectation that they would have the time to come back together, to stitch up the wounds, to stop the bleeding. But then, we all just left. How will that affect them? What will be the psychological impact of an uncauterized friendship? I just don't know. And I worry.

  The more I think about these transitions, the more I think that they are similar to the stages of grief. But what happens when you are mired in the anger phase, or never get to bargaining because you haven't been given the space or the wherewithal to do so? How do you make it to the point of acceptance when you are abruptly taken from school and placed in a quarantine?  My students are anxious and depressed. They no longer turn on their cameras or their minds when they come to my virtual classroom. They are disconnected, and aching for connection. I beg them to show me their faces each morning. Some of them concede. Others stay hidden. They are grieving their losses. And in my fifth grade daughter's anger each night before bed, I find the same grief. 

  These transitions from fifth to sixth grade, from senior in high school to freshman in college, are so important to how we mature, and with lightening speed the pieces put in place to ease the way, have been taken from our kids. We have no easy words for them, because not one of us has been through this in just this way. There will be a lot of unexpected impacts of the Corona Virus. The effects of this moment in time on our kids going through the greatest changes in their lives is one that I had not thought about until now. But I can see them beginning to take shape in the virtual faces of my students (those who are willing to show them to me). After twenty years of teaching, I can usually find an answer, but across a computer screen, now, I can only send my smiles and little in the way of advice. Just remember to get out of bed, I tell them, to go outside in the sunshine, and to keep talking to each other and to me. I can’t provide them with the closure they are begging for, the closure that they need, but am hoping against hope that as a society, we’ll find a way to give it to them.