Dear Tyler, love of my life, my Stinky John, my little man, my favorite...
First of all, let me say thank you for letting me use you as a great punchline these last two years when people ask me if there are any new men in my life. "Well, there is one...he's just great. He has these adorably soft brown eyes, a great smile, the softest hair...he's such a good listener and he laughs at all my jokes. He thinks my cooking is excellent, and he's content to just sit and cuddle and be."
Second of all...I am NOT ready to stop being your nanny.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
Taking care of you was my first full-time job. Technically, I did work full-time at the Conference Grounds, but that was only summers. You were my first 8 hours a day, 5 days a week job. And let me tell you, this was the best full-time job I've had so far! Fantastic bosses, no annoying co-workers to deal with, challenging enough to not get bored, but not so challenging that I got stressed out and stopped enjoying the job. There was not a single day where I dreaded coming to work. Do you know how rare that is? They say that if you enjoy your job 4 days out of 5, you're in the right job and very lucky. I am beyond lucky, young sir.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
In all that time, you never once peed on me. You did poop on me once, though. You were crazy sick, so I'll give you a pass on that one. You never outright puked on me, either. Plenty of spit-up that first year, but I won't count that. Spit-up is pretty easy to clean up and doesn't have that horribly pungent smell that vomit seems to have.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
The first time you said "Nanny," I just about died. I melted inside. I suppose it was a small glimpse of how parents feel when their baby says "mama" or "dada" for the first time. Going into your room in the morning and seeing you smiling up at me (or, when you were younger, seeing you in your bouncy seat start bouncing and giggling when you saw me come in) was often exactly the boost I needed. You see, I have something called depression and it's hard for me to get out of bed in the morning. Knowing I had you to look forward and that you would always be excited to see me helped a lot with my depression.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
Did you know that before I started as your nanny, I could count on one hand the number of times I'd changed a diaper? Now I am a diapering master. I could diaper anything. I could probably diaper a wet cat. I don't think I'd like to try though, because I'm allergic to cats and I feel like interacting with a wet cat would just flare that up. But I bet I could diaper a wet cat, if it came right down to it.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
Right now, your mom is 8 months pregnant with a baby that she and your dad have nicknamed "Gummy" because they are waiting to find out the gender until the baby is born. Right now, you're really bad at the "guh" sound and every time I ask you the baby's name, you say "Dummy." And I laugh every single time. Ditto the word 'banana,' which you currently pronounce 'badada.' Odd, since you're perfectly capable of saying 'nanny'...
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
#thanksbutnotthanks for making me watch every episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. You love that show right now. You ask for it every time we enter a room with a TV. Even if we're in someone else's house. There were a few times this year where I brought you to my neighbor Allison's house so that I could go to internship interviews, and you would run right into the house, start pushing buttons on the their TV, and saying "Dan-yo, Dan-yo" over and over. You had similar feelings for Thomas the Tank Engine, which you affectionately referred to as "Tommy." So while I could go my whole life without ever watching either of those television shows again, it was a delight to watch you watch them. You just get so excited...
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
The summer that you were a year old, you guys moved to a duplex in Grand Rapids after selling your Jenison house. This was before you moved to your house in Wyoming. That house was like a playground for you because it had a pretty open floor plan. Unlike the Jenison house, where we could put up a baby gate and keep you in the living room, you had access in the duplex to the living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, and bathroom. We quickly learned to shut the doors. I didn't see you much that summer, because your mom has summers off, but it was a joy to see you get so excited about walking and running around a new house.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
I forgive you for all the times you sent nonsense texts to my friends. And for the time that you took advantage of my love of cuddling to steal my phone. See, I thought I had finally outsmarted you by keeping my phone in my pocket where you couldn't reach it. Then, one day, you climbed up onto my lap and wrapped your arms around me and I thought, yes, finally, this kid is gonna calm down for a bit and come and cuddle with me! This wonderful cuddle-bliss lasted about ten seconds. All of the sudden, you hopped off my lap with my phone in your hand and started texting away. Oh, the betrayal. But I forgive you and I commend your craftiness.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
I've never met another 2-year-old (or indeed, a child of any age) who loves coffee as much as you do. It boggles my mind.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
Speaking of coffee, I didn't start drinking coffee until this year, when you stopped taking a morning nap. Good thing your parents have a Keurig.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
Starting around the time you turned 2, you started realizing the comedic opportunity of farting. You would come over to me, sometimes climbing up onto my lap, let a big one rip, and then go back to playing with your toys. The funniest times were when you stop what you were doing, bend your knees just a little bit, and then fart. Hilarious. Also very stinky.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
Your favorite book right now is a Thomas the Tank Engine book. It is literally the only book that you will sit still and listen to. I don't remember the title, despite reading it to you elevendy-billion times. Every page ended with the sentence "'Peep, peep!' said Thomas." I would turn it around and prompt you with "Thomas said..." and then let you say the peep peep part. I suspect that's why you wanted me to read it to you so many times a day.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
You fall down a lot, despite having learned to walk a year ago. I think the sunken living room is to blame. Sometimes when you're really excited and running from place to place, you forget that there's a step down into the living room. You biff it into the living room at least 3 times a week. I hope you get the hang of this after I leave. Good luck.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
There are five pictures hanging above the fireplace in the living room. Four of you as a little baby, and a bigger one of you and your parents. Usually, when I ask you who's in the picture you say "mama. dada. tie-yo (you're not great at L's and R's yet)." Then, one day, instead of saying mama and dada, you said "wobbie" and "thoo-thee." I just about died. Hadn't laughed that hard in a long time.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
Back when you would eat baby food, I would try to craft elaborate mustaches on your face whenever we had prunes. You didn't particularly enjoy this, but one day you really got into it and I took a bunch of pictures of you and made it into a No-Shave November PSA. You can see it here. Click on the first picture and cycle through them to get the full effect.
Love, Nanny
--
Dear Tyler,
You didn't often get hurt, but when you did, I could usually make it better by kissing whatever body part you held out toward me. Next year, I'll have middle-schoolers whose problems are much bigger and more complex than a hurt finger and can't be fixed by kissing the boo-boo. I pray that the kiss-the-boo-boo method works for you as long as possible.
Love, Nanny
--
Dearest Tyler,
I'm really going to miss being your nanny. Like, so much that it hurts to think about. You were the best job I have ever had. You taught me what it means to be a mom (an 8-hour-a-day weekends-and-holidays-off paid mom, anyway). Taking care of you never felt like just a job. That's the best kind of job to have, as far as I can tell. It will feel so weird and difficult to know that I won't be coming back to be your nanny in September. I'll definitely still visit you, probably at least once a week, so long as it's okay with your mom.
Don't forget about me, okay?
All my love always, Nanny
Showing posts with label Transitions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Transitions. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
How I Spent My Summer Vacation: A Love Letter to the Conference Grounds
Until Sunday, August 17, my summer was unremarkable. And that was at best. At worst, it was horribly frustrating. I took three classes this summer, and while they weren't difficult, they were a lot of work. Not to mention, spending 4 nights a week in class was less than enjoyable. My job was nothing to write home about, either. I had the summer off from my school year nannying jobbecause the mom is a teacher, so I had to pick up a summer job. I knew I would miss my little boy, but it was only three months and then I could go back to nannying him when school started again. I won't go into details, but I ended up quitting the summer job that Sunday night because I was frustrated and wasn't making the money I was promised. Let's just say that there were unmet expectations on both sides.
Now, under different circumstances, I would have just accepted the 2 weeks off and enjoyed some free time. However, I worked only 5 weeks out of the whole summer when I was told I would work 10. Half the weeks meant half the income. A quick look at my bank account online told me that I was $800 short of tuition, which was due on the first day of the semester. If I didn't make that money, I wouldn't be able to go to school in two weeks. The people I worked for couldn't guarantee me that I would work during those last two weeks (they pretty much said they would let me know the day of) and that wasn't going to work for me. I needed to make money, and I had to be sure that my hours wouldn't be canceled on me at the last minute.
So I quit.
Then I panicked just a little bit.
How was I going to make $800 in two weeks if I had just quit my job?
Then, a flash of brilliance (or perhaps divine intervention): THE CONFERENCE GROUNDS. The last two weeks out there are always understaffed because the high schoolers and college staff go back to their regularly scheduled sports, orientations, jobs, classes, and activities. Where else could I get a job on short notice with no application, no interview, no training period, and no hassle? I didn't even have to fill out any of the usual paperwork because they still had it on file from two years ago! So on Sunday night at about 9pm, I made a few calls, sent a few texts, secured two weeks of guaranteed work, and moved out to the Grounds the very next day.
It was as if I had never left. I slipped back seamlessly into the ice cream store and teaching Bible school. I received a hero's welcome when I arrived because I was able to pick up so many random shifts vacated by the people who had already left. It was actually kind of embarrassing - the way I saw it, they were helping me out more than I was helping them by giving me a job so that I could pay my tuition.
Being around people I liked and who liked me turned my entire summer around. At my other job, I never felt like they liked me or trusted me, and those are important things for me to have in my job. Going back to a place that felt like home, where I felt safe and accepted, was exactly what I needed after a summer of school stress and getting the run-around at work. It felt great to be trusted again - trusted to know what I was doing, trusted to do a good job, trusted to take care of the kids. It's hard for me to put into words just how much this all meant to me.
Now, when people ask me how my summer was, I feel like I can truthfully say that it was good instead of disappointing. My self-confidence suffered quite a hit after I quit my original summer job, especially because I knew my employers didn't care that I was frustrated to the point of quitting. They told me they had hired someone else the week before. I'm 95% sure that they would have just strung me along until the end of the summer instead of telling me they were dissatisfied with the job I was doing. That's never a good feeling. But after my two weeks at the Grounds, I felt like my heart was put back together. The people there are genuinely interested in how you are and what you have coming up in your life. I don't have to pretend there. They accept me as I am. They make me smile. They make me laugh. They care.
They are my people.
Now, under different circumstances, I would have just accepted the 2 weeks off and enjoyed some free time. However, I worked only 5 weeks out of the whole summer when I was told I would work 10. Half the weeks meant half the income. A quick look at my bank account online told me that I was $800 short of tuition, which was due on the first day of the semester. If I didn't make that money, I wouldn't be able to go to school in two weeks. The people I worked for couldn't guarantee me that I would work during those last two weeks (they pretty much said they would let me know the day of) and that wasn't going to work for me. I needed to make money, and I had to be sure that my hours wouldn't be canceled on me at the last minute.
So I quit.
Then I panicked just a little bit.
How was I going to make $800 in two weeks if I had just quit my job?
Then, a flash of brilliance (or perhaps divine intervention): THE CONFERENCE GROUNDS. The last two weeks out there are always understaffed because the high schoolers and college staff go back to their regularly scheduled sports, orientations, jobs, classes, and activities. Where else could I get a job on short notice with no application, no interview, no training period, and no hassle? I didn't even have to fill out any of the usual paperwork because they still had it on file from two years ago! So on Sunday night at about 9pm, I made a few calls, sent a few texts, secured two weeks of guaranteed work, and moved out to the Grounds the very next day.
It was as if I had never left. I slipped back seamlessly into the ice cream store and teaching Bible school. I received a hero's welcome when I arrived because I was able to pick up so many random shifts vacated by the people who had already left. It was actually kind of embarrassing - the way I saw it, they were helping me out more than I was helping them by giving me a job so that I could pay my tuition.
Being around people I liked and who liked me turned my entire summer around. At my other job, I never felt like they liked me or trusted me, and those are important things for me to have in my job. Going back to a place that felt like home, where I felt safe and accepted, was exactly what I needed after a summer of school stress and getting the run-around at work. It felt great to be trusted again - trusted to know what I was doing, trusted to do a good job, trusted to take care of the kids. It's hard for me to put into words just how much this all meant to me.
Now, when people ask me how my summer was, I feel like I can truthfully say that it was good instead of disappointing. My self-confidence suffered quite a hit after I quit my original summer job, especially because I knew my employers didn't care that I was frustrated to the point of quitting. They told me they had hired someone else the week before. I'm 95% sure that they would have just strung me along until the end of the summer instead of telling me they were dissatisfied with the job I was doing. That's never a good feeling. But after my two weeks at the Grounds, I felt like my heart was put back together. The people there are genuinely interested in how you are and what you have coming up in your life. I don't have to pretend there. They accept me as I am. They make me smile. They make me laugh. They care.
They are my people.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Life After the Conference Grounds
Isn't there a song or a phrase somewhere that says "You can't go home again"? This is the first summer of not living and working at the Conference Grounds after five years in a row of being there. I had to move on because I have school this summer and I wouldn't be able to work there full-time. I figured that visiting frequently would be enough, that it would fill me up with the added benefit of not having to work in the ice cream store under a baking hot sun. I knew that it would feel a little different to be there only every so often, but I didn't expect it to feel this different.
It's not that I feel left out of something great. Technically, I am left out because I don't work there anymore, but I made my peace with that at the end of last summer, so it that part doesn't bother me. I think what's so hard is knowing that I eventually have to go home each time. And home isn't the Conference Grounds. It will always be my heart home, but I don't live there anymore. No matter how much fun I have while I'm visiting my friends there, in the back of my mind, there's that niggling voice that says, "Don't get too happy, you know you'll just have to go home later."
Sometimes it's just too hard, ya know? Being in a place that used to be your place. That place where you fit perfectly, no questions asked. I can go back and visit all I want, but it's not the same. Today, before I left, it physically hurt to be there and know that I couldn't stay. I can't explain where it hurt or why it hurt. It hurt so much that it has made me wonder if it's even worth it to go out there again. Is it worth it to enjoy myself for a few hours and then feel so horribly lonely afterward? In the long run, would I be better off emotionally if I just stayed away? Do the good feelings outweigh the bad ones?
That's what I'm struggling with tonight. I'd have a good cry about it, but we both know that that ain't gonna happen. Sometimes I hold my breath until my heart starts beating really loud just to make sure that it's still going. But ya know what? It is what it is. Good night world, the sun'll come out tomorrow.
It's not that I feel left out of something great. Technically, I am left out because I don't work there anymore, but I made my peace with that at the end of last summer, so it that part doesn't bother me. I think what's so hard is knowing that I eventually have to go home each time. And home isn't the Conference Grounds. It will always be my heart home, but I don't live there anymore. No matter how much fun I have while I'm visiting my friends there, in the back of my mind, there's that niggling voice that says, "Don't get too happy, you know you'll just have to go home later."
Sometimes it's just too hard, ya know? Being in a place that used to be your place. That place where you fit perfectly, no questions asked. I can go back and visit all I want, but it's not the same. Today, before I left, it physically hurt to be there and know that I couldn't stay. I can't explain where it hurt or why it hurt. It hurt so much that it has made me wonder if it's even worth it to go out there again. Is it worth it to enjoy myself for a few hours and then feel so horribly lonely afterward? In the long run, would I be better off emotionally if I just stayed away? Do the good feelings outweigh the bad ones?
That's what I'm struggling with tonight. I'd have a good cry about it, but we both know that that ain't gonna happen. Sometimes I hold my breath until my heart starts beating really loud just to make sure that it's still going. But ya know what? It is what it is. Good night world, the sun'll come out tomorrow.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
It's Okay.
This is a list of things you don't hear in our culture.
- It's okay to not go to college after you finish high school.
- It's okay to stop going to college if it's not the thing for you.
- It's okay to take a year off from school if you're not sure what you're doing there in the first place. And if that year turns into several years or not going back at all, that's okay too.
- It's okay to go to community college. They are just as academically rigorous as 4-year state colleges. Their quality is just as high. And hello, they cost a fraction of the price of other colleges!
- It's okay to not know what you want to do when you graduate from high school.
- It's okay to not know what you want to do when you graduate from college.
- It's okay to not get perfect grades. Your grades don't define you.
- It's okay to fail. It doesn't make you a failure.
- It's okay to not like kids.
- It's okay to not want to have kids.
- It's okay to work a job that doesn't give you lots of money, especially if you love that job.
- It's okay to not be happy all the time.
- It's okay to live with your parents (though you should probably check with them as to how long their welcome will last).
- It's okay to not fulfill everyone else's expectations all the time.
- It's okay to not fulfill your own expectations all the time.
- It's okay to feel far away from God from time to time.
- It's okay to wonder if God even cares about what happens to you.
- It's okay to cry, even for guys. It's not a sign of weakness.
- It's okay to not be perfect.
- It's okay to not be doing great things all the time.
- It's okay to be you.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Doing Great Things All The Time
If there is one thing that I have learned from this season of my life, it is this:
"Andrea, you can't always be doing great things all the time."
My therapist said that to me a couple of weeks ago after listening to my umpteenth complaint about how bored and frustrated and sad I felt with my life. I'm not in school for the first spring in 18 years, I don't work during the day, and I simply don't have much to DO. I watch a lot of TV. I read a lot of books. I check my email obsessively so that I won't miss any important WMU news or deadlines. I spend a lot of time next door playing with the kids because they are so much more interesting than my own house. I even started exercising.
Yes. EXERCISING.
About two weeks after moving back home, I began to feel extremely depressed about doing so little with my life. I was looking for a daytime job that wouldn't interfere with my afternoon and night jobs, but with very little luck. It was cold and snowy and gray and lifeless outside, which mirrored perfectly the way I felt inside. Hearing that I had been accepted to my master's program helped to ease my anxiety about the future, but it changed into a different kind of waiting that was only slightly easier to tolerate. My future was safely on track, it just hadn't started moving forward yet.
I've felt that motionlessness very deeply. My minecart of life is at a standstill on the tracks between the junctions of college and grad school. It has coasted to a stop and I'm very afraid that my little minecart has lost all of the momentum it had gained through all those years of school. I'm afraid that it will be hard to push my minecart into motion and keep it moving. So much of my life during the past few months has felt slow, monotonous, and unexciting. I never ever ever thought that I would say this, but I miss having schoolwork. I miss being occupied. I miss moving at the speed of light.
"You can't always be doing great things all the time."
If you are not familiar with Calvin College and its culture, that idea might seem like a no-brainer. Duh. You can't do great things all the time because then you'd be exhausted and always trying to out-do yourself and you'd never be satisfied. Somehow, though, when you're inside the Calvin bubble, you can delude yourself. People at Calvin and from Calvin seem to always be doing great things all the time. There are posters everywhere urging you to join this club, attend this seminar, participate in this awareness event, get involved with this ministry, on and on and on. The school's website has an entire News and Stories division devoted to showing the great things that their graduates are doing all the time. This person is single-handedly building wells in this remote village in Africa. This person is mapping this mysterious portion of the brain and discovering what it does. This person is teaching entire immigrant communities how to read English. This person just became an ambassador to the United Nations. On and on and on.
If they did a News and Stories story about me, it would be embarrassingly disappointing. "This person wakes up at 10:00 every morning but usually stays in bed til 11 because she can't think of any reason to get out of bed. She has watched the entire series of Law and Order: SVU beginning to end (that's thirteen seasons). Sometimes she eats lunch; sometimes she doesn't have an appetite. She leaves for work around 3:00 during the week, and curses the snow up and down for wreaking havoc with her little car. Here's something exciting! She got stuck in her employer's driveway on afternoon and slid backward into a tree, destroying a taillight and part of her rear bumper. The tree is fine, though, so don't worry."
I love Calvin dearly, but sometimes their idealism spins out of control. Its entire mission is to redeem the WORLD, aka do great things. Math class is not just math class, it is "changing the world through math." Spanish class is not just Spanish class, it is "ministering to Spanish-speaking people who don't know Jesus and changing the world." Education classes are not just education classes, they are "being the best teacher the world has ever seen and bringing God's light to every student and, of course, changing the world." The people of Calvin can usually make a joke out of this idealism and optimism and redeem-it-all-ism, but at the end of the day, it gets stuck in your head like the reviled, overplayed song on the radio that everyone is sick of.
You can imagine my surprise after spending a few weeks at home, living life in a much lower gear, and feeling horribly inadequate. Here I was, a bilingual college graduate with a teaching certificate, for crying out loud, but feeling like I amounted to very little. I really do have a lot going for me: not pregnant, not a teenage mother, not a drug addict, not an alcoholic, college-educated, literate, fed and sheltered, and loved. In no way am I need of "getting my life back on track." But why can't I make myself remember that?!
I guess it all boils down to this: you can't always be doing great things all the time. Sometimes, all you can do is exist. Live your day-to-day life. Make it through the week. Do your homework. Take care of your kids. Go to work and put up with the people you don't like. Get up in the morning. Eat at least some healthy food. Get in bed and fall asleep at night.
We can't all be digging wells in Africa. We can't all be studying the human brain and finding cures for cancer. We can't all be teaching English to immigrants. We can't all be legislators and ambassadors on the front lines, crusading for freedoms and rights. Most of all, we can't always hold ourselves to the impossible standard of doing big, noteworthy, sparkling, attention-getting things every moment of every day. It's a good thing to strive for, but we've got to stay realistic. Life itself is a big thing. Making lunch for your 4-year-old isn't very sparkly or glamorous, but if you didn't do it, your kid would starve. Keeping your head above the flood that is your schoolwork is not fancy or exciting, but if you blew it all off, you wouldn't get where you want to go. If you didn't have these stretches of time that seem interminable and deadly tedious, you wouldn't appreciate the opportunities that arise for doing great things, things that make life seem worthwhile, things that make you feel alive.
"We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it." - Mother Theresa
Preach.
"Andrea, you can't always be doing great things all the time."
My therapist said that to me a couple of weeks ago after listening to my umpteenth complaint about how bored and frustrated and sad I felt with my life. I'm not in school for the first spring in 18 years, I don't work during the day, and I simply don't have much to DO. I watch a lot of TV. I read a lot of books. I check my email obsessively so that I won't miss any important WMU news or deadlines. I spend a lot of time next door playing with the kids because they are so much more interesting than my own house. I even started exercising.
Yes. EXERCISING.
About two weeks after moving back home, I began to feel extremely depressed about doing so little with my life. I was looking for a daytime job that wouldn't interfere with my afternoon and night jobs, but with very little luck. It was cold and snowy and gray and lifeless outside, which mirrored perfectly the way I felt inside. Hearing that I had been accepted to my master's program helped to ease my anxiety about the future, but it changed into a different kind of waiting that was only slightly easier to tolerate. My future was safely on track, it just hadn't started moving forward yet.
I've felt that motionlessness very deeply. My minecart of life is at a standstill on the tracks between the junctions of college and grad school. It has coasted to a stop and I'm very afraid that my little minecart has lost all of the momentum it had gained through all those years of school. I'm afraid that it will be hard to push my minecart into motion and keep it moving. So much of my life during the past few months has felt slow, monotonous, and unexciting. I never ever ever thought that I would say this, but I miss having schoolwork. I miss being occupied. I miss moving at the speed of light.
"You can't always be doing great things all the time."
If you are not familiar with Calvin College and its culture, that idea might seem like a no-brainer. Duh. You can't do great things all the time because then you'd be exhausted and always trying to out-do yourself and you'd never be satisfied. Somehow, though, when you're inside the Calvin bubble, you can delude yourself. People at Calvin and from Calvin seem to always be doing great things all the time. There are posters everywhere urging you to join this club, attend this seminar, participate in this awareness event, get involved with this ministry, on and on and on. The school's website has an entire News and Stories division devoted to showing the great things that their graduates are doing all the time. This person is single-handedly building wells in this remote village in Africa. This person is mapping this mysterious portion of the brain and discovering what it does. This person is teaching entire immigrant communities how to read English. This person just became an ambassador to the United Nations. On and on and on.
If they did a News and Stories story about me, it would be embarrassingly disappointing. "This person wakes up at 10:00 every morning but usually stays in bed til 11 because she can't think of any reason to get out of bed. She has watched the entire series of Law and Order: SVU beginning to end (that's thirteen seasons). Sometimes she eats lunch; sometimes she doesn't have an appetite. She leaves for work around 3:00 during the week, and curses the snow up and down for wreaking havoc with her little car. Here's something exciting! She got stuck in her employer's driveway on afternoon and slid backward into a tree, destroying a taillight and part of her rear bumper. The tree is fine, though, so don't worry."
I love Calvin dearly, but sometimes their idealism spins out of control. Its entire mission is to redeem the WORLD, aka do great things. Math class is not just math class, it is "changing the world through math." Spanish class is not just Spanish class, it is "ministering to Spanish-speaking people who don't know Jesus and changing the world." Education classes are not just education classes, they are "being the best teacher the world has ever seen and bringing God's light to every student and, of course, changing the world." The people of Calvin can usually make a joke out of this idealism and optimism and redeem-it-all-ism, but at the end of the day, it gets stuck in your head like the reviled, overplayed song on the radio that everyone is sick of.
You can imagine my surprise after spending a few weeks at home, living life in a much lower gear, and feeling horribly inadequate. Here I was, a bilingual college graduate with a teaching certificate, for crying out loud, but feeling like I amounted to very little. I really do have a lot going for me: not pregnant, not a teenage mother, not a drug addict, not an alcoholic, college-educated, literate, fed and sheltered, and loved. In no way am I need of "getting my life back on track." But why can't I make myself remember that?!
I guess it all boils down to this: you can't always be doing great things all the time. Sometimes, all you can do is exist. Live your day-to-day life. Make it through the week. Do your homework. Take care of your kids. Go to work and put up with the people you don't like. Get up in the morning. Eat at least some healthy food. Get in bed and fall asleep at night.
We can't all be digging wells in Africa. We can't all be studying the human brain and finding cures for cancer. We can't all be teaching English to immigrants. We can't all be legislators and ambassadors on the front lines, crusading for freedoms and rights. Most of all, we can't always hold ourselves to the impossible standard of doing big, noteworthy, sparkling, attention-getting things every moment of every day. It's a good thing to strive for, but we've got to stay realistic. Life itself is a big thing. Making lunch for your 4-year-old isn't very sparkly or glamorous, but if you didn't do it, your kid would starve. Keeping your head above the flood that is your schoolwork is not fancy or exciting, but if you blew it all off, you wouldn't get where you want to go. If you didn't have these stretches of time that seem interminable and deadly tedious, you wouldn't appreciate the opportunities that arise for doing great things, things that make life seem worthwhile, things that make you feel alive.
"We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it." - Mother Theresa
Preach.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Caught In Between
I am caught in between many different worlds right now.
I have just three days left at Calvin, which feels weird. There are very few people that finish their Calvin career at the end of interim. Instead of going out with a bang - student teaching, teacher commissioning ceremony, graduation, etc. - I am going out with a whisper, disappearing quietly while everyone else enjoys interim break and gears up for spring semester.
I am in an interim class that is traditionally taken by freshmen. There are 40 freshmen in my class. While they are exploring themselves and their identities as college students and determining their paths, I am crossing off an item on a checklist. I can't get my teaching certificate until my grades for this class are in. Most of the rest of my classmates are gaining momentum; I am coasting to a stop.
I am waiting for a letter from Western Michigan University telling me that I have been accepted to the graduate program that I have been dreaming about for the last six months. I have literally had nightmares that I come home to a letter stating that my application has been rejected. WMU is the only school that I applied to because it's close, it's affordable, and its program is exactly what I want. Applying to this program was the first career decision that felt absolutely 100% right to me, far more than teaching and Spanish ever did. If I don't get in, I really don't know what I'll do. I have literally put all of my eggs in one basket.
As for my romantic life...my therapist tells me that, once I get into the grad school environment, my singleness will not be nearly so glaring as it is here at Calvin. She tells me that once I get away from Calvin, I will realize that being 23 and single is perfectly normal, expected, even desired. She tells me that I have chosen a different path than many people my age; a path of higher education and career pursuit. It's hard to remember that and be content with it when I can see so many friends together on a path that I want to be on. Different path. Different path. Different....path.....
On a somewhat unrelated note, counseling is great. Not great as in a good time, but soul-great. You should try it.
So as you can see, I am caught in between the worlds of Calvin and Western, between freshmen and graduates, between singleness and marriage, between frustration and contentment...God is a God of works-in-progress.
I have just three days left at Calvin, which feels weird. There are very few people that finish their Calvin career at the end of interim. Instead of going out with a bang - student teaching, teacher commissioning ceremony, graduation, etc. - I am going out with a whisper, disappearing quietly while everyone else enjoys interim break and gears up for spring semester.
I am in an interim class that is traditionally taken by freshmen. There are 40 freshmen in my class. While they are exploring themselves and their identities as college students and determining their paths, I am crossing off an item on a checklist. I can't get my teaching certificate until my grades for this class are in. Most of the rest of my classmates are gaining momentum; I am coasting to a stop.
I am waiting for a letter from Western Michigan University telling me that I have been accepted to the graduate program that I have been dreaming about for the last six months. I have literally had nightmares that I come home to a letter stating that my application has been rejected. WMU is the only school that I applied to because it's close, it's affordable, and its program is exactly what I want. Applying to this program was the first career decision that felt absolutely 100% right to me, far more than teaching and Spanish ever did. If I don't get in, I really don't know what I'll do. I have literally put all of my eggs in one basket.
As for my romantic life...my therapist tells me that, once I get into the grad school environment, my singleness will not be nearly so glaring as it is here at Calvin. She tells me that once I get away from Calvin, I will realize that being 23 and single is perfectly normal, expected, even desired. She tells me that I have chosen a different path than many people my age; a path of higher education and career pursuit. It's hard to remember that and be content with it when I can see so many friends together on a path that I want to be on. Different path. Different path. Different....path.....
On a somewhat unrelated note, counseling is great. Not great as in a good time, but soul-great. You should try it.
So as you can see, I am caught in between the worlds of Calvin and Western, between freshmen and graduates, between singleness and marriage, between frustration and contentment...God is a God of works-in-progress.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Some Thoughts on Graduation
Well, I graduated from Calvin College yesterday and even 24 hours later, it still doesn't feel real! My whole college career was leading up to teacher certification, not necessarily graduation. Every form I filled out, every grade requirement met, every proficiency test passed, and every field experience completed was for that certificate with my name on it that says "yup, this woman can teach Spanish." I wasn't even THINKING about graduation most of the time. And then like a whirlwind, graduation week was upon me.
Another reason that I wasn't thinking about my own graduation is that this year is the year that my brother graduates from high school. His open house was the topic of discussion for at least a month leading up to it and he received a steady stream of cards in the mail. I'm not saying that I'm bitter about all the attention he got, but it certainly helped me to forget about my own graduation.
Before graduation, however, Calvin held a Teacher Commissioning Ceremony for all the teacher graduates. This seemed a lot more real than graduation because it was all about the Education Department, which has been the focus of my studies pretty much all along. All the profs and faculty were there, we had an absolutely fabulous speaker (Gary D. Schmidt, author of The Wednesday Wars and Okay For Now), and they fed us before and after! Basically, they told us, "Okay, you've studied all you need to study and you've passed all the tests you need to pass. Go out and teach and show your students the face of God."
Then Graduation Day arrived. We all piled into the car to make what was my 4th trip to Calvin in 5 days. The family found their seats and I found my place in the old gym with all the other grads. We spent about 45 minutes just taking pictures and looking at everybody's hats. I gotta say, the Education graduates had some of the best hats:
The music grads had a phrase from Pomp and Circumstance on their hats...
The math grads had π = 3.141 on their hats...
And the world language grads had flags or mottos from various countries on their hats!
(from left: Mexico, Spain, Spain+Education+Psychology, Germany, "Pura Vida" from Costa Rica, Peru, and Honduras)
I was pretty amazed that the ceremony lasted only an hour and a half. They got through 850 names so fast! We were done and outta there for a nice little party on Commons lawn. And lots of pictures, of course.
There were soooo many of us. My row is filing out right now.
Here I am receiving my diploma holder from...someone. I don't remember his name.
The four of us graduated from Calvin Christian High School together 4 years ago, and here we are as college graduates. 3 of us went to Calvin, and 1 went to Trinity in Chicago.
Some fabulous women of Calvin College.
So now what? Well, I'll be at the Grounds for the summer months, then finishing my undergrad at Calvin in the fall, then I plan to work full-time to earn some money for grad school. And maybe somewhere in there I'll get used to thinking of myself as a college graduate. :)
Summer of 10,000 Pages update:
Total pages so far: 682
Books completed: 1
Books in progress: 3
Most recent title completed: Harry Potter y la Camara de Secretos by J.K. Rowling (2nd HP book in Spanish)
"Mount Everest" title for the summer: Les Miserables, Victor Hugo, 1488 pages. So far (8% done), it's pretty good.
Before graduation, however, Calvin held a Teacher Commissioning Ceremony for all the teacher graduates. This seemed a lot more real than graduation because it was all about the Education Department, which has been the focus of my studies pretty much all along. All the profs and faculty were there, we had an absolutely fabulous speaker (Gary D. Schmidt, author of The Wednesday Wars and Okay For Now), and they fed us before and after! Basically, they told us, "Okay, you've studied all you need to study and you've passed all the tests you need to pass. Go out and teach and show your students the face of God."
Then Graduation Day arrived. We all piled into the car to make what was my 4th trip to Calvin in 5 days. The family found their seats and I found my place in the old gym with all the other grads. We spent about 45 minutes just taking pictures and looking at everybody's hats. I gotta say, the Education graduates had some of the best hats:
The music grads had a phrase from Pomp and Circumstance on their hats...
The math grads had π = 3.141 on their hats...
And the world language grads had flags or mottos from various countries on their hats!
(from left: Mexico, Spain, Spain+Education+Psychology, Germany, "Pura Vida" from Costa Rica, Peru, and Honduras)
I was pretty amazed that the ceremony lasted only an hour and a half. They got through 850 names so fast! We were done and outta there for a nice little party on Commons lawn. And lots of pictures, of course.There were soooo many of us. My row is filing out right now.
The four of us graduated from Calvin Christian High School together 4 years ago, and here we are as college graduates. 3 of us went to Calvin, and 1 went to Trinity in Chicago.
Some fabulous women of Calvin College.
So now what? Well, I'll be at the Grounds for the summer months, then finishing my undergrad at Calvin in the fall, then I plan to work full-time to earn some money for grad school. And maybe somewhere in there I'll get used to thinking of myself as a college graduate. :)
Summer of 10,000 Pages update:
Total pages so far: 682
Books completed: 1
Books in progress: 3
Most recent title completed: Harry Potter y la Camara de Secretos by J.K. Rowling (2nd HP book in Spanish)
"Mount Everest" title for the summer: Les Miserables, Victor Hugo, 1488 pages. So far (8% done), it's pretty good.
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