“ . . . motherhood narrowed me, but it has also focused me. It’s made me as clear as I’ve ever been about what matters—and what doesn’t. I spend so many more of my moments on what does. I let go. I let go. I let go.” (Courtney Martin, 2015)
Sometimes, when writing an email to someone at St. Andrew’s and functioning in my Mom identity rather than my work role, I make sure to add the phrase “Parent Hat” to the subject line so folks don’t confuse the two. It also can help me not confuse the two. It can be easy to confuse the two. So let me preface all of this with: I’m putting on my parent hat for a sec. It’s not as cute as the hat below, but you get the idea.
In 2016, while still a professor at Millsaps, I published my favorite ever peer reviewed publication, entitled: “Mother-Scholar Tangles: Always Both This and That”. It wasn’t the most cited of my pieces, it wasn’t in the highest impact journal, and it radically diverged from my research agenda in a way that most people pursuing tenure would describe as unusual at best and unwise at worst. But it is the piece that still follows me. People, and by people I mean other professors who happened to also be mommas, would email me, find me at conferences, etc. to tell me “THIS IS MY LIFE. Thank you for writing the truth.”
One of the most fundamental truths I explore in the piece is the clash between theory and practice, the way that motherhood pushes you to face off with what you say you believe and humbles you to submission with its innate introduction of pacifiers, diapers, sleepless nights, and just general atmosphere of epic fails.
It is true that, in the tangled busy mess of mother-scholar, there is the inability to depict all things neat and tidy in the field of education. Constantly inundated with the realness of kids, and, if you are a mother of more than one, the complexities of their differences, you, in many ways, live in a wild, breathing, research site. . . . [They] invade every question you ask, every context you research in, every analytic method you employ, and every conclusion you reach. I grew into my status as an academic through a slow and tedious, brick-by-brick process. I watched my theoretical framework expand from the ground up. My furniture is built on ideas, on process, on peer review. Parenthood, though, rushes in like a flood and seeps into every nook and cranny available. It is fueled by a passion birthed of fierce love. (Rust, 2016, p. 113-114)
At the time of writing the piece, my children were still young, so today the piece functions as a time capsule of sorts: a freezing of the time that is both horrifying and sentimental. I largely write of the ways my academic field of educational research and my mom identity intersected by dropping Facebook posts and lived stories from a day in the life of a professor-momma.
In one section of the piece, I recall my (slightly smug) 21 year old teacher self musing about how irrational parents were when it came to their children. I write: “I couldn’t even begin to access the volatile love that is parenting at that stage in my life, couldn’t imagine these insane, biased, human beings could actually give me much information that was valid in the education of their child. I couldn’t see past the emotion into the wisdom.”
20 years later finds me in a very different place of understanding. And honestly, I’m also in a very different place than I was 8 years ago when I initially wrote the piece. My children are at entirely different stages of their school-life-development and parenting has morphed into a gig almost unrecognizable to what I captured in 2015-2016. Plus, I now find myself actually working at my kids’ school which introduces a host of swirling-complicated stories, most of which I can’t write about here because (1) My kids would kill me. (2) I would never want any adult who works with my kids to worry they would become the subject of my next raw and honest blog ha.
I will leave it to say that although our community isn’t 100% perfect all the time, I am absolutely 100% grateful my children get to be at this school with all of you.
But for those that may teach/work here and don’t also have a parent hat to put on, I wonder if a few small snapshots might be illustrative or illuminating in some way. I write these rhetorically to my 21 year old teacher self, who sure had lots of book smarts, boundless energy, and a billion ideas . . . but very little understanding of the entire constellation of elements that frame up the life-worlds of families. I understand well that these snapshots don’t capture the reality for every child or family and they are very particular to my weird and specific nuclear unit. But here they are, offerings nonetheless:
- The after school activity stress is real: Whether you teach very very young children or almost-adult children, I can guarantee that their lives are quite full, even if you decide to give everyone a break on homework or read aloud practice. A strange time-warp situation happens between 5-9pm, one that is accompanied often by sports practices, ravenous small people, concerts, activities, church services, other class homework, a walk with the family dog. If you took a poll of parents and asked “can I really genuinely count on you to practice math facts with your child three times a week” the most honest majority of us would say ashamedly, “we are so sorry; we know we should be; somehow we cannot figure out how to make the time, the will, the way.”
- The procrastination is also real; so is the regret..: I’m not going to name any of my children’s names, but let’s just say a particular child of mine that is unerringly responsible in all the ways EVEN THAT KID has been known to sit on a project (like not even touch during an entire week of Thanksgiving vacation when nothing is going on) that they are not excited about doing until two nights before (and there are major sports events the next two nights so that child won’t get home until 8:30pm those evenings). These are hard lessons to learn, but I am in favor of letting kids learn them rather than being the keeper of due dates.
- One learning platform makes [Rust] kids cry.: The theory part of me loves how IXL gives real time feedback and skill data to students and faculty alike. The momma part of me hates how it results many times in any given Rust crying at the kitchen table after 65 minutes because they made a silly error and it has bumped them down 15 points. The theory part of me thinks “this is good for your children to experience some failure and build resilience.” The momma part of me is like “ABOLISH IXL!”
- Kids worry so much about what you think of them: Whether or not they show it, kids are obsessing over how they word emails to you (faculty/coaches especially), particularly when they are in those middle school years and learning how to communicate/advocate for themselves. They want you to trust them; they want to be polite; getting sick is the worst thing ever; they worry they will fall behind or you will perceive them as weak. When there is evidence that you know them/see them in a kind official note or quick comment, they positively glow. When they feel as though they have been falsely accused or unfairly treated, the world goes a bit dim. They sometimes struggle for the right balance between respect/submission and self-advocacy/clear communication.
- Ipads, iphones, video games are the best/worst parts about childhood these days: As a fairly hands-off parent, I never set very strict boundaries on tech and this has rippled in good and bad ways. One kid has self selected out of social media participation because they read the research on mental health impacts. One kid would go home and play video games for five hours a night if he could, but the practice is incredibly social as he engages with multiple friends at a time and shrieks with such a high pitched voice the walls shake a bit. (He’s even been known to study for a test with a buddy while playing Fortnite.) Another kid has complex lives on her iPad when she has time, simultaneously playing Roblox and facetiming with friends to try on clothes and see what they think. In the game for attention, we know it’s not a fair fight. And sometimes I don’t mind. And sometimes I do, such as this morning when I set a new rule about “no iPhones during our morning commute because I want to have conversations with people I love in the morning.”
- Assume they tell parents nothing about their school days: Your students may project engagement and enthusiasm and enjoyment throughout the school day, but (depending on the kid) generally by the time they get through the activities and back into the arms of their loving family they are BEAT. While they may talk animatedly about a moment in the school day, it’s likely not about your excellent teaching like it should be. It’s more likely to be about a weird thing a popular kid said at recess.
I think sharing stories of our funds of knowledge, whether they come from our teaching or our parenting is the best gift we can give each other in the community. And most of all, if parenting has taught me anything, it is that I don’t know what I don’t know and I likely am wrong about a lot of things I THINK I know. In other words, parenting has forced me to look straight on at a level of ambiguous mess that I never thought possible. But the mess is occasionally cute and often entertaining, so there is that.
I’m gonna end this thing with a portion of the preface to my dissertation about mess, which I wrote before I knew I was pregnant with Alianna and is still one of the truest things I’ve written even though no one in my family really eats goldfish anymore. (Salt and vinegar chips though . . . totally different story.)
With a five year old and two year old at the time of this dissertation drafting, it is safe to say that I am quite familiar with a wide range of varieties of messiness. My primary space for writing, for instance, is a cluttered mixture of stuffed animals, loud electronic toys, scholarly articles and books, coffee cups, and spilled chocolate chips (writing fuel). I’ve never been the neatest person, and the entry of these two short people into my life has cured any hope I ever had of having the kind of house where things are shiny and tasteful. Instead, I watch my two year old gleefully throw a handful of goldfish on the floor and, just before I can reach him, I see his little sweet, slightly dirt-stained foot rise to grind a satisfying crunch of crumbs into the carpet. I watch him run off laughing, no doubt intending to dump that huge toy container of little cars and animals he so loves out into the only clean spot of floor left in our tiny apartment.
All of this to say, I am at a phase of my life where I feel a bit suspicious of all things neat, tidy, and in-the-right-place. My life space is composed of conflicted interplays between my school self and my mommy self, my professional books and my children’s toys, my desire to finish this dissertation and my desire to play hide-in-seek until the summer dusk settles over the horizon. These juxtapositions that create so much mess simultaneously fuel my every pursuit. And so this dissertation has been, in many ways, a tossing of some proverbial goldfish on the floor to highlight the untied laces that keep tripping me, the bright orange crumbs that I found ground into the carpet of my research journey.
I’m not writing a dissertation anymore. But my life-space is still composed of these conflicted interplays. I think we all have lives that make us wonder and occasionally trip-up with their complexity. And I think it is these parts of life that can be the most beautiful.