Please. Please. For the love of God and your constituency, find a real problem to write bills about. Because transgender people in bathrooms are not causing any problems. None. Zero.
My preference would be that you spend your energy addressing pressing concerns that threaten to destabilize society and possibly annihilate the entire human race. Might I suggest: generational poverty, mass incarceration, underfunded public schools, or Donald Trump’s presidential bid.
If, for reasons I won’t pretend to understand, you insist on creating bills related to public restrooms, allow me to suggest some bills that might actually improve the bathroom-going experience of the general public:
A bill requiring “occupied/not occupied” signs on stalls. The older I get, the more awkward it is to bend over and check for feet under the stall door.
An “all or nothing” bill regarding automation of bathroom amenities. Does the toilet flush by itself? Will the soap squirt out automatically? Will the water turn on if I move my hand back and forth faster under the faucet? How long should I stand here waiting for the paper towels to emerge? An “all or nothing” bill would help me avoid quite a bit of embarrassment.
A bill prohibiting the use of 1-ply toilet paper. For reasons I shouldn’t have to explain.
I appreciate your time and attention to my concerns. And I hope your next experience in the public restroom of your choice is a pleasant one.
Kind regards,Joanna
Dear Conservative Christian “News” Sites and Conservative Talk Show Hosts,
I imagine you and I disagree about many things. Evolution. Abortion rights. Gay marriage. Women pastors. Israel/Palestine. Military service. But with all of these issues, I at least understand where you are coming from. I can articulate the values that undergird your opposition to same-sex marriage. I can turn to the Bible passages that you quote when you champion creationism. I can even tell you all the reasons you would say that I should not be a pastor.
I don’t agree with you on these issues; I do (more or less) understand your perspective. But when it comes to your opposition to inclusive bathroom policies, I am truly and completely at a loss. I listen to your arguments in favor of forcing people to use the bathroom of the sex they were assigned on their birth certificate. I try to find some shred of reason in what you say, but every single argument I hear either says nothing or it says something that is so obviously false I can’t imagine anyone really believes it.
The say nothing arguments go something like this: You know we’ve just always . . . and we’ve never . . . and society and common sense and values.
The obviously false arguments go like this: If you let people use the bathroom that corresponds to their chosen gender identity, men will go into women’s restrooms and attack women.
The obviously false arguments go like this: If you let people use the bathroom that corresponds to their chosen gender identity, men will go into women’s restrooms and attack women.
Also, it has NOTHING to do with allowing transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. The man was not transgender. He was not even a cross dresser. He was a creepy guy who walked right into the women’s restroom and strangled a girl. Which, by the way, is against the law everywhere.
I don’t get it. I have deep roots in the Christian tradition—Baptist roots. I’ve read a broad theological range. I’ve attended prayer meetings where people spoke in tongues. I’m fluent in evangelical-ese (if a bit rusty), and I almost always understand the conservative Christian perspective, even though I don’t often agree with it.
I truly and honestly have no clue why you are opposed to letting people use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. I thought maybe there was something in the Bible that I’ve somehow missed in all my years of study. So I did some searching.Turns out that many relevant bathroom words are not found in the Bible at all: bathroom, toilet, pee, poop, feces, shat. None of them are in there.
But not this time. This time I’m stumped. I truly and honestly have no clue why you are opposed to letting people use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. I thought maybe there was something in the Bible that I’ve somehow missed in all my years of study. So I did some searching.
Turns out that many relevant bathroom words are not found in the Bible at all: bathroom, toilet, pee, poop, feces, shat. None of them are in there.
But “urine” was a hit. God tells Ezekiel to proclaim the coming devastation: “Every spirit will become faint and every leg will be wet with urine.” (Ezekiel 21:7) Also, in a story repeated in 2 Kings and Isaiah, a commander declares that the defeated enemy will “have to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine”. (2 Kings 18:27 and Isaiah 36:12)
Which led me to “excrement” and a passage in Ezekiel where God relents and lets the prophet bake his bread over cow dung instead of human excrement. (Ezekiel 4:15)
Very vivid verses—but not especially relevant to the topic at hand.
I was able to find only one verse that seems at all related to modern bathroom use. In Deuteronomy 23: 12-13, instructions are given to the Israelites:”Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement.”
I think we can all agree on the basic Christian principle of covering up our excrement. Or flushing. Beyond that, perhaps we should keep silent where the scriptures are silent.
Your Sister (I can show you my birth certificate if you like) in Christ,Joanna
Dear Cis Woman in the Women’s Restroom with Me,
If I run out of toilet paper in the stall next to you, I may ask you to pass me some. I would be happy to do the same for you. Otherwise, I expect we can each do our bathroom duties in peace. Have a nice day.
Dear Trans Woman in the Women’s Restroom with Me,
If I run out of toilet paper in the stall next to you, I may ask you to pass me some. I would be happy to do the same for you. Otherwise, I expect we can each do our bathroom duties in peace. Have a nice day.
Dear Cis Man or Trans Man in the Women’s Restroom with Me,
It seems only fair that if you enjoy the privileges of being a man in our society—higher pay, more respect, a wardrobe that does not go out of style every six months—then you should also experience the down sides of being a man in our society—nasty public bathrooms.
But, at any rate, if I run out of toilet paper in the stall next to you, I may ask you to pass me some. I would be happy to do the same for you. Otherwise, I expect we can each do our bathroom duties in peace. Have a nice day.
In bathroom solidarity,Joanna
Dear Sexual Predator in the Women’s Restroom with Me,
GET OUT!
Dear Men who were in the Men’s Room when my Woman Friend Accidentally Wandered in there and Used the Bathroom and then Noticed You All Looking at her Funny While She Was Washing her Hands,
She feels pretty silly and wants you to know she was really tired and jet lagged. It won’t happen again. Probably. But if it does, thanks for being cool about it.
We gathered at the park on a warm, sunny day—a day that would have been lovely if not for the urn that contained the ashes of my neighbors’ baby.
We gathered at the park on a warm, sunny day—a day that would have been lovely if not for the urn that contained the ashes of my neighbors’ baby. I stood by the urn and looked out at the people seated in folding chairs: the baby’s three agnostic/pagan parents, her staunch Baptist grandparents, friends and family of assorted religious and political leanings. All of them heartbroken.
The pagan priestess who had planned the service with me and agreed to give the sermon had canceled just a couple days before. There I stood, a baby’s ashes beside me, aching eyes staring up at me. There I stood, looking out at all of those people who were waiting for me, the pastor, to say SOMETHING—something that would make the unbearable lightness of those ashes at least a little bit bearable.
That was the first funeral I officiated. The first time I felt that funeral weight of love for heartbroken strangers who were looking to me for comfort. The first time I felt the heaviness of the funeral words crawling out of my mouth. The first time I dealt with the weighty anger because my words were not enough, because death was not fair, and this God I was supposed to serve had a lot of explaining to do.
This heavy love-in-grief has revisited me through the years: when I had to move our Easter sunrise service to the hospital bedside of a beloved church member; when I sat with a young man devastated by his porn addiction; when I talked with parents struggling with a child’s mental illness; when I heard that the diagnosis was ALS and, when the time comes, he doesn’t want a feeding tube.
It’s a pastor’s job to bear the weight. A friend’s job too, I suppose. And a parent’s, and a sibling’s, and a lover’s. I used to think my words should lighten the burden. It’s an easy mistake to make for a girl who fell in love with Emily Dickinson in elementary school and went on to major in creative writing. I believe in the power of language almost as much as I believe in the power of God. And if I could just find the right words, I thought, I could pry the weight off of the crushed hearts around me.
I think of Job’s friends who sat with that destitute man for seven days and seven nights before they opened their mouths. Most of us can’t handle that much weight.
Turns out, though, that the words don’t work. More often than I would like, the words turn to dust in the ears of the grieving. My dusty words may or may not be beautiful—it doesn’t matter much. What matters is that the words born in love bear witness that I have been there, with someone, under the weight of their grief. What matters is that, with or without words, love calls me to be present in the pain with my whole self. Which is hard. And heavy.
I think of Job’s friends who sat with that destitute man for seven days and seven nights before they opened their mouths. Most of us can’t handle that much weight.
It’s a pastor’s job to bear the weight. A friend’s job too, I suppose. And a parent’s, and a sibling’s, and a lover’s. I used to think my words should lighten the burden.
Love in grief, funeral love, is heavy. But wedding love . . . I know that marriage is an imperfect institution—that many marriages involve dissatisfaction and heartbreak and grief if not outright abuse and trauma—that the history and much of the present reality of marriage is patriarchal and heterosexist. I know. But still, wedding love, for me, is light. It is joyful and sacred and full of promise.
I have been privileged to officiate weddings for many people I love: my gorgeous graduate school officemate who escaped a nightmare marriage and found Mr. Dreamy Triathlete; young men and women from my church, who I baptized and preached to and prayed for; two women who contacted me to see if I would be willing to do their wedding because they wanted to be married by a Christian pastor and they were having a hard time finding one to officiate; two men who had been married already for years, but wanted to finally make it legal and wanted to do it in my town where one of their fathers, who had refused to come to the first wedding, was eager to be part of this one.
What matters is that, with or without words, love calls me to be present in the pain with my whole self. Which is hard. And heavy.
Yes, weddings, for me, are light love. But these last two hold the story of a heavier love. Because not everyone in my religious tradition sees the beauty of two women or men in love committing themselves to each other in holy matrimony. Some of my fellow pastors would refuse a request to officiate such a wedding. Some of them tried to get my pastoral credentials revoked because I said yes to such a request.
Still, I am called to love them: the ones who called and wrote to explain to me my faulty theology. The ones who voted for my ordination to be suspended. The ones who testified in front of an entire delegate body about why I am unfit to be a pastor.
As a Christian, I (try to) follow the teachings of Jesus who said, “Love your enemy.” (Other faiths echo this concept as well.) Even if I disagree with someone. Even if I deeply dislike someone. Even if someone is really and truly a supreme jackasses. I am called to love them.
Still, I am called to love them: the ones who called and wrote to explain to me my faulty theology. The ones who voted for my ordination to be suspended. The ones who testified in front of an entire delegate body about why I am unfit to be a pastor.
That is heavy love. Heavy and awkward.
Loving people through grief is hard and heavy, but it is, at least, recognizable as love. The weight bears down in a familiar way, and you just bear it because you have to. You let the heaviness settle all over you, press your limbs, your gut, your heart, firmly down like a lead blanket.
But loving the enemies? Loving the jackasses? What does that even look like? How does it feel? It’s uneven and distorted. For me, the weight rests less in my heart and more in my mind. I have to try to figure out what that kind of love looks like.
It doesn’t look like refusing to marry same-sex couples for the sake of “church unity” and some people’s misguided biblical scruples. It doesn’t look like smiling and nodding when an angry pastor tells me that in his entire congregation of two hundred there are no gay people. It doesn’t look like leaving the convention hall so that people will be more comfortable when they talk about why I shouldn’t be a pastor.
But it also doesn’t look like snarky name calling, or refusing to listen, or leaving the table.
Even if I disagree with someone. Even if I deeply dislike someone. Even if someone is really and truly a supreme jackasses. I am called to love them.
Like the funeral words, the words of this heavy enemy love also come slow. But not because they are painful and feel meaningless—because they are weighty with meaning. Because, when it comes to loving enemies, there is a fine line between being honest and being brutal, between being polite and being a coward. When it comes to loving enemies, the words do matter. A lot.
Like, for example, “jackass.” It is a fine word to communicate to you the struggles I feel in loving difficult people. But if I were writing or speaking to an actual jackass, I would need to find a more appropriate, more loving word.
Like the funeral words, the words of this heavy enemy love also come slow. But not because they are painful and feel meaningless—because they are weighty with meaning.
Perhaps the heaviest love of all is love of God. The centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer service is the shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G-d, the Lord is one.” This flows into the v’havta: “Love the Lord your G-d with all of your heart, soul, and mind” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This teaching is so important to the Jewish people that when Jesus, a devout Jew, was asked, “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” he responded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:36-37).
The scriptures teach that loving God is a deep obligation for people of faith. And that is rather intimidating—to be expected to love the Creator of the universe—the Creator of love itself—in any sort of meaningful, worthwhile way.
How does one even begin, really, to love God?
So we circle back around. The weight of loving God comes from the obligations such love carries to also love other people and to love ourselves.
Maybe that’s why Jesus, after revealing the most important commandment, goes on to say, “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:38). So we circle back around. The weight of loving God comes from the obligations such love carries to also love other people and to love ourselves.
The love of God is, for me, the Love that compels the other loves of my life. The Love that nudges me to continue to pray for and speak (mostly) kindly of the woman who sent a nasty email about me to everyone in the church. The Love that sets me down right in the middles of heartbreaking grief. The Love that leads me to officiate gay weddings and engage in meaningful conversation with those who claim homosexuality is a sin. The Love that demands I consider what is good rather than what is polite, what is true rather than what is easy.
The obligations of love are heavy. Still, so many times I experience this weight as a gift, a grace that keeps me grounded and strong.
The portage was boring, and a little intimidating, sometimes exciting. Depending on the trip, we had to gather things – the wetbags, paddles, whatever food, clothes, life jackets and cushions had collected in the bottom of the canoe – and carry them overland, following the canoes-with-legs through the trail, where the overgrown branches and weeds grabbed legs and arms.
This was the boring part. If the portage was long, and the straps started to slip from our shoulders, dragging, or the path was rocky, the portage involved some scrabbling, and this could be a little tricky. The intimidating, or exciting, part was at the beginning, when the grownups lofted the canoes up and onto their shoulders in one fluid movement (if all went well), and became the canoe-with-legs that led the way.
You portage between two bodies of water to keep paddling. You portage around a particularly difficult section of rapids, or ledges or waterfalls, if it’s not safe. You portage to connect. Portaging is the necessary overland travel for navigating waterways. The portage is the connection between the navigable waterways.
As a writer living and working in rural Wisconsin, metaphoric connections are often accomplished via methods other than the face-to-face interaction. I find myself seeking these connections more and more – needing to find a retreat or conference to be surrounded by “my people,” enjoying the breathing presence of other poets (even if just a handful) at a reading, finding a fabulous journal or magazine online, where the work featured speaks in a voice I recognize, as if I’ve found a very dear friend. Lately, I’ve been sending cold emails, where the subject line reads “fan girl,” to poets I love, and have been surprised how many have responded. With every new reply, I’ve let out a whoop. My partner asked, “Are all poets lonely?” And I replied, “No, we’re just nice.” But maybe we are a little lonely.
I’ve been lonely. I’ve been lonely in a room of writers where we seem interested only in talking about our own work, waiting for the breathing gaps in conversations to take up a thread, navigate back to our own interests, the lines we’ve laid down. I’ve been lonely in a room of writers who eschew any whiff of difficulty, any hint of work, who want the easy and accessible: the poem they already know. I’ve been in numerous conversations elsewhere where writers ask how I can possibly live where I live, if there’s anyone to talk to, whether there is anything to write about.
Wisconsin has a town named Portage: the fur traders called it “le portage” for the approximately two miles they traversed between the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers to cross the lower half of the state. Using this marshy patch of ground, the large Wisconsin, the upper and lower Fox, and Lake Winnebago, it was possible to cross the state and reach the bay of Green Bay, entering the waters of Lake Michigan. From Lake Michigan, all the other Great Lakes were reachable, and eventually the Atlantic. Although history books still speak of the French and British routes, the “discoveries” and place names left by these travelers, the routes they followed preexisted them, as did the knowledge they happened upon. Occasionally, the place names that remain catch us up with a strange and macabre poetry. Connected to the Fox River and Lake Winnebago near Oshkosh is Lake Butte des Morts – Hill of the Dead. In true Wisconsin fashion, we flatten and realign the pronunciation, obscuring both its semantic and linguistic roots.
I’m fascinated by the stories we’re told that may be wrong, but are all the more compelling for that. The so-called stories. Growing up, I was told that Winnebago meant “stinking water,” that Winneconne meant “hill of skulls.” Just now, I’m trying to find out whether any of that’s true. I remember the mantle of authority resting on adult shoulders when I was a child, the way they looked in flickering campfire light, the way they called out the names of birds, told of secret fishing spots, recalled the things told them by ancient uncles and fathers. There’s poetry plenty in the misremembered stories, the incandescent imaginings of childhood that will be undone by a too-bright light.
There’s magic at the end of the portage, when in another moment of grace, after one trip or more, all the paddles and PFD’s are piled at the put in, we are sweaty and swatting mosquitoes, and the canoes-with-legs change back into adults. The canoes, their aluminum bodies, land with a thud on the rocks and sand, the sometimes pink soil. We take up our spots. The stern is the paddler who steers. The front paddler calls out the rocks hiding beneath the surface of the ater. The duffer (usually me) is ballast, fitted between the gunnels, making sure the wetbags are securely fastened to the crosspieces in case we capsize, keeping our spare clothes dry, our bug spray and lunches and solitary roll of toilet paper safe until we get to wherever we are going.
Someday, we will portage. When we are grown, when we sit astride the seats, calling rocks, practicing our draws and pulls, our furious back paddles. We hope we are up to the job. That given a map with rapids marked, with campsites noted, we can navigate the days, safely shepherding the group along, shouldering the heavy load, heaving the aluminum or fiberglass canoe with grace and only a little grunting. So as Brain Mill continues to evolve and grow, with its Driftless Novella and Mineral Point Poetry Series (both named for the southwest corner of the state, from whence the Wisconsin also flows), and its publishers in Green Bay, we also begin the portage – to continue the journey and make connections with other small presses, writers, and poets in the Midwest.
In keeping with Brain Mill’s mission, Portaging hopes to highlight marginalized voices, as well as marginalized forms – we’re interested in the experimental andthe hybrid. We also want to bring the work of small presses and art and writers’ collectives to a larger audience. We want to share some very Midwestern love, contributing to a community of literary citizenship in our own small way. Give us your raw and ragged, your genre-permeable, your visceral, your uncanny, your intentional and decidedly unbeautiful. If your work fits within this deeply shaded Venn diagram, please send a query through our contact form.
Portaging celebrates new writing from the Midwest with a particular focus on experimental and hybrid work from small presses.
C. Kubasta writes poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms. She lives, writes, & teaches in Wisconsin. Her most recent books include the poetry collection Of Covenants (Whitepoint Press) and the short story collection Abjectification (Apprentice House). Find her at ckubasta.com and follow her @CKubastathePoet.
At the beginning of each summer, I excitedly make a list of what I want to read in the two and a half months I am free from reading hundreds of student essays.
Last summer, I read everything I could find by Octavia Butler and about the Vikings (no connection to Butler). The summer before that, I read books I had never read but knew I should, like My Antonia and Anna Karenina. This summer, I have an eclectic list, which is fast becoming an actual teetering stack with the help of the Denver Public Library, with the general theme of “lesbian.” It’s been awhile since I wandered the stacks of books by and about lesbians, and—since I’m attending the Golden Crown Literary Society Conference in Vegas this summer—I thought I’d immerse myself a little early. Here’s my list for the summer (a mix of new and old, compiled solely because they consider topics and/or genres that interest me):
A Thin Bright Line by Lucy Jane Bledsoe (the keynote at the GCLS Con!)
The World Unseen by Sarim Sarif (I’m re-reading that one)
The Ada Decades by Paula Martinac (I just finished it last week)
Sappho’s Leap by Erica Jong
Art on Fire by Hilary Sloin
Hoosier Daddy: A Heartland Romance by Ann McMann
Lesbian Pulp Fiction: the sexually intrepid world of lesbian paperback novels, 1950-1965
American Romances: Essays by Rebecca Brown (a re-read)
My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years by Sarah Schulman
Zami by Audre Lorde
The Dime by Kathleen Kent
The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson (a re-read)
Patience and Sarah by Isabelle Miller (a re-read)
Across an untried sea: discovering lives hidden in the shadow of convention and time by Julia Markus
Depths of Blue by Lisa MacTague
Bend by Nancy J. Hedin
Because lesbian lit considers a marginalized group of people in some way, it possesses its own unique qualities, which, I would argue, makes it its own genre.
Because lesbian lit considers a marginalized group of people in some way, it possesses its own unique qualities, which, I would argue, makes it its own genre. Lesbian lit almost always features main characters who are lesbian, it often seeks to subvert the dominant societal narrative, and it often does that subverting in a fascinating, cross-genre way. Some of the most experimental books I have read have been lesbian books. Consider everything by Jeannette Winterson, or Rebecca Brown’s essay (nuns, Oreos—wow).
Lists like this one move beyond a summer reading list for me. Already, just making the list made me feel more connected to the larger lesbian community out there (and the prospect of attending an lesbian literary conference in July makes me excited to be in that community awhile, too). Of course, my daughter Mitike rolled her eyes at me when I told her my summer reading plans: “So you’re just going to read romance all summer?” I tried to explain that these books are about all kinds of themes, from romance to oppression to politics to lived life to science fiction, but she shook her head. “Mom, all these books are about women who love women, right? That’s romance.”
Some more recent lesbian books merely feature a lesbian main character, like the lesbian detective in Kathleen Kent’s The Dime. The more acceptable it becomes for women to love women, the more we’ll see this shift in lesbian literature.
Yes and no. The older lesbian books, like The Price of Salt (made into the 2015 film Carol) focus primarily on the love between two women, because the main conflict was that the women were trying to love each other at all. The same is true about historical fiction, like The Ada Decades, a lovely little book that carries the reader through eight decades of the life of a woman living as a lesbian in North Carolina, or The World Unseen, which considers a forbidden love between two Indian women in South Africa. However, some more recent lesbian books merely feature a lesbian main character, like the lesbian detective in Kathleen Kent’s The Dime. The more acceptable it becomes for women to love women, the more we’ll see this shift in lesbian literature.
Shelving lesbian literature as a separate genre matters most to women who have just come out. When I came out in 2005, at age 28, I felt incredibly alone. I knew only one other lesbian, a friend from college who had moved to New York City, fallen in love, and held a civil union with her girlfriend. I called her and she invited me to visit. It was late October; the gingko leaves in Central Park were turning yellow. My friend and her legal partner showed me around lesbian New York by bringing me to bookstores. At Oscar Wilde (now closed) and Bluestockings, I stood in the stacks and, trembling, picked up book after book after book in the section marked LESBIAN, my face hot because now everyone in the bookstore knew that I was a lesbian because I was touching and opening lesbian books. I bought my first Jeanette Winterson book (Written on the Body) and my first Sarah Waters book (Tipping the Velvet); I bought the classic Patience and Sarah by Isabelle Miller and I bought the classic Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden. When I returned home to Alaska, to my little apartment three blocks from the ocean, and started to read, I felt comforted. I wasn’t the only one.
Later, reading lesbian literature became more about research. What kind of lesbian was I, anyway? An Adrienne Rich contemplating the unfurling of fern fronds in the forest? A Dorothy Allison, swearing loudly through my fear? A Jeanette Winterson, diving into rabbit-hole wanderings? I wanted to know about the community I had joined. I read Joan Nestle and Lillian Faderman, to discover my history (and I learned the word “HERstory”). I subscribed to Sinister Wisdom and Curve.
Still later, I just preferred reading lesbian stories to straight ones because they experimented more, dared more, surprised me more… I love experimentation with language and structure; I love flipped roles and surprising historical details. Lesbian literature offers all of that.
Still later, I just preferred reading lesbian stories to straight ones because they experimented more, dared more, surprised me more. Some of my favorite books are not lesbian ones, of course, but they are favorites for those same criteria (The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje and The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich, for example). I love the book in which a character suddenly time-travels into a different body, as happens in The PowerBook, and as I expect to happen in Sappho’s Leap. I love experimentation with language and structure; I love flipped roles and surprising historical details. Lesbian literature offers all of that.
This summer, immersing myself in lesbian literature is not about a desperate search for recognition or about research (although I expect to learn something), but a cozy familiarity. As I relax on the deck of our little rented cabin on the Oregon coast this June with my wife and our daughter, I want to lose myself in books about characters that look a little like us. And yes, Mitike, I’m excited to read a fair bit of romance, too.
Stacks of research papers teeter on my desk; my colleagues and I slog through hours and hours of standardized testing proctoring; the students are irritable and restless, and so am I. Every April, my mind hums with the same old question: What else could I be? What else am I qualified to do? I search the internet for job postings, but drift toward all the ones that sound quite a bit like teaching. Could I get paid to garden? Would someone employ me to hike mountains? Is it possible to work as a professional reader of books?
Yes, I could be a writer. Since I was nine, when I wrote rambling stories about a girl named Zoe who lived on a farm oddly like mine, I have yearned to be a writer. Not just someone who writes every once in a while, not just someone who writes in the precious early hour before work, but someone who, for a living, writes. My secret love has always been words and sentences and paragraphs. Stories.
Every April, my mind hums with the same old question: What else could I be? What else am I qualified to do?
But at twenty-six, drifting through Central America with a piece of paper that proclaimed me a college graduate and trumpeted the profoundly useful double major in English and religion (majors to which I had switched my sophomore year, romanced away from chemistry and math), I sighed, and became a teacher. The old adage mocked me: Those who can’t do, teach. I pulled the first stack of student essays toward me and began to read.
“Teacher” is the identity with which I am most uncomfortable. For fifteen years, I have viewed it as temporary. Someday, I say to whomever is listening, I’ll quit this job and write full time. I try to wake early to keep my writing discipline. I try to attend writing workshops, where a surprising number of people seem to have hours each day to write. I try to learn from others: at a “local author” book signing for Grief Map recently, I talked to two other local authors and grilled them on how they have made the jump into a full-time writing life. One woman told me: You just do it. You just jump. Right. Except jumping requires the confidence that the stories I’m trying to tell will translate to a living wage somehow, that we’ll be able to continue to do all the other things I love and value: travel, buy plants for my garden, eat out at restaurants, save for Mitike’s college education. Better to keep teaching.
This job, teaching, is cyclical. As soon as I sink to my nadir, in the first weeks of April, the end of the school year begins to shimmer in the near distance. At home, my plants begin to sprout in the garden.
A colleague told me recently, in response to my “Someday, I’ll be a writer full-time,” that someday I’ll admit that I’m actually a teacher at my core, and I bristled. He laughed. We stood in the echoing hallway, both of us holding armloads of papers to grade. Too often, I feel like a character in a Stephen King or a Kent Haruf novel—the jaded English teacher, correcting papers late at night, staring back at disengaged students by day, her own half-finished novel in a drawer because she has to plan lessons for this week and attend professional development and call the parents of every student who is failing and beg the district to give me adequate health care.
On PSAT testing day this April, I walked in circles around and around a room full of sophomores. In my monotone voice, I read the script: “You will only receive credit for answers recorded on your answer sheet . . . If you have any questions about testing procedures, please ask them now. I cannot answer questions during the timed sections of the test. . . .” I looked up. The sophomores held their number two pencils politely, but they were hearing nothing I was saying. They had heard all of these instructions before. Outside, a tree blossomed white, and the robins and chickadees announced spring. I thought, We are all trapped here. I told the students to just begin the test.
“Teacher” is the identity with which I am most uncomfortable. For fifteen years, I have viewed it as temporary. Someday, I say to whomever is listening, I’ll quit this job and write full time.
There are days when my job feels like one of the best possible jobs in the world. After all, I am free to plan my own time, to teach whatever texts I deem relevant, to engage roomfuls of teenagers in meaningful conversations about their lives. And every year, I reach a few students who needed to be reached.
This job, teaching, is cyclical. As soon as I sink to my nadir, in the first weeks of April, the end of the school year begins to shimmer in the near distance. At home, my plants begin to sprout in the garden: the peas and kale and broccolini and radishes I planted on St. Patrick’s Day, the perennial native flowers I planted three years ago. I store the skis and the winter coats; I spend an entire weekend digging in the dirt, carefully pushing mulch around greening plants. The delicate soft green leaves of the sage plant reminds me to have more empathy for my students, who are trying to thrive in soil and air that is not their native habitat. The delicate butter lettuce leaves tell me I need to bring those students more water, more peat moss and compost. On a Monday after gardening, I am always a better, more devoted teacher.
Every morning I make myself write is a little more amendment to the soil; someday, the writing life I imagine will thrive here.
But I still don’t believe I will be a teacher forever. It’s a stop along my way, no matter what anyone says. On the first weekend of April, as I sank my fingers into the newly friable soil I had created for my new herb garden, I made a mental to-do list of the writing projects I intend to finish this summer, while these plants are growing: the Anna Dickinson manuscript (finished, but needing major editing), the Colorado women place names project, the new collection of hybrid essays I want to begin on the wilderness and nature, the short story about the lockdown. Someday, someday, someday. The word is the rhythm of my spade in the Colorado clay. Every morning I make myself write is a little more amendment to the soil; someday, the writing life I imagine will thrive here.
For now, I’ll drive to work at a huge Denver high school, where I’ll grade two more papers before the bell rings, and then I’ll stand in front of thirty teenagers and tell them, “Okay, let’s start by writing a little.” It’s always about that, about beginning. And then, as the morning sun streams through the tall windows onto thirty heads bent earnestly over notebooks, pens scratching, then, for a moment—just before I take attendance—this is the perfect job for me, after all.
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