Tag Archives: identity

In Memoriam

Posted on by under History and Place

It’s my fiftieth birthday and I’m wandering around a graveyard.

It’s not that I am feeling morbid, or even that I am attempting to come to terms with my mortality. (Although it’s hard to deny that there is something about turning 50 that pulls the whole mortality thing into sharper focus.)

My younger brother is visiting from New York City, which doesn’t happen very often, and we have decided to take a drive into the country to visit our parents’ burial plot.

“Do you have any paper towels?” Vern asks, as we merge onto the interstate, heading south from Pittsburgh toward Washington County, Pennsylvania.

I point to the glove compartment and raise my eyebrows. “Why?”

“Remember the last time we visited?” he asks, and I do. We planted marigolds, and we scrubbed dried bird droppings from the marble headstone. We laugh and agree that this is par for the course in a graveyard surrounding a church with the word “pigeon” in its name.

Forty-five minutes later, we pull into the parking lot of Pigeon Creek Presbyterian Church in Eighty Four, Pennsylvania. A stone monument to the left of the wide front door proclaims the church’s historical significance:

The Pigeon Creek Presbyterian Church was founded by John McMillan August 24, 1775. It is the oldest church west of the Monongahela River.

***

pigeon-creek-church-graveyardMy mother’s mother is a descendant of the Rev. John McMillan. Pigeon Creek was the home church of my mother’s father—and his parents, and their parents, and so on. This little red brick country church, perched atop a hill near the intersection of Brownlee and Church Roads, is in walking distance of the house in which my mother grew up, and in which I lived my first two and a half years.

Grandpa Hamilton was an elder at Pigeon Creek Presbyterian Church, and Grandma Hamilton taught Sunday school and accompanied the choir on the piano. This is where Mom and Dad were married, where my two younger brothers and I were all baptized, and where my parents are buried, in a plot next to my grandparents.

It never fails to amuse me, as a person descended—through my mother’s line— from a long line of English, Scots-Irish, German, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, to see the Maczuzak headstone adjacent to the Hamilton one. My father, the son of a Ukrainian immigrant coal miner, married into a family of WASPs and is now buried among them.

I am descended from a Scots-Irish Presbyterian missionary who opposed the Whiskey Rebellion on the western frontier of America in the late 18th century. And I am the granddaughter of a brave Eastern European 18-year-old who sailed to Ellis Island in 1913 to labor in the coal mines of western Pennsylvania. The presence of my surname in Pigeon Creek’s graveyard, just a few hundred yards from a handful of Revolutionary War interments, speaks eloquently of the American story—and of mine.

***

Since my mother’s and father’s funeral services, a decade ago and nearly three years ago, respectively, I have attended only one worship service in this building—the installation of its new pastor, my friend and former campus ministry colleague, John Dykstra. That intersection of past and present is a story for another time, and a bit of serendipity. Another chapter in my history with this church.

Today, we stand together in the center of the small sanctuary, and John catches us up on the modern-day happenings of this congregation. Vern and I reminisce about our childhood memories of this place—how much brighter it used to be before the clear windows were replaced with stained glass, how the Hamilton/Maczuzak clan always sat in the same pew—second row on the left, as you face the altar.

We walk to up to the chancel to investigate the inscribed plaque on the side of the upright piano which has graced this space for nearly 40 years, a living monument to our musical grandmother:

IN MEMORY
FRANCES F. HAMILTON
MAY 7, 1978

gravestone-gridWe step into the bright September sunshine and walk together down the steep bank to visit the matching marble headstones for DAVID A. & FRANCES F. HAMILTON and for JANET HAMILTON & JOHN ANTHONY MACZUZAK. My grandpa and my dad were both predeceased by their wives, and when visiting the graves, must have experienced the jarring sensation of seeing their own names and birth dates etched into the marble, a blank space waiting to be filled in at some future time.

By the time they were my age, my parents knew where their earthly remains would rest. I am now 50 years old, and I have no idea.

***

“Are you two related to the Hamiltons at the top of the hill?” John asks, and curious to find out, we climb the steep bank to check out the headstones closest to the rear of the church building. Catching my breath after the climb, I pull out my phone and snap a photo of an ornate headstone:

David M. Hamilton
Aug. 28, 1846–Apr. 26, 1911
———–
Elizabeth A. His Wife
Mar. 15, 1855–May 16, 1933

I text the picture to my mom’s brother and ask, “Who is this?”

Uncle John replies within minutes, identifying my great-great grandfather. After some back-and-forth Q and A, he wishes me a happy birthday and teases me about how I have chosen to spend it.

***

I don’t visit this cemetery often, and I confess that I am never really sure what I’m supposed to do when I get here. I feel connected to my parents in all sorts of places—even moreso than on this quiet country hillside.

But this is where we gathered with our family and friends shortly after they died. This is where we shared memories about how grateful we were to have known them. This is where we chose to erect a monument to commemorate that, once upon a time, they lived and breathed and laughed and cried and loved.

Like my ancestors at the top of the hill, most of whom I never met, and the people buried in the nearly illegible Revolutionary War era graves, the headstones in this cemetery represent flesh-and-blood men and women who lived full, rich, complicated lives about which I know very little. But I do know this: if they had not lived, I would not be here.

As Vern and I say goodbye, my friend John assures me that it’s not too late to purchase a burial plot in the Pigeon Creek Presbyterian Church cemetery, and we laugh. But then I wonder. Maybe I should. I’m not getting any younger.

***

Amy Maczuzak is a writer and editor who has lived most of her fifty years in or near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Other People’s Dirty Dishes

Posted on by under Mess & Place

The stack of plates next to the sink had bits of dried cheese and other unidentifiable foodstuff stuck to them. A frying pan and a couple of saucepans were soaking in dirty dishwater in the sink, along with handfuls of cutlery. Unwashed drinking glasses were colonizing next to the dirty plates. I had just recovered a couple more from the living room where they had been abandoned, water rings left behind on the garage-sale end tables.

The house was quiet. The students who weren’t still sleeping in their bedrooms were scattered across campus, attending class or studying in the library.

And I was annoyed.

***

Nearly a quarter century ago, I spent four years living in community with college students. When I accepted a campus ministry position as a co-director of a co-ed discipleship house in Erie, Pennsylvania, I had idealized notions of what that would look like. These ideals were founded on my own experience a few years earlier, when I spent the summer between my junior and senior years of college living in Ocean City, New Jersey, in a co-ed house with fifteen other Christian college students and four campus ministers.

We shared a house and we shared meals. By day, we worked in souvenir shops and pizza parlors, or we cleaned hotel rooms or mowed lawns. In the evenings, we took turns leading Bible studies and learning from teachers who visited each week to help us grow in our faith and our leadership abilities. All of this while living a couple blocks from the beach.

We laughed and learned and flirted and grew in our relationships with one another and with the God we were getting to know better. For two months, we experienced the very best parts of living in community. And then we tearfully said goodbye and returned to our families and our different college campuses.

When we parted ways, we were barely out of the honeymoon stage.

***

Two years into being a campus minister and a “house mother”—at age 24—the honeymoon was definitely over.

I was now one of the adults, living with students who had varying motives for living in this house. For some, it was an opportunity to live with other Christian students and to grow in faith and learn how to share that faith with their peers. For some, it was an inexpensive alternative to the university’s residence halls or campus-owned apartments. And for others, it was a combination of the two.

Dirty dishes were the tip of the iceberg. There were so many more issues below the surface.

We were a motley crew. Protestants and Catholics and agnostics. Republicans and Democrats and independents. Young women and men transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, and two campus ministry “house parents” who did not have much of an age advantage but were trying to help these students to ask good questions and figure out who they were and who they were becoming.

This was no two-month adventure at the Jersey shore with relatively like-minded people. This was nine months of classes and midterms and finals and debates about whether the TV should be tuned to CNN (the general preference of the international students) or MTV (the rest of the students) or shouldn’t be turned on at all (the house directors).

dirty-dishes-resized-600This was a minimum two-semester commitment to weekly house dinners and meetings on Sunday evenings, followed by living life together the rest of the week.

It was difficult for some of us to resist the temptation to keep an hour-by-hour mental tally of who cleaned up after themselves and who did not.

For much of my time in that house, I disregarded the importance of the mundane, day-to-day, messy business of living life together. My focus was on house dinners and Bible studies and philosophical conversations. These were important. But my passive-aggressive response to dirty dishes and TV channel disagreements contributed to the mess—and dismissed real opportunities for growth and identity formation.

I wish someone had shared with me back then that the secret to a healthy community living environment is being willing to put up with each other’s messes.

Or better yet, to pitch in and help clean them up.

***

Amy YAH bio

Homecoming

Posted on by under Finding Place

The snapshot is of a girl in a gray Allegheny College hoodie, one she purchased in the campus bookstore on one of her pre-college visits. She is gazing at the camera, chin on fist, an open notebook on the table in front of her, a pen clutched between her fingers. She is not smiling.

The girl in the gray sweatshirt is me, more than three decades ago.

I look at the photo today, and I remember the melancholy and relief, the complicated emotions I experienced upon completing the first term of my first year of college. I remember that unmoored sensation, adrift between old and new and unknown.

*****

It was a few days before Thanksgiving, and I had a long six-week holiday vacation ahead of me before I would return for second term. I had survived my first round of final exams, and with that stress behind me, I was looking forward to seeing my mom and dad and two younger brothers, waiting for me in a house I’d never seen, on the other side of the state.

Just a month earlier, my family had relocated from a northwestern suburb of Pittsburgh to a northeastern suburb of Philadelphia.

When I chose to go to Allegheny, one of the selling points of this idyllic liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania was its proximity to home. I knew before Christmas of my senior year of high school that this is where I would go. I found out shortly after I graduated that, instead of a two-hour drive to visit my family, it would take eight hours door to door.

Now that finals were over, I felt homeless. The home of my high school years now belonged to another family, and the home I had known for the last ten weeks was a dorm room two hours north. When the photo was snapped, I was hanging out with my mom’s brother and his family for a few days. On Thanksgiving Day morning, we would all pile into Uncle John’s station wagon for the journey from one end of the scenic Pennsylvania turnpike to the other, where I would spend my long holiday break in a home I had yet to see.

When we arrived, I had to ask where to find the bathroom.

*****

I spent the first 18 years of my life getting used to new homes. Thanks to my father’s frequent corporate job transfers, I had never lived any particular place for more than five years. Home was where the family was. I learned to make new friends and adjust to new situations. As long as I could count on going home—wherever that was—to be with my mom and dad and brothers, everything was okay.

Every time I reread my favorite Laura Ingalls Wilder book, These Happy Golden Years, I was thrilled by the romance of Laura finally marrying Almanzo. And I cried every time I read the last chapter, when Laura moved out of Ma and Pa’s house and into a home of her own.

*****

I cried when my mom and dad left me at college one sunny September afternoon a couple weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday. But my tears dried quickly as years of new-kid-in-school practice kicked in. I met the other young women in my residence hall. I participated in all the orientation week events. I found new friends with whom to eat and study and explore campus and the surrounding town. I met boys, and I enjoyed my first post-high school almost-requited crush.

And then came the casual invitation that would set the course for the rest of my life so far.

When a new friend, a senior named Karen, invited me to a Christian fellowship meeting, I said yes. Because, why not? I had been saying yes to everything, from fraternity parties to movie nights to spontaneous late-night pizza deliveries.

A life-long church-goer, I had been involved in my high school youth group, but I had given no thought one way or the other about whether I would continue to go to church as a college student. Bible studies and service projects and retreats had no place on my pre-college bucket list.

Who knew that this is where I would find my people—and my calling?

*****

What the girl in the gray sweatshirt did not know on that long ago Thanksgiving Eve could fill volumes.

She did not anticipate how her decision to attend a fellowship meeting would lead her to a deepening faith in God, and to a desire to invite others into that journey. She did not know how many of the new friends she had just wished a happy Thanksgiving would still be in her life three decades later, or what triumphs and heartaches they would experience together in the coming years.

She did not realize that her own experience of finding purpose and direction as a college student would become her purpose and direction going forward.

She may have sensed that the home she was about to visit that Thanksgiving would never really be hers. She certainly did not yet recognize that Home had found her.

*****

Amy bio YAH

Alone in an Unlikely Place

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

Driving would be faster. It will be a long walk from the Metro station to the coffee shop in the post-snowstorm cold. But I jump at any chance to take public transportation into a city – alone.

Maybe it is because I grew up in suburban Ohio, where light rails and city buses were a rare sight.  Maybe it is because I have never lived in a city.  But there is something irresistible about being transported to the urban hustle in a train full of…everyone.

And that’s exactly what it is:  everyone.  Light rails, city buses and trains don’t filter out the haves and the have nots, they don’t care if your collar is white or blue or nonexistent, they don’t turn away the underprivileged or celebrate the accomplished.

On the train, we are all the same.  We are all trying to leave something behind.  We are all going somewhere.  We are all looking for the next stop.

It is in this convergence of everyone that I feel free to be alone.  And it is not a lonely, dark alone, but a healthy, inspiring alone.

Steven Pressfield writes, “We know what the clan is; we know how to fit in the band and the tribe.  What we don’t know is how to be alone.  We don’t know how to be free individuals.”

Perhaps it is this tribal wiring that, paradoxically, nurtures healthy solitude in such an unlikely place: a crowded train of strangers.

You Are HereIn the train’s tribe, it is how I am the same that propels me into aloneness, not how I am different. Titles are irrelevant, responsibilities suspended, control of the steering wheel surrendered, and upholding of images put on hold.  I am, simply, going somewhere.  And I am not in control.

Off the train, I try so hard to stand out.   I craft the Facebook posts, go for the promotion, bow down to the gods of children’s sports, and buy the stuff in hopes of attention and achievement.  On the train, I don’t want or need to stand out.  Closer to humanity’s equality, I can stop trying so hard.  There is space to find the things that lie deep within me, the ones that are trying so hard to get my attention and that make me the free individual I was intended to be:  my uncensored dreams and true desires.

It is in the rare moments of glimpsing the equality of humanity that I can learn how to be a “free individual.”

Comforted by our sameness and my anonymity, I look out the windows of the train and see space for my dreams.  I listen to the engine’s hum and to the voice that grants permission for desire.  On the train, I respond, although incompletely and imperfectly, to the question “Who are we?”  And it helps me move on to “Who am I?”

I get off at the Columbia Heights station.  Lifted by the escalator into the morning light, I emerge humbled by who we are, inspired by who I can become.

I see business suits walking swiftly with purpose.  I see faded jeans meandering slowly with regret.   And I see snow hiding in the sidewalk’s shadows, too stubborn to melt.

I see me.

* * * * *

H1Holly Pennington is a writer in the other Washington, but she loves to visit family and friends in D.C.  At home in the Seattle area, she jumps at the chance to take the ferry.  She blogs about vulnerability, faith and freedom at www.dreadlocksandgoldilocks.com and would love to connect with you on Instagram, Facebookand Twitter.

Together, Undefined

Posted on by under Together in Place

It was 8 pm on my daughter’s 15th birthday, and I remained a Mama on a Mission, gearing up for the home stretch.

The mission, of course, was making my daughter feel as special and loved as possible—a mission that’s more challenging, I’ve discovered, when your children are teenagers and less likely to buy into the enthusiasm in your voice as you sell them on some random idea: Bowling would be a fun birthday treat! If my daughter had her way we’d be seeing Broadway shows in New York for her birthday, but in reality I had less to work with.

By 8 pm on this particular birthday, we had already completed our typical activities: a mother-daughter outing (which in this case involved a new ear piercing); a birthday dinner at the restaurant of her choice, with the seven people who make up her immediate family (mom, dad, sister, stepmom, half-brother, stepdad, step-sister); and finally dessert and presents back at home. My now-15-year-old already had a big party with friends the night before, so now what?

“Do you want to go anywhere?” I asked.

“No, I just want to be home,” she said, smiling contentedly.

“Should we rent a movie?” I suggested. “Or play a game?” I know very well that games are not her favorite pastime, but I couldn’t help myself. In my family experience, both as a child and an adult, this is what you do when you’re together: You play games. Sitting around a table covered with the pieces of a game is my family’s quintessential definition of togetherness.

“No, I just want to be home and do whatever,” she said, a trace of exasperation edging into her voice. “I’ve had an amazing birthday! Can’t we all just be here but do our own things?”

As an extrovert, I (not for the first time) had to pause and forcibly wrap my head around this less structured version of “Together.” I could see my other daughter re-calibrating as well, as we tried to imagine that the birthday girl’s idea of a fun birthday might not look exactly like our plans for her. After all, we were there to serve! To entertain! To focus all of our time and energies on HER! And she wanted to go up to her room and try out the new guitar pedal she just unwrapped? We had to let that sink in.

“Well…OK. If you’re sure,” I said.

She was, of course, sure.

6647530355_0233217d07_zAs the sounds of reverberating electric guitar and my daughter’s pure voice serenaded us through the ceiling, the rest of us looked at each other in somewhat sheepish agreement: Let’s play a game. In her own way, she was right there with us.

*   *   *   *   *

While I probably wouldn’t choose “alone in my room” as a way to spend my birthday evening, upon a bit more reflection I realized that I know a thing or two about this desire my daughter often has: to be together yet alone.

Since February 2002, after nearly a decade of working in populated office settings, I’ve worked essentially alone, as a writer. When I was in the process of deciding whether to take the leap and start my own business, my biggest fear wasn’t Will I have enough clients? or Will I make enough money? It was this: Will I be able to work alone?

Not only am I social—someone who is energized by being in the mix, having people to go to lunch with, and feeling connected to others who are dealing with the same bosses and projects—but I’m also most creative in collaborative settings. In other words, I worried not just that I would be lonely working by myself, but also that the very skills I was selling might fall flat if there weren’t people around to bounce ideas off of and provide critique.

I decided to take the leap anyway, and was lucky enough to discover that technology was my safety net. It was the growing availability of wireless Internet, in particular, that prevented me from gradually slipping away from myself, sitting day after day at the desk in the corner of my living room. Wireless Internet meant I could take my laptop—all that really comprised my “office”—to my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, where I could be together yet alone.

photo (3)In that coffee shop, I learned it was the mere presence of bodies and voices—being surrounded by activity and the gears of many brains thinking and creating—that I craved more than anything else. In the unnatural silence of my empty home I felt slightly on-edge and easily distractible, but the buzzing white noise of the café allowed me to dive into my work and ride a stream of creative flow for hours.

There’s simply something powerful—at once comforting and freeing—about being autonomous yet in community, whether that community is family or strangers at a café. It’s an experience that carries a certain rightness and balance: In a single moment and place, it acknowledges and respects both our “sameness” as humans and our “difference” as individuals.

Ultimately, both identity and empathy are strengthened through that single form of togetherness. When I think of it that way, I can see what a wonderful gift it was to give my teenage daughter on her birthday—and what a wonderful reminder it was for her to share with me.

*   *   *   *   *

Photo of the game “Carcassonne” by Aslakr. Coffee shop photo by Kristin Tennant.

Chicago was spring, Philadelphia Autumn

Posted on by under Guest, Season & Place

I am sitting in a guest room that was once my room at my parents’ home. I’m typing away with my feet propped up on a box and my computer on top of an antique vanity that belonged to my great-grandmother. The years have cycled back, the way they do, to the first season. The room is mine again.

The red Georgia clay and the bare winter limbs on the oaks outside are part of the season that birthed me 32 years ago. I joke with my parents that I am the poster-child for the boomerang generation. Three cross-continent moves, a graduate degree, and a couple “adult” jobs under my belt, but here I am typing away at a vanity where I can see my name that I etched into the wood as a kid.

On my first cross-country move I landed just north of Chicago, a ten-minute walk from the shore of Lake Michigan. It was a land of straight and flat roads, crossing at hard-right angles until you got to the shore where sand and rocks met vast water. I had a spot near the lake—a tree arched over the edge of the water and every season I marveled at the changes there. I once waded waist-high in snow drifts to get close to the icy lake. I watched in awe as the weather changed from week to week. For the first time in my life I knew what it was like to ache for the coming of spring, to see the green shoots of grass start growing as the slushy, dirty snow finally melted.

In Chicago, the beauty of the Lake and the beauty of the architecture fed my soul in tandem. Chicago introduced me to myself in a way that’s only possible when you flourish somewhere brand new. As a suburban girl, I barely knew my neighbors, but here I passed them on the sidewalk regularly as we all walked to the train or the coffee shop or church.

When spring came, we all went outside. The two elementary school children across the street played football with their dad in the front yard, Henry the beagle and his caretaker made frequent trips around the block; I chatted with the next door neighbor about plants as I edged my lawn right next to her driveway. There was an annual block party and an Easter-egg hunt. My introverted self means I can’t tell you the names of many of these people, but I was drawn to the community and togetherness–these seeds of community burrowed into my heart.

And when the season in Chicago was done, I landed in the hills and valleys of Eastern Pennsylvania to attend seminary. Here, I would check the weather for rain and plan my life accordingly. When it rained the basement flooded and blocked my path to the washing machine for a day. The roads flooded in such a way that my old car protested and sputtered over every puddle.

But on pretty days I’d sometimes find myself on a hill in the beautiful Valley Forge National Park, textbook and pen in hand as I did my reading for my seminary coursework. During those years the theology I studied and learned began to stitch together the pieces of my life. I was desperate to know if I was changing, or just growing. Had my years as an educator and a non-profit worker,  my experiences as a single woman and a fat woman, my understanding of God learned in a suburban Southern church and an urban Midwestern church  finally all come together to produce who I was?

That last year in Pennsylvania was a bountiful harvest. I had seen the beauty of community while watching my Chicago neighborhood, I got to live it in Pennsylvania where every Sunday night neighbors gathered together for dinner. Relationships were deep and meaningful. Ideas and hopes and dreams were always close at hand. After a lifetime of not knowing what I was passionate about, I finally had answers (to some things!). There were places where I could voice a firm “yes” or “no.”

Those passions and ideas unexpectedly led me back to Georgia, a move not for work or grad school, but a choice to be near family. There is a lot that is uncertain for me about life back in Georgia. While I found a worthwhile reason to move, one that was born out of the community I experienced with people who had been strangers,  my current situation lacks the structure to define my day’s activities. There is a freedom to find what will shape my life here. It is planting season: time to sow the seeds I reaped from a Pennsylvania harvest, first nourished in a Chicago spring.

The dark wood of this old vanity and the even-older red clay outside remind me that there are roots already here. This very specific plot has nurtured my beginnings before. A harvest will come again.  Now, counting on the hope of spring and the bounty of autumn, I sow.

* * * * *

fall“Chicago was Spring, Philadelphia Autumn” was written by Nicole Morgan. Nicole has lived near Chicago, IL; Philadelphia, PA; and in a handful of lesser known Georgian towns. She loves discovering, and falling in love with, the parts of these communities that make them unique. She currently lives in her childhood home near Atlanta, GA, writes about bodies, theology, and community at jnicolemorgan.com  and tweets away @jnicolemorgan

 

Scarves & High Heels: The Layers of Personal Geography

Posted on by under Guest, Role & Place

I was fresh out of grad school and decided that if I just wore high heels and scarves I’d be taken seriously in the classroom. Because at 5’2″ and just a few years older than my college students, I needed something to communicate big words like “authority” and “stature” and “smart” and “serious.” I walked around that campus with the air of someone who knew what she was about, who knew her subject matter and who knew how to teach.

But I felt like I was playing a giant dress-up game called life.

And then real life happened, by which I mean, life in the dailyness of washing dishes, and learning how to love, and making the bed, and grocery shopping. Life full of the glorious mundane. And then there is the life that happens when you add lives to your own, and spend your hours changing diapers, and making dinner, and trying to make meaning from the crying, the napping, and developmental milestones.

So slowly, as we moved from Los Angeles, to San Diego, to Salt Lake City, and as I moved from student to professor to mother, this “game” of life took on a bedrock finality where I had to concede I was, in fact, grown up. I didn’t need high heels or tomes on my bookshelf. I had a mortgage and a minivan full of kids to prove it.

It just took me to my mid-thirties and seven moves—one international—to begin to feel at home in myself.

Each place has whittled me down based on who I am becoming in each place. As I turn the pages of my past selves, each place holds for me a tender space with an accompanying nostalgia akin to flipping through old photo albums. Each place gives a geography to the chapters of me.

Each place we’ve lived has shown me more of who I am and more of who God is. Each has evidenced a terrible beauty. The painful beauty of becoming. Every home has shown me how wide and deep the Kingdom of God is and that there are good gifts in each spot; that there are always people who need you and whom you can connect to one another. Each place has stripped me a bit bare.

Los Angeles laid claim to my know-it-all-ness, as I put on my grad school knowledge like a scarf and found it lacking. For all the learning in the world couldn’t tell me about marriage, and sacrifice, and how to balance work with new motherhood. San Diego showed me my idol of my self-sufficiency as I floundered with two children under two. I felt helpless and at sea, having left the pats-on-the-back of academia and instead, spent my days pushing a double stroller up and down hills at the zoo.

And now, in what many consider the conservative capital of the US, I have been given bravery in Salt Lake City. It’s a city dominated by the LDS temple, the center point around which the city’s grid system is based. And yet, there are other factions which orbit that hub—factions that challenge, and augment, and move gracefully around the dominant religious culture. It’s made being a Christian here something exotic; and even with the pressures of four children, a college ministry and a dominant religious culture of which I’m not a part, Salt Lake City has birthed my voice.

Places do that. They push and pull at who we think we are and stretch us into who we are becoming.

Places, if we let them, usher us into a multi-orbed story, where in each new place we carry our past layers, have the freedom to shed some old ones, and to don new ones.

Places finally take up residence in our souls, not for their amenities and attractions, but for how they birth us into new people. And how, after awhile, we can look back at each place with a certain fondness after the terror of becoming has abated.

So as I string those dear places together—as connected dots on a world map—I’m reminded that there is no space that is too unlovable, too hard, or too unattractive. And, as we anticipate another move this summer, I’m looking forward to another dot on the map that I will weave my story around, and in whose stories I will be woven.

*   *   *   *   *

ashley

“Scarves & High Heels” was written by Ashley Hales. Ashley is passionate about helping others to tell their scary brave stories. When she’s not stealing time to write at Circling the Story, she’s chasing her four kids or helping out with her husband’s college ministry in Salt Lake City, Utah. She also holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. You can read more of Ashley’s work on her blog, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

 

Fill in the Blanks

Posted on by under Role & Place, Uncategorized

If you had told my seventeen-year-old self what she would grow up to be, I think she might have cried. But then again, she never knew half as much as she supposed.

It all began early. In second grade I was set apart as “gifted.” Practically, this meant I stood waiting in the school stairwell on Thursday mornings, with a little boy name Todd, and a mini-bus came and delivered us to a neighboring school. It was the best part of my week. There, waiting in the library, were several other children, word puzzles, art materials, floppy disks labeled “Oregon Trail” and “Turtle LOGO”, and a magical teacher who made learning seem like play.

As school progressed, I rode the wave of privileges and honors. When I was in fifth grade, they let me assist the kindergarten teacher, in junior high I chose among special electives that were only available to kids ‘like me’. By the time I got to high school, I was enrolled in A.P. Everything, heading for Governor’s School, and chosen as a National Merit Finalist.

I was so very impressive back then.

****

When I was seventeen, I wanted to be an elementary school teacher when I grew up. And so I chose a college, and everything went swimmingly for about two years. But my interests were broad–or maybe I should say ‘scattered’. Toward the end of my junior year, I added some religion courses and decided not to student teach.

And with this choice, I stepped off the marked path, and began wandering in my very own vocational wilderness. Eventually I would end up in seminary, still longing for the day when I could finish this sentence: “I’m a _____________.”

If it wasn’t “I’m a teacher,” it could be “I’m a pastor.” Right?

But then our lovely, miraculous and terribly inconvenient babies were born. We welcomed two little girls, in two years. As graduation approached and I was changing diapers while learning Greek conjunctions, the thought of ordination exams-or a role as a full-time pastor-was more than I could bear. Again, I chose to get the degree without the title.

And again, “I’m a _____________,” was an open-ended statement. Sure, I could say, “I’m a mother,” but many of my friends were mothers and _____________. I had no “and.”

Without a professional certification, there was no point in getting a job just for the sake of getting a job. I made less per hour than we paid our babysitter. If I stayed home, the numbers worked. But still, it gnawed on me. How could it be that the little girl who was so smart, so full of promise, could grow up to become… me?

****

Here is a true statement: we would never talk to our friends the way that we talk to ourselves.

Did I consider my fellow stay-at-home-mom friends “failures”? No, of course not. They were making choices within a specific season of their lives. They were blessed to have spouses who made good salaries, allowing them to focus on their young children. They were doing what they needed to do, as were my friends who pursued their professions.

And I soon learned that the grass wasn’t greener for my “mother and _____________” friends. Their paths were not as straightforward as they seemed. Some alternated between full and part-time, and many felt as if they did everything, but couldn’t do anything well.

It seemed that we were all making this up as we went along.

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photo by Niklas Fridwall

As my children have grown older (both are in elementary school this year), I have added hats along the way. Two years ago I took a part-time job as a secretary, working for an organization and with people I love. I’m also (as you may have noticed) writing, or rather trying-to-write while volunteering at my kids’ schools, leading a community Bible Study group, and being the “on call” parent for snow delays, sickness, after-school activities, and random inservice days.

It’s good. It’s busy. It’s worthwhile. However.

The most difficult part of all this is that it is almost completely volunteer. Not getting paid is a blow to my ego, makes our finances tight, and sometimes makes me feel as if I’m not a real, contributing grown-up. Now again, would I ever tell a friend that you “are” what you “make”, or that volunteer work is worth less than paid work? No.

But there are times, many times, when I still find these thoughts needling into my sense of who I am. Especially when I am tired, or a child is screaming, or some activity was a disaster, or a blog post fell flat, my seventeen-year-old self sits on my shoulder and says unhelpful things like, “We could have been someone, you know.”

And I just nod, wearily, and say, “I know. I know.”

But when I recover, usually after getting a good night’s sleep, I also know that being a grown-up is more complicated than I ever imagined it would be as a child. And then, ironically, I often remember a picture that was posted in the halls of my daughter’s elementary school, a picture that stopped me in my tracks.

The kids were asked to complete this sentence, “When I grow up, I want to be a __________” and then draw a picture of themselves in this role. Down the row there were firefighters and teachers, police officers and dancers-all the typical kid answers-but the one that stopped me said this:

“When I grow up, I want to be a woman.”

And underneath this sentence was a smiling stick figure. I suppose it was a picture of me.

Learning from Ms. Norman

Posted on by under Guest, Role & Place

At my first school the kids called me “Freedom Writer.”

Who you got for English? Freedom Writer.

That is pretty much all you need to know. If you know they called me Freedom Writer you know that they were black and poor and I was white and young. You know that we both swallowed the lie that a young white woman can save a whole generation.

My students don’t call me Freedom Writer anymore. It isn’t just because I’m older. I now work at an upper-middle-class school and they just call me Ms. Norman.

Teaching is one of the only professions where no one uses a first name, at least at any school I’ve ever worked at. Generally, the adults in my building even refer to each other as Mr. or Ms., for continuity’s sake, which means most of the kids don’t even know our first names.

Very occasionally, a student will see me in public and call out my name. I know before I see who is shouting that they are my student. Just hearing someone shout “Hey, Ms. Norman” puts me immediately into teacher mode, even in the middle of the grocery store.

I like Ms. Norman. I like my classroom and I like who I am in it. I have carefully curated the furniture (spray painted funky colors) and the posters (MLK, Mother Theresa, Ghandi), just as I have carefully curated the persona that is Ms. Norman. In fact, sometimes I wish Abby could be a little more like her. Ms. Norman is always in charge. Abby, not so much. Ms. Norman may not always have the answers, but she knows where to find them. Abby doesn’t even know the right questions to ask half the time. Ms. Norman takes no crap, not from anyone. Ms. Norman handles her business so well that she only has to write an office referral for discipline once a year. Abby takes a lot more crap and does way more freaking-out-about than handling of the business.

I know exactly who I am in my classroom, and my students know what to expect. I will yell a little when you turn in a paper late, but I will let you turn it in. I will just give you a dirty look for saying a swear word, but I will not tolerate you saying unkind things to the other students. My classroom speaks to this. I have a giant hand-painted sign where you would expect the clock to hang that says BE KIND. My bean-bag chairs speak to my desire for kids to be comfortable in my room. My giant piles speak to my general disorganization. Even that flaw Ms. Norman is comfortable with.

After almost ten years in the classroom, I am considering trying my hand at something else. I am not sure quite yet if this is a phase, or if I really am ready to leave. As I contemplate the possibility of not being a teacher anymore I think about how there won’t be a place to hang the posters I have so carefully picked and laminated. What in the world will I do with eight bean-bag chairs?

Without a classroom, I also wonder what will happen to Ms. Norman. Will I ever need to be able to shout down 35 kids in 15 seconds or less? Will I maintain the ability to simultaneously read a passage aloud and confiscate a cell phone? Will I remember all the dirty jokes in Romeo and Juliet or be able to recite whole pieces of Of Mice and Men without looking? These are all things Ms. Norman does very well.

I have been surprised at how lost I feel even thinking about leaving the classroom, the loss that I feel, the uncertainty. Can the best parts of Ms. Norman, of myself, live on if there is no classroom for her to reside, no plaque with her name, telling the world she belongs here?

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Abby“Learning from Ms. Norman” was written by Abby Norman. Abby lives and loves in the city of Atlanta. She swears a lot more than you would think for a public school teacher and mother of two under three. She can’t help that she loves all words. She believes in champagne for celebrating everyday life, laughing until her stomach hurts and telling the truth, even when it is hard, maybe especially then. You can find her blogging at accidentaldevotional and tweeting at @accidentaldevo. Abby loves all kinds of Girl Scout cookies and literally burning lies in her backyard fire pit.

Where I Am: Four Houses, Four Turning Points

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

I live in Urbana, Illinois, a city I didn’t want to move to in the first place. My opinion on the matter was weakly based on the handful of times I had driven by the Champaign-Urbana exit on Interstate 57. From that vantage point it was just another flat, cornfield-edged town with predictable, treeless suburbs and chain restaurants.

But in 2001, when my youngest daughter was still in diapers and I was finally admitting to myself that my marriage was falling apart, it felt like God was urging us to move. More precisely, I thought that moving—and my husband’s new job—would somehow save our marriage.

In the 13 years since moving to Urbana, four houses have been home. I don’t know if it’s by design or coincidence, but it seems that each significant Act in my life here has demanded a new stage, as if the inner transitions couldn’t be complete without the leaving of one tangible place and the arrival at another.

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Our first Urbana house caught my eye because—if you could see beyond the birdhouse and ivy wallpaper—it reminded me of the beloved house we sold in Michigan before moving here. Both were 1920s-era Mission style, with sturdy stucco exteriors, generous wood mouldings inside, and plenty of tall windows paned with thick, wavy, antique glass that creates mottled patterns of light when the sun shines through.

During the three years we lived in that house, our toddler and pre-school-aged daughters were at that kill-you-with-cuteness stage of life, busy choreographing dances, creating elaborate plastic feasts in their play kitchen, and layering on the most unlikely costume combinations.

But in spite of those bright moments, I think of that first house the House of Pain. Yes, I know it’s overly dramatic (and also the name of a nineties hip-hop band), but for me, the house was the scene of much yelling and crying and despair. Ultimately, it was the place where I gave up—not just on marriage, but also on my long-held childhood belief that God had plans to prosper me, not to harm me.

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If I was drawn to my first Urbana house because it reminded me of a house in my past, I was drawn to the second Urbana house for the opposite reason: It was nothing like the House of Pain. It was one-story not two; 1960s not 1920s; brick not stucco; and straight-forward, not “full of charm and character.” Most importantly, I was bound to it only by a 12-month lease, not a mortgage. I signed the lease after my divorce was final—after the House of Pain was sold and our marital collections of books, CDs, artwork, and kitchen appliances had undergone a necessary but unnatural process of division.

This second home can best be described as the House of Rebellion (clearly a perfect name for an angry metal band). Just like music that serves to numb the mind, the House of Rebellion provided an escape hatch from the life my ex-husband and I had shared. It played into my desire to be tied to nothing: not a marriage certificate, a church membership, or a mortgage. I devoted myself to my daughters when they were with me, and on the weekends they weren’t, I did whatever I pleased.

Like many rebellions, however, this one led to rock bottom, not freedom or enlightenment. One day about a year after moving into the rental, I knew it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and start claiming my place. Maybe if I chose to live here—decided to put down roots on my own, in a house of my own—that whole sob story about “following my husband to save a marriage that couldn’t be saved” would lose its power over me.

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Buying house number three happened amidst a flurry of change: I ended a bad relationship, decided to try church again, went to a new counselor, and generally began figuring out who I really was.

This was my House of Healing (yep, cue the cheesy eighties CCM band). It’s the house where I learned to sit and just be in the moment, and where I learned that God wants me to find myself, not fix myself.

I worked in my garden, pulling out weeds with deep roots and planting perennials, and I invited new friends to sit around my table and share the meals I cooked. My daughters grew in those sunny rooms, writing stories, learning to play my grandmother’s piano, and forging great “wilderness” adventures with friends in our large, tree-filled yard. Along the way, as I mowed, painted, baked, and parented, I recognized this truth: I have more power to shape my place than it has to shape me.

And then I met Jason. We eventually got married, blending our families in that House of Healing, all five of us crowded in, watching and learning in awe (or at least the grownups were in awe) as redemption was worked out in one surprising way after another.

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Finally, last spring, as our three girls (and their groups of friends) grew bigger, Jason and I sold “my” house and bought “our” house: The House of Hope (or Truth)? The House of Second (and Third and Fourth) Chances? The House of New Creations? I’m not quite sure yet, but that’s OK—I don’t feel the need to pin down the life that’s unfolding here or the God who works in so many places, in so many ways.