Full Embrace

To learn about yourself, sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone. I pushed myself WAY out of my comfort zone this weekend and attended the Slice Literary Conference in Brooklyn.

I have discovered this writing life to be ironic. It is the most insular undertaking I have ever experienced: sitting in a small space, with the reflective glow of my laptop as my only companion. However, the point to sitting alone for hours every day is to artfully get my thoughts on paper to be shared with the world. True confessions: I miss the community nature of teaching, the energy of other people, the dramatic highs and lows of working with teenagers. I spent the last year writing a novel, alone, and found myself talking to my cat and dog way more often than is acceptable. It was high time for me to find a larger community of writers.

Thanks to the lovely and talented Celia Johnson of SliceLiterary coming to Maine and teaching a killer workshop on the business of writing through the Maine Writers and Publishers Association, I discovered that writers actually do leave their hovels from time to time to blink at the sunshine of the world. I applied to attend the Slice Literary Conference and was accepted. Then, I enrolled for a couple of agent meetings, and was confirmed. I was on a roll – so I entered the Bridging the Gap competition. My poem, Emotional Eater, earned me a spot as a finalist in the competition, which gave me entry into two specialized workshops. It was all too good to be true, and I hadn’t even left home yet. Of course, all this news came to me as I sat, alone, in that reflective glow of the laptop. Last Friday, I had to actually pack a suitcase with my anxiety and get on a plane.

My family, friends, local writing acquaintances, all support my foray into this world – of course they do, they are not the ones facing their greatest fear. As a fledgling in this world, I was about to learn if I had what it takes to make it. The pronouns are intentional here: I don’t even know what either “it” actually represents. I am clueless. My goal for the conference was to become informed.

The conference was certainly an eye opener, full of plenty of its own irony. The amount of intelligence that surrounded me was overwhelming, but I learned that every writer there felt ignorant in comparison to the person next to them. (Apparently we are a self-demeaning bunch.) People traveled from great distances, including a lovely young woman who came all the way from Istanbul, to enter a space full of people who usually sit alone. The majority of writers agonized over agent meetings, full of passion about their completed works, and most of them were told their work was not really complete. Overall, the entire experience of being part of the literary community was mind-jolting enough to make me secretly long for the moment I could be alone with my laptop again. And so, here I am, alone, basking in the soft glow of the computer screen, hyper-focused on my time at the conference, where I found my people.

I would like to say I had a great epiphany about myself or made a highly intellectual connection with another writer as my great take-away from the conference, but I have to be honest. My greatest moment at the conference was at the informal presentation by Neal Thompson of Amazon Author Relations, when he encouraged us to ask ourselves, “what do I want to get from this life as a writer?” I was taking notes on my iPad when his question entered my existence, forever changing me. I shut my iPad and sat there, heart pounding, not hearing another word of the presentation. And that’s when it happened. I saw the woman next to me, taking notes on paper, obsessively boxing for emphasis the question, “what do I want to get from this life as a writer?” I tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Mind-blowing, right?” She looked at me, eyes glazed over, and nervously laughed. I stifled my own laughter, and then the woman on the other side of me leaned in and added, “I need to go home now.” As the presentation ended and the three of us collected our things, basking in our commonality, a couple of other women from a nearby table joined us, saying they enjoyed seeing our reaction to that burning question. One of them said, “I have no idea what I want,” and the other chimed in with, “I’ve never even considered what I am doing as creating a new life.” I summed it up for us by stating that I was done. Conference over. I could go home and spend the next year trying to answer that question.

It seems many of us “emerging writers” have it all wrong. We are focused on creating work, and we are supposed to be focused on creating a life. Let’s face it, not too many people can support themselves as writers. That’s why most of the writers I met this weekend are also grad students, teachers, scientists, political consultants, wait staff. We love our writing work, and we produce art – then move on to our regular existence. We have all been cheating ourselves. Writing is supposed to be who we are, how we live our lives.

So, here I am. In my small space, trying to dull the glare of the screen with words that will prove to you, reader, that I experienced a great life lesson this weekend. Prepare for the letdown – my great life lesson is that I have the ability – the freedom – the responsibility – the need to create a life for myself as a writer. There is no great formula to success, there is no corporate structure that I need to mold myself to, there are no steadfast rules about hours or workflow. There are only words that need to be artfully arranged into a platform for my life. That platform is totally up to me – no one is going to hand it to me, or determine how it should look. In all the confusion, it’s really very simple.

I am a writer. 

www.peggyldeblois.com

Emotional Eater

This poem was selected as a finalist in poetry for the Slice Literary Conference's Bridging the Gap competition in September 2016.

Emotional Eater

May 3, 2016

I am an emotional eater -

Of words.

I can binge myself for hours,

gobbling them so fast I sometimes have to

flip through the pages in disbelief of

the quantity I have consumed.

Indigestion,

Burning in my throat like a swig of bad whiskey,

Fearing all the while that they will regurgitate within me

And come back out in a burning gust of release,

Smelly and disgusting,

Leaving me weakened on a cold bathroom floor.

But I cannot resist eating more.

Finding those morsels of sweetness that soothe me

Phrases of Kaopectate that slowly crawl down my throat

Coating my insides

Protecting them from another batch of fiery phrase.

Words to be chewed,

mashed between my molars

mixed with the acids in my digestive tract,

Becoming part of me.

Their spice

seeping from my pores

so that I may smell

of Shakespeare

or Dickens

or Angelou,

Depending on the day.

And so -

I become a chemist.

Wanting to mix my words,

Turn new phrases,

Develop a scent that will be uniquely mine.

Serve a salad with a casserole of words

That are not ever truly mine.

I can only use the leftovers to reconstitute a new meal.

And if my guests do not arrive,

I will gorge myself on these new concoctions.

Savor some -

Spit some out.

Rejection is not a judgement,

Just a realistic way of sorting words,

Of finding sustenance.

Teachers belong to you, their students and families

August 22, 2016

Dear fellow parents,

Today may be your child’s first day of a new school year. I totally share your excitement and anxieties – letting go of that little hand and trusting that the world will be kind. It is my child’s first day, too – as a teacher. I’m writing to you to plead for your support of new teachers.

Here’s the situation – I was a teacher for twelve years. I loved teaching, because I loved your kids. I left for one simple reason: I could not take the system. And please understand, I had a cushy teaching job in a private school where I was very well respected by my students and parents, but over the years I saw parent-teacher relationships spiral out of control. I was not strong enough to exist within a space where my teaching peers were forced to live in fear of a parent phone call to the office. Back when we were students in these schools, our parents let teachers do their jobs. The most effective classroom management strategy for a teacher was simply to suggest your actions might warrant a call home – now, students have learned to turn the tables on teachers and declare that their parent is going to call the school. Somewhere along the way, teachers became your enemies – villains who simply don’t understand the special needs of your child. It’s never your child’s problem in the classroom, it’s the inability of the teacher to reach him. While the teacher is home at night researching new methods to try, you are drafting a strong letter of complaint to the principal, and if she doesn’t respond immediately, that letter makes it to the superintendent, then the school board. Suddenly, the teacher who chose this profession to help your child is being vilified. What have you gained? You’ve taught your child that rather than take any responsibility for his own education, he should blame the system for failing him. And that new teacher? She will retreat to her classroom and stop trying so hard, learn by default to just follow the mandates, try to get through the year without doing anything that might be construed as beyond the norm. At first, she will worry more about losing your kids than losing her job, but eventually she will become tainted by the reality. You will volunteer at your PTA and be dismayed to learn the teachers in your school are unhappy, bordering on bitter, and you will wonder why they became teachers in the first place.

Today, as my darling girl begins her vocation as a teacher, I am nervous to let go of her hand for fear that the world will not be kind. Every bit of logic tells me that I should have tried harder to get her more interested in another field – she is extremely intelligent and would be successful at anything she pursued. Teaching means she will always be underpaid, and now worse, undervalued. She chose to get her degree in a program with some of the most rigorous requirements for licensure because she wants to be prepared for the challenges that she knows lie ahead. She is going in eyes wide open, choosing to work in urban high-needs education because she is passionate about making society better by working with families below the poverty line. She is trained in all the theories, practiced in all the methods, volunteered in the kinds of systems she wants to work in. She gets it. She is ready.

Most people are shocked when they hear my daughter, a child of middle-class privilege, is working in Lawrence, Massachusetts, one of the most challenging high-needs systems in the country. True confessions: I hoped she would get a job in a nice, “normal” suburban school, a place I would recognize. But you know what? She absolutely made the right choice. In Lawrence, the teachers make home visits the week before school starts, and Ashley was welcomed in to their homes and showered with gratitude. She had one parent who demanded Ashley make accommodations for her son, and the administrative team immediately put together a plan to support Ashley’s interactions with that child. Today, her students will arrive and be greeted at the building door by the principal, at the hallway by the second grade dean, and at the classroom door by Ashley – not because the first day is special, but because this school does this simple routine every day. They engage with the parents, empower them to be part of the community, ensure them that the children are safe in their care. This school and the community have learned to work together, to trust the professionals, to respect the families, ultimately, to love the children.

From our privileged vantage point, we see this school as a failed institution in a dangerous neighborhood. From my daughter’s standpoint, she sees a new approach where she can make a difference. Take another look: the school in your own middle class neighborhood is struggling, too. The new teacher there is excited to meet your kids, but that joy is overshadowed by the pressure to meet tough testing standards, or worse, the constant threat of your demands. The socio-economic status of the school doesn’t matter – we need a mind shift to trust each other, to allow our children the freedom to be nurtured by someone other. To be hurt on the schoolyard without making an accusation of negligence. To fail a test without saying the teacher never covered the material. To cry over homework without telling them they don’t need to do it. You will make mistakes with your child, as will the teacher. See each other face to face and recognize that you are both working toward the same goal of your child’s success.

So please, on this first day of school for your child, think about my child, too – the new teacher. She sees your child every day, probably for more waking hours than you do. She will be influential in your child’s life, and maybe that’s the real threat. We all want so much for our children, and life is so busy and demanding that we feel we are never doing enough for them. And then this smiling young woman enters your child’s life as his new teacher, and you can’t let go of your child’s hand and put him in her care. You are incapable of this level of trust with your most precious cargo. Please understand, she loves your child – even though she’s not required to, she does. Even if your child is a challenge, she does. She wouldn’t have chosen to teach otherwise. And, most importantly, she’s not judging you. She knows you are doing the best you can, understands you have challenges as a parent that she cannot begin to grasp. You love your child. It is the universal in our world, no matter how bitterly divided we become. Now it is her turn to help your child move forward, even tiny steps, because she can. She is uniquely skilled at connecting with children, looking into their eyes and seeing their insecurities, listening to their voices and sensing their hopes – and finding the sweet spot between that insecurity and hope and helping them get there. Teachers strive to enable – not to assess, analyze, and record – that belongs to the system. Teachers belong to you, to students and their families. My girl belongs to you now. Please cherish her as I have. She is worthy of your child. Your child may love her, or not, but she will cherish each of her students regardless of his actions, or yours. She is blessed with that ability, her gift from God, and lucky for all of us, she has chosen to be a teacher. It is her vocation. Please support her.

Sincerely,

A Teacher’s Mom