Daydreamer

Trying to write a blog while being a PhD student sometimes seems an exercise in futility, as evidenced by the fact that my last post was June 2007. And yet here I am again because I can’t not write. Yes, that’s right. An English PhD candidate just used a double-negative…correctly, might I add, and absolutely intentionally. I work within parameters but I love breaking the rules, especially if the desired outcome can still be achieved. Pushing the boundaries of what makes an acceptable and appropriate writing teacher is one of my current projects. So what inspired this return to the blog? A book. No surprise, really. Books have always helped me to think through problems, issues, social and family situations, personal demons. And this is no different.

The book is Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary and I’m reading it in service of my comprehensive exams, upcoming at the end of August (if I get my way with scheduling). Although we come from very different backgrounds, I found my own experiences mirrored somehow in his recollections of literacy, language, and education as a youngster. One phrase in particular struck me: “the abyss of paradise”…what a fabulous evocative phrase – the text so far is littered with gems like this. (I’m only on page 131) Another gem from the introduction also resonates with me: “the resilience of the imagination.” Words to live by. At least for me…and I want to find a way to help my students understand the vital importance of imagination in reading and writing and education.

As I sat outside Applebee’s last night waiting for my friend, Jessica, I ruminated on what I’d read of Rose’s text thus far. Here are some thoughts I wrote down on the back of an envelope containing a thank you card and a $10 gift certificate to Books a Million (for my participation in some friends’ graduate research project during spring 2008):

Ability and skill with language for me meant escape, acceptance, and a way to harness and use my imagination in ways that gained me recognition, which, in turn, fueled my confidence and self-esteem when more traditional sources of these failed or frustrated me (friends, parents, standard academic subjects and classroom experiences).

Important book – Mirror, Mirror – self-acceptance; Brave New World and The Third Wave – reinforced my concern about the future

Important classes – Shakespeare and Science Fiction – love of difficult language and concepts, made me feel smart and part of a community

Important phrase – “carpe diem” – at 16 gave me a motto for life that I have strived to live up to ever since

So what on earth do these shorthand ramblings mean? Well, they are very personal remembrances of literacy moments in my past; moments that somehow helped to shape who I am, how I think and relate to others, and even my very ideas about right ways of being in the world.

Take Mirror, Mirror. I don’t remember the author, but I do remember the story – about a girl struggling with weight and self-image and self-acceptance issues - read when I was 12 and at the height of physical self-esteem issues. A constant phrase in my household directed at me was, “You’d be so much prettier if you lost weight.” And permutations of the like. I read this book at the height of my despair – bought with my own babysitting money, not pre-digested by Mom – I saw the cover and read the blurb and instantly knew I wanted to read this girl’s story. It helped me understand that I not only had the right to accept myself for who I was, but that I shouldn’t allow others to tear my psychological fabric (obviously, not the words I had at the time!)…I had been a competitive swimmer from age 6 to 12, but suddenly I was a developing young woman with breasts and hips and no longer a slight, boyish figure. I also had a thing for candy. But looking back at pictures of myself, I try so hard to be objective and not see a fat little girl – the image foisted so regularly upon me by my family. If I’m being really honest and as objective as I can, I see a girl whose body is changing, who is trying so hard to be happy and positive but is unsure and worried about friends, boys, parents, school. Especially school. Those damn tests.

I was always bad at taking tests. And I have always been horrible at math. In second grade, my teacher called my folks in for a parent-teacher meeting. She walked them over to my desk and opened the lid, revealing all of my second grade math homework for that section, unfinished. My parents were not pleased, but to their credit, they came up with a creative solution to figure out if I was capable of math or not – their suspicion was that I WAS capable, just uninterested. (How prescient that prediction turned out to be.) My dad, an artist, made me a Valentine’s Day card that year with a long addition and subtraction problem gracing the entire length of the inside page. The deal? If I could figure out the problem (no calculator) on my own and get the right answer, they would give me that much in money to spend on candy at the corner store.

I got it right on the first try. This daydreamer, creative thinker, imaginative spirit just wasn’t interested in math.

Thus began a lifelong hatred of all things math – except when it relates to money. I’m very good with money. But ask me to enter the realm of abstraction and equations unrelated to anything tangible and I shut down – uninterested and annoyed. But language? What a vast difference…I thrive on language. Language, as I wrote on that envelope, provided me a method of escaping critical parents, mean classmates, my own sadness and loneliness in the dozens of books I read every summer in the library’s competition. I regularly finished 40 – 50 books well above my grade level every summer and always earned a certificate and some free ice cream at Baskin Robbins.

Mike Rose’s book reminded me of all these childhood experiences with language and literacy – and what language really means to me. And here I thought I was just reading a book for my comprehensive exams. You just never know what’s going to resonate.