The obligatory "thankful" post

I'm not one of those people that goes through every single day in November and lists something that I'm thankful for, because honestly I'm afraid I would run out of things to talk about halfway through the month and end up desperately trying to come up with something to post for the last ten days before Thanksgiving, like, "Uh, um, okay.............oh yeah, I'm thankful for garter belts, yay!" Which I totally am grateful for, because I hate pantyhose, but that seems pretty lame to mention in a thanksgiving tribute, especially in light of the myriads of things that other people are talking about for days on end. It's not that I'm an inherently ungrateful person, it's just that I don't particularly want to shed light on a lot of the things I'm grateful for, because so many of them are private and my gratitude for them is deeply rooted and sometimes triggers tears. Tears make my head hurt, and that sucks. So I make sure the people that I'm thankful for know that, in abundance and throughout the year, and I go about my own way of feeling gratitude for inanimate things like Diet Coke and chocolate covered strawberries (the former I consume in abundance, and the latter I almost never have, because I'm afraid I'll get sick of them and that would be the worst thing ever).

However, since I have spent the last couple of months finding my way out of an abyss of darkness that I haven't experienced since my early twenties, I decided to write about the things that I'm grateful for. Not the people. OF COURSE I'm grateful for my family. OF COURSE I'm grateful for my support net of friends, both old and some very new. They know how much I love them, or at least I hope they do. If you're reading this, and you regularly talk to me, and you don't know whether or not I love you--guess what? I love you. I truly do. I don't waste my time with people I don't genuinely care for. Know that you are loved and appreciated and that just because I may not say the words, often or in some cases at all, you have a special place in my heart that has been reserved just for you.

Instead of writing about those people that I love and who keep me going when things are hard, I decided to write about the things in my life that do the same. There are many things I am grateful for that most wouldn't consider all that important. For example:

I am so very thankful for my ability to get lost in other worlds, whether it be though books, movies, television, theater, RPGs, or video games. I'm easily distracted, yes, but I love getting completely absorbed in nonexistent realities. I love falling in love with characters that aren't real. I firmly believe that if heaven exists, my heaven will look like the world of Spira in Final Fantasy X. I'm not even a little joking, go ahead and make fun of me. No shame over here.

I'm thankful for music. I am so very thankful for music. I'm thankful that I truly appreciate it, in all forms, and that it serves as such a balm to my soul. Not only to my soul, but to my kids as well. It is a powerful thing, to see what music does for my five year old son, who can be inconsolably hysterical one moment, and then the instant I begin to sing "Feed the Birds" from Mary Poppins to him, he goes completely still, calms, and relaxes against me. A couple of days ago, my eleven month old daughter, who is teething, was in my arms, crying from pain and discomfort, and I started to sing "Not While I'm Around" from Sweeney Todd. She lifted her head from my shoulder and stared at me, wide-eyed, and after a moment, quietly put her head back on my shoulders and fell asleep in my arms. I'm thankful that I have worked so hard at piano and voice, so that I can find not only comfort, but real satisfaction from my own musical gifts. Pride in one's self, in small doses, is important. I'm grateful for Mozart, who makes me laugh when I play his piano sonatas. I'm grateful for the ocean of sound I am given over to when I play Debussy. I'm grateful for the richness and warmth of Puccini. So yes, I am immensely grateful for music.

I'm grateful for Memphis. I love this city, and all of its gifts. I love its diversity and character, and its history. I don't know where life is going to lead me, but I know that Memphis is and always will be my home. I'm thankful for the gift that is kickboxing, even if I haven't had the chance or energy to go in some time. I plan on jumping back in next week when things slow down a bit, and I think that's important because heaven knows, I need some stress release. It's a marvelous anger management tool, and I'm thankful for the therapist who introduced me to it last summer.

Mostly, I'm thankful for the quiet moments that allow me to escape the stress of life and just BE. Sometimes that's driving around in my car (despite the fact that I generally hate driving). Sometimes it's sitting at a restaurant bar by myself, drinking a beer and journaling my thoughts so that I don't go crazy. Sometimes it's going to a movie alone. These days, I find that it's often spending time with one person, just one, and talking. Maybe a friend, maybe a family member, maybe a coworker, and talking to them. Not about anything life altering or important, but getting to know someone new, getting to know someone else's story. I'm grateful that I am finally able to let my guard down for a moment, even when I don't want to, and being reminded that it might not be so bad to be vulnerable. There is trepidation, but also awe, in watching the walls that you've built up so carefully around yourself be smashed to rubble, by someone who doesn't even realize they've done anything, and discovering you're grateful to them for it. There is something freeing in being stripped down to your barest self, and knowing that there are people in the world who want you to be that person, and no one else. No false masks or body armor. I'm grateful for those moments, and for those people.

Yes, I said I wasn't going to write about people, but how could I possibly avoid it? I'm writing about gratitude. It would be one hell of a lonely existence without people in it, and all those things that I'm grateful for would mean little to nothing if I had no one to share them with. 

After two months of drowning in darkness, and finally finding a treatment that helps and has started to pull me out, I now know that my ability to recognize the important things, the ones that make me grateful to be alive, is what has kept me here. I'm grateful for that, for all of my escapes, and for all of you. I hope, if you're reading this and can't see through the darkness yet, that you can continue to be strong, even if that means you can't be strong right at this moment. Give yourself a break to be tired, and sad, and sick. It's okay. I believe you'll get back up. I hope that you can find a way in the darkness to remember that you are needed. I hope that you can find a small corner of your heart to find peace within yourself. It is possible to come out of the dark and into the world again. I'm living proof, even though I'm still shaky and pretty fragile from the reentry. I hope you all have a warm and gratitude filled holiday this week. I am going to be grateful that I'm still here to do the same.

Why I do what I do

I'm so tired of being down and serious, so I'm going to focus on what inspires me. Right now, for as stressful as it is, what is inspiring me most is my job.

I think anyone who hasn't been living in a bomb shelter or under a rock for the entirety of their lives would agree that life rarely allows you to take the path that you laid out for yourself. Something always twists and veers and leads you not to where you think you are going, but where you are headed (whether you know where that is or not). When I made the decision to go back to college in 2009, it was ostensibly to finish a degree I had started long earlier, with one slight change--I decided that, since years of playing piano through multiple hand injuries had taken their toll, it no longer made any sense for me to pursue a music degree. I changed my major to my second love--history--and in about fifteen months, I had my B.A. I never anticipated falling in love with the history program, but within six months of being in it, I was hooked. I also witnessed the collapse of pretty much any job opportunities I might have had coming out of college at that time (thanks to the housing market and subsequent economic crash), so I decided to stay in school and pursue a Master's of Arts in history. I took the GRE, applied to grad school, found out I was pregnant, was accepted into the MA program, had my son three months into my first semester, and roughly two and a half years later, graduated. From the moment I decided to pursue graduate coursework, the plan was always to either work for the state department as an interpreter, since I'm good at languages, or to work for a museum as a director or curator.

I ended up being hired as a senior level manager in the city's main library. 

Without question, at the time I considered this position to be a stepping stone job. I never intended to stay long--two, maybe three years, get the experience I needed, and move on to a museum job, wherever it might be. It really made sense though, that I ended up in the library, and with kids in particular. My entire professional career had centered around education, direction, management, event coordination, and the arts, so I certainly had the chops to do the practical side of the job. As for the books part, let me assure you that the word "bookworm" doesn't even begin to describe me as a kid. For years, my mom's nephews (by her stepsister), whenever we would see them, couldn't remember my name. They would simply ask, "Where's that girl with the book?" I've always been a particularly voracious reader. Regardless, it took me until I had been at the library for well over a year before I started recognizing that there might be a real career there for me, and that I could make a real difference in this city that holds such a stronghold on my heart.

During my second day on the job, one of my colleagues said, "The public library is the last true bastion of democracy left in the world." I had never really considered that before, but it's so true. Anyone can come in, for any reason, and have access to whatever information they need or want, no matter what. Or as a far more eloquent American that I once said:

I work with kids, so I am constantly searching out ways for them to find the best information for research projects, upcoming books from popular authors, or helping them find something new to read when they've hit a wall (we've all been there, I think). I love working with the public, talking to people, hearing their stories, making personal connections. I love testing the limits of how accepting the community can be--for example, last June I raised a LOT of eyebrows by approving and helping to implement a display for LGBT Pride month. It was a massive success though. Last summer we had a family that found themselves homeless and came to the library every day, from open to close, to escape the intense heat and to scour the internet, looking for employment opportunities. They had a shelter to go to at night, but during the day, they lived in their car. Family of five. After the third week, with the start of school coming and the end of summer reading, and aching from seeing the kids wearing the same clothes they had worn the week before, but inside out, I and a few members of my staff gave the kids some of the prize books from summer reading to put in their donated book bags, and made sure they had plenty of pencils and notebooks so that mom and dad had a few less things to have to provide. They were so happy, and we've seen very little of them since, so I'm hoping that means that the tide has turned a little. What a gift, to be able to help those in need in such a small, but important way.

Kids are the next generation of leaders, whether our current leaders want to admit it or not. The future of our communities, cities, states, countries, and the entire world, is in the hands of those children and what they are learning AT THIS VERY MOMENT. I understand that there are important and pressing problems that need to be addressed right now, that can't wait, but the bottom line is that if those problems are being dealt with at the expense of our children, we--ALL OF US--are screwed. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but in twenty or thirty years these problems will come to a head and we will have an entire generation of leaders who have no idea how to work collectively, how to problem solve, how to search for the right answers, and most importantly, have the proper perspective to know what those right answers are, not just for one segment of the population, but for everyone. Right now we have a generation of children that are being taught how to take tests, not how to learn. The standardization of public education has taken precedence over teaching the next generation how to think critically. I can't change that by myself, as much as I would like to scream it from the mountain tops. What I can do, however, is make sure that I influence every single child that comes into the library in search of information, talk to them, work through problems with them, and try to spark a love for learning and researching in them. I think that's one hell of a career to have, and those kids--and their caregivers, no matter who they are--inspire me every day to work harder for them. They truly are our future. They are worth as much time as I can give them.

WHY DOES MY HUSBAND HATE NICE THINGS?!

So my husband just walked in after being gone for several hours, leaving me alone with our four year old and 9 month old who is teething and refusing to sleep without being wrapped around mommy (the baby, not the 4 year old), and when he finally gets home, this is the conversation that follows:

Drew: "Hey!"
Me: "Thank God. Cameron won't go to bed until you go up and read him a story and he's come out of his room every five minutes for the last half hour asking if you were home yet. So get up there."
Drew: "Awesome! I can show him this cicada I just caught."

This is the point at which I noticed that he was, indeed, holding a cicada in his hands. I also notice that the cat is staring at him intently.

Me: "Oh Jesus. Please get that thing out of here before you lose your grip and it starts flying around the house making noise and bumping into things and Zeus starts chasing it and breaks everything nice that we own while trying to kill it. Because you know that's what is going to happen and he won't ever catch it because Zeus sucks at catching anything."
Drew: [laughs]
Me: [stares at him, wondering why he's laughing. I'm being completely serious. That cat can't walk across the couch without falling, tearing something, or drawing blood on someone]

Cameron, from upstairs: "Daddy? Is that you?"
Drew: "Yeah buddy! Come here, look what I found!"
Cameron: "WOAH! A CICADA!"
Drew: [grins at me in triumph]
Me: [glares back at him]

They did, at that point, take the cicada back outside to, "set him free to fly away." Apparently that didn't happen, and they walked back in discussing how it probably was just pretending to sleep (I maintain that it had a heart attack after being brought into a house where a not stealthy, extraordinarily un-ninja-like, 17-year-old cat was staring at it unnervingly. Never mind that the cat would have easily injured himself long before causing any kind of bodily harm to the cicada).

So I suppose the moral of the story is..........

I have no idea. You're welcome.

New books, new hobbies, and things that are just plain hot.

So I just reread a post I made about 18 months ago, at the height of grief over the loss of a friend, entitled "Grief, God, and Trying to Heal." Boy, was I a mess. It seems like it was only just yesterday, and yet also a lifetime ago. I was just so angry and hurt and lost. I hope I've learned something in the time since about not losing myself so entirely in the darkness. It is deceptive and seductive, and I have no intention of returning there if I can at all help it.

My life nowadays seems to be continually changing. I have always declared a deep disdain for the ideal of a "schedule," but I am, at heart, a true Virgo, and I honestly have a deep and abiding love for routine. It keeps me grounded, it keeps me sane. My sweet Gemini husband is the one who forces me to stay on my toes and gets me to stop being so cemented in a schedule. He also keeps me from hyperventilating when my routine gets shaken by the almost daily curveballs that accompany being a working mom.

Interestingly enough though, I have recently found myself changing my routine of my own volition, and I'm completely okay with it. In the last few weeks I have done some interesting things to shake up my life. I am taking a leave of absence from a part-time job that I have held for more than 8 years--a singing position that I am removing myself from, in no small part due to my third bout of tonsillitis in less than two months. I'm taking a day off this week and didn't plan it out a month in advance, and taking a short, but long overdue road trip, to see some friends for the day. I signed up for kickboxing classes, and it's AMAZING. God, I have never sweated and hurt so much in my life, while simultaneously feeling like such a sexy badass. It's incredible, and has done wonders for my self-confidence, which I actually didn't even know needed help.

Yep. I have pink boxing gloves. Go ahead, make fun of me. I dare you.

There are some other things that I have fallen into as well, but I'm not quite ready to talk about them yet, so I'll save those for another post, if they come to fruition. The point is, I feel like I'm moving. I feel like I'm going forward. I'm about to be 38 years old, working harder than I ever have before in my life, balancing a full-time career with being a wife and mother of two young children, and I can honestly say that I am making a real difference. Not just in my life, and the lives of my kids and family, but in my community. That's big. It makes me feel as strong and confident and sexy as kickboxing does, and I couldn't be happier about it.

As I stated in my last post, I'm doing a LOT of reading right now. I am currently in the middle of ten (10!) books, of varying genres. Book of the week this week is one I'm not even finished with--Once Upon a Time in Russia by Ben Mezrich. If you're into non-fiction, history, mob stories, political thrillers, murder, mayhem, and/or truth being far more bizarre than fiction, then this book is for you. It is the true story of the rise and fall of the oligarchy in post-Communist Russia under Boris Yeltsin and his successor, Vladimir Putin, told primarily from the perspective of Boris Berezovsky. It also gets into the background and story of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB and FSB officer who fled from Russia in fear of his life after accusing the FSB of ordering him to assassinate Berezovsky; he gained international attention in 2006, when he was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. He died three weeks later, a seeming victim of Putin's far reaching power. This is the kind of stuff that you can't make up, and it HAPPENED. This book is just amazing, and it reads like a Tom Clancy or James Patterson novel (I assume--I'm actually not well versed in their books).

ANYWAY, I look forward to continuing onward and upward. Fighting my own demons like so many others is exhausting, and right now I'm really, really good. I hope I can continue to just keep swimming and fighting, and helping others as they fight as well. There are so many of us struggling, but there are reasons every day to keep on.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go enjoy one of my favorite examples of just how beautiful life is--Vin Diesel is on The Tonight Show. Yum.

Seriously. That. 

Thoughts on being "thankful," and what that really means

Every November, I see an outpouring on social media of people who choose that particular platform to think about and acknowledge the varying aspects of their lives that they appreciate. Most are thankful for family, friends, jobs, etc., but then there are those that just could not live without their double oven or mega refrigerator. That's okay too--no judgment here, many people find that they cannot express gratitude through words but have to give thanks in the way of food or crafts. Nothing wrong with appreciating the modern appliances and technology that make those little tokens of love easier to create and distribute. I, for one, will be eternally grateful if I ever end up with a bells-and-whistles dishwasher, or (more importantly) a deep, soaking bathtub with jets and aromatherapy. I could happily live in an outhouse so long as I had that and an unlimited supply of hot water.

I'm not vain, I just find happiness and gratitude in the simpler things in life. I don't need video games or a television, or even my coveted shoe collection. I love them, but I could do without all of them and really be okay with it. After years of anxiety and depression, I've realized that if I can find a place to be in body where I can simultaneously have my mind quieted and settled, then I'm really good. So I don't usually partake in the whole "30 days of things I'm thankful for" game that many play around the holidays. Kudos to those who do, because I respect so much that you recognize just how much you have in your life that is good and positive and powerful. Just not really my style.

That being said, I've been reflecting a lot over the last few days about just how precious and sweet my life is, and how grateful I am to have so much joy and love contained within it. None of it is easy, and I'm grateful for that as well. I have this paperweight that I got a few months back, that sits on my desk right in front of my computer so that I have to look at it often and remind myself to breathe.

Everything about living is hard. Marriage is hard. Even in the best of circumstances (which I feel that mine is in that category), marriage is still really challenging. It should be, otherwise you take for granted the love you have for that person, even as you grown and morph into something more. Ideally, the person you married supports that growth and goes along for the ride with you. Regardless, marriage is hard no matter what, and you have to never lose sight of the fact that you are in this together. You're a team, and nothing should take priority over that.

Finances are hard. I both love and hate working. I love the idea of getting to stay home all the time, but I just could not be a stay-at-home mom. I'd be okay for a couple of weeks, then I would get antsy, and then I would just get depressed. I love my job, and I'm grateful for that job for two reasons: 1.) because I get a sense of real accomplishment every time I pay our bills and know that I can pay those bills; and 2.) because I have the ability to make a real difference in my community through the work I do. What I do at my job really matters, and that is everything to me. It's incredibly hard and sometimes difficult to see, but it's there. That, not to mention financial security, is worth a lot, so I'm thankful for it. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to maternity leave so that I can have some time off and bond with the newest member of our family, but I'm also incredibly grateful that I'm going to have a job to go back to when maternity leave is over.

Speaking of children--lord, children are HARD. I have possibly the easiest, happiest, healthiest, most well adjusted and relaxed little boy on the planet, he's been that way since birth. The kid never cried unless he was starving or having pain. He was sleeping through the night (I'm talking midnight to six a.m.) by the time he was ten weeks old. He just laughs and is independent and keeps himself entertained, and--like his father and me--is just as happy sitting quietly drawing, reading, or watching a movie as he is going out and playing in the city or with his friends. Even with that being the case, sometimes I just want to cry from how hard it is being a parent.

People forget that you aren't raising a pet or a plant or making a loaf of bread. As a parent, you are actually raising another human being, and they look to you for everything--for love, safety, comfort, understanding, and all of that, but they also watch and listen to what you think and do, and they learn from that. Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods is being released as a feature film this month, and the Witch nails it--"Careful the things you say--children will listen/Careful the things you do--children will see, and learn/Children may not obey, but children will listen/Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be./Careful before you say 'Listen to me.'/ Children will listen."

I am so very grateful for that though, because it has made me a more aware and conscientious person. I am a far better human being because of my friends, my husband, and my family, but absolutely because of my son. You can't expect your children to do things as you would have them done, or react the way you want them to. You aren't training a dog, you're growing a human, and they have a will all their own. I have to remind myself of that constantly. It's not about me. It's all about learning who they are and what they need.

I am currently 36 weeks pregnant. That's further along than I was when my son was born, and boy am I grateful for that accomplishment. I have no desire, ever again, to have to witness my newborn hooked up to monitors, with tubes coming out of his/her nose, mouth, and head, and know that there is absolutely nothing I can do except wait, cry, and hope my baby is okay. For as easy as my son is, and for as relatively easy as that pregnancy was (until his premature birth), this time around being pregnant has just SUCKED. I've been lucky to not be on bed-rest, but boy has this been difficult. I've had bleeding since 16 weeks, contractions since 18 weeks, complications from diabetes, ongoing anemia, swelling, terrible heartburn from early on, acute pain in my ribs, legs, and back, and (unlike my son, who hardly ever moved while in utero) a baby that is apparently fully intending on being a full-fledged Radio City Rockette before she gets into junior high. She also apparently doesn't care that her mother is little (5' tall, not a lot of room to grow into), and such activity is causing mom a tremendous amount of pain and difficulty breathing. I cannot wait to never be pregnant again. Ever. It is hard to be thankful for something that is causing me non-stop pain, discomfort, and deprivation.

Oh, but I am so grateful for her. I am so in love with this little hellion beating up my internal organs. I want her to be here so I can hold her in my arms and see her face and tell her how much she is loved and cherished. I can't wait to introduce her to her brother and daddy, and her family members who love her so much. I want to show her everything, and teach her about gratitude, especially after a year that has been so incredibly difficult. This little girl was not planned in the slightest. She was a direct result of the intervention of stars aligning in the universe and potentially a higher power getting involved, if such a thing exists. There is no doubt that this year has taught me a great deal about thanks and gratitude though, because I could not have survived it without that support net I have up around me. This sweet little one is a message that there is beauty and light in the world, and is a reminder that I should never forget that, no matter how much pain I'm being exposed to. You have to be thankful not only for the gifts you are given, but for the hardships as well. How else would we appreciate all the blessings we have?

I've glanced into the future, and I think I'm terrified

I'm having a girl. Holy crap, I'm having a girl. A daughter. When I got the phone call telling me that our second child, due in early January, was healthy, with no signs of genetic problems or a Y chromosome, I almost felt my heart explode in my chest. I never knew just how badly I wanted a little girl until I was told I was going to have one. I cried uncontrollably for five minutes, I was just so happy. I have no doubt that I would have been over the moon with happiness if we had been told we were having a boy, because we currently have the sweetest little boy in existence and how could I not want another one of those? I do think, though, that I would have always dreamed about the little girl that never was. I am so excited to be having a girl. I am also absolutely terrified that she's going to be a little replica of me.

When I say that, I don't necessarily mean that I'm worried she's going to be a little hellion or anything. Truth be told, I was actually a pretty good kid. I always had my nose in a book, was just as happy staying home on a Friday night playing piano or video games as I was going out to a party or a football game. I'm not worried about things like rebellious teenage years--I've got time to prepare for that. I'm more thinking about me as a child. Temperamental, emotional, independent, and more than anything, SICK ALL THE TIME. I spent the first 8 years of my life in and out of doctor's offices, fighting sinus infections, chronic ear infections due to very narrow U station tubes, strep throat, etc. I even had shingles my senior year in high school. I am allergic to EVERYTHING, from grass to mold, dust, mildew, cats, dogs, various antibiotics and anesthesia, and panthenol (which is in pretty much any shampoo, conditioner, mascara, facial wash or skin moisturizer that's worth a damn). We think I'm allergic to bugs, because I blow up in hives if I get bitten by something as innocuous as a mosquito. I've never been stung by a bee or wasp or anything of that ilk, so I'm running under the assumption that I'm allergic to those as well. I should probably keep an epi-pen handy just in case that ever happens. Then there's the migraines. If I eat aged cheese (like blue cheese, for example), chocolate, or drink red wine, or if I consume anything that has a fermentation process involved in it's development, I get a migraine. I'm a diabetic on top of everything else. My best friend, Jamie, once said to me, "Girl, you are the sickliest human being I have ever met in my life."

In case you think I'm exaggerating, consider this: I am allergic to Claritin. It makes me projectile vomit. I am allergic to an allergy medication. My son has thankfully inherited his father's iron immune system (and stomach). I just know that my daughter is going to be just like me--likely a redhead, allergic to everything on the planet, and with a stomach so sensitive that even saltines and ginger ale will make her throw up. Now, I've never really thought about the fact that I am, in Jamie's words, "sickly." This is just how I've always been, so I don't know any different. It astounds me that my husband has only had to go to the doctor four or five times in the decade that we've been together. That being said, I'm now looking at myself from the perspective of a mom, and I know what my mother has said about me for my entire life, which is that if I had been her first child, I would have been her last. I wasn't a bad child. I was just sick all the time. My son got his father's immune system, and a great combination of my husband and I's brains and emotions. He's smart as a whip, with a wonderful sense of humor and disposition (like his daddy), but is also quite serious when confronted with new situations and he hates conflict. Raised voices upset him, just as they do me, and like me, he examines problems and observes quietly from the sidelines before jumping into new things. He's an easy kid. Eats everything in front of him, sleeps constantly, goes along with the flow, and is just so damn adaptable. There is no way we're going to get that lucky again. We're doomed. Doomed.

I, of course, know that I am being utterly ridiculous. She's going to be beautiful and wonderful and completely perfect in my eyes, in every way. She has to be, there's no other explanation for her presence. This pregnancy wasn't planned. We were taking active measures to avoid getting pregnant. Several of them. She was meant to be here, and I have no doubt she will make one hell of an impact on our lives, no matter what. Our family is already so in love with her, and she's not even here yet. Cameron is always touching my stomach, whispering to his baby sister, asking me how big she's growing and singing into my belly button. But lord have mercy, I'm crying all the time and having mood swings at the drop of a hat. I'm telling you right now--this girl's giving me trouble already. She's going to be a handful. I absolutely can't wait to see just how much trouble she can dish out.

Proud to be a Hutchison Girl

It's that time of year when the annual giving fund comes around, and for the first time this year, I had the financial stability to be able to give something back to the private, all-girls school that I attended from the time I was 3 years old until I graduated from high school. The Hutchison School for Girls, established in 1902.

A lot of people are surprised when they find out that I'm a Hutchison alum, because there are a lot of preconceived notions in Memphis about what Hutchison is and the kind of girls that attend it. In the last few years, I have become one of Hutchison's most outspoken supporters and all-around cheerleaders, which has been somewhat of a shock to those who knew me when I was growing up there.

There isn't a time when I don't remember being at Hutchison, and with predominantly the same group of girls. Some came and went as the years passed, but collectively, it was a solid group of roughly 60 girls in my class, all of us stubborn, independent, proud, hilarious, and very, very smart. Now, I spent a good chunk of my time at Hutchison with the distinct feeling that I didn't "belong" there, and not because of the girls in my class or the teachers. I just never felt settled, like I was supposed to be some place else--I never felt comfortable, I was always just a little uneasy and out of place. Again, these feelings had absolutely nothing to do with my classmates, it just was what it was. I lived in a neighborhood where I was the only kid that didn't go to public school, and I wasn't allowed to forget that fact. The other children I grew up seeing every day, mostly boys, lived to mock me about the fact that I went to Hutchison, with my dresses and occasional uniforms that we wore over our gym clothes, and the required dance and art and music and French classes. I remember a boy that I had grown up with once accusing me of thinking that I was better than everyone else in our neighborhood, which was pretty much a working class area. My dad works in the telephone business, and my mom was a nurse, so we didn't exactly live in the suburbs. It was a very urban residential zone, with the interstate running directly in front of my house, a major street running behind it, and a fire station at the end of the block. So between being my general discomfort of being at Hutchison and the taunts of most of the kids in my neighborhood that never let me forget that I didn't fit in with them, I grew up a pretty solitary child; I was quiet, nose always stuck in a book, with a very small, but very close-knit, group of friends. I wasn't unhappy or anything, I just kind of kept to myself. My best friend in the whole world lived next door to me, so I spent most of my time away from school with her, and at school, again, I just kind of kept to myself.

As the years went by, and as I got older and became more resentful of being called out for going to a private school and being "different," I began to place blame on Hutchison for the way I was being treated by kids in my neighborhood that I had known all my life. Like any child, the opinions of other kids mattered to me, and I began to see Hutchison as the primary source of my angst. Again, it was never directed at my classmates, but at the larger institution of "Hutchison." It's like when you get angry at the "government"--you're rarely thinking about your congressman or senator or representative. It's like a giant looming figure that you can't see but that impacts every aspect of your life. You shake your fist at the sky and say, "It's the damn government that's ruining everything!" That's what Hutchison became to me for a long time. I was angry at having no say-so over where I went to school, that I didn't have any voice in where I got my education. As I got into middle school, I discovered that I had a real talent for music, and Hutchison had very little in the way to offer a budding musician--it was a college preparatory school, and anything outside of that was just extra-curricular, and not supported within the academic system. I saw my best friend going to the top creative and performing arts public schools in the city, and I wanted to have that experience. I thought music was the only thing I was any good at, and I could really do something with it if I had the training that those schools could offer me. My parents were adamant--I was going to go to Hutchison, I would not be going to public school, and no, I did not have any choice in the matter. Cue the quadrupling of resentment.

That being said, by the time I got to high school, I had given up even trying to convince my parents to take me out of Hutchison. I had been there for over a decade, might as well just give it up and finish it out. It was then that I allowed myself to start becoming more than just the girl who obviously didn't want to be there. I started trying to make better connections with some of the girls in my class, and unsurprisingly, I was welcomed with open arms. Look, I'm not trying to say it was perfect--of course there were cliques that we sorted ourselves into, and yes there were catfights and tears and "world-ending" levels of drama. Those things never lasted though, and the cliques were never exclusive. Just because we had our small groups of friends didn't mean that others weren't welcomed. My class of girls were (and this is backed up by any member of the faculty that taught us, I assure you) stubborn and persistent and, in many ways, total renegades. There was a general hunger for understanding of knowledge in our class. We were never the "Is this going to be on the test?" class. We wanted to know WHY. We pushed boundaries in our classes, much to the delight of our teachers (mostly), and challenged long-standing Hutchison traditions that appeared to have lost their relevance, or stood in the way of the changing views of what a woman could and should be. More than anything, my class, the class of 1996, genuinely loved each other. All drama and bickering aside, if any one of us was in trouble, the rest of us came storming up to surround that girl and take her side. It was, and to this day still is, exactly what a sisterhood should be. We held each other up, supported each other, and accepted each other, warts and all.

I remember being on a choir trip my junior year in high school. I ran down to the room of another girl to ask her a question, and she invited me into the room she was sharing with three other girls, none of whom I had really ever talked to despite the fact that I had known all of them for my entire life. They were all messing around with their hair, seeing how crazy they could make themselves look. Within minutes, I found myself sitting in a chair, laughing, as one of them pulled my hair (I have curls, and a lot of them) away from my face. Suddenly, everyone settled down, and the girl who was pushing my hair back looked at me and very quietly said, "My God, Angela. You are gorgeous." She didn't say it as if she were surprised or anything, it was just a matter of fact. I glanced over, and the other girls were genuinely smiling and nodding in agreement. For the quiet, ill-at-ease bookworm with devastatingly low self-esteem, it was such an important moment in my life, and one that I have never forgotten. In that moment, I realized that I was exactly where I needed to be. I was accepted, and appreciated, and valued. These girls were my sisters. Hutchison was my second home.

We graduated the next year, and at the traditional mother-daughter luncheon that follows graduation, I realized that this would be the last time that all the girls in our class would be together in the same place at the same time. At that exact moment, I made eye contact from across the room with a girl who had been one of my best friends from third through fifth grade. We had drifted into different circles over the years, but we had always maintained something of a connection. Our eyes met, and we smiled at each other. I walked over to her, and she said to me, "Oh God, you're not going to start crying are you?" I burst out laughing (because I was absolutely about to start crying), but I was spared from having to answer her as another girl interrupted us. Another moment I'll never forget. I could spend all day talking about my class and all the memories we made, like how we built "houses" out of hay on the lower school playground, or the time we got into a food fight at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and were yelled at for half an hour outside in the freezing cold. Our skits for Spirit Week every year were legendary, and our enthusiasm contagious. Thanks to social media, I have been able to reconnect with most of those girls, and many girls who were in other classes as well, and what a gift that has been, because I have spent the last fifteen years wishing I could let them know just how much I love them. I would do anything for any one of them, at the drop of a hat, without question, no matter what time, day or night. I have never known such a dynamic, spirited, bombastic group of women in my life, and it was Hutchison that gave them to me. I am so grateful that I was and continue to be a part of that place.

There are many other, very personal, reasons that I feel a close connection to Hutchison that don't belong here. Maybe one day, when I'm braver and more at peace with myself, I'll share them. For now, it's enough to say that if I ever have a daughter, she will without question be a Hutchison girl. I never appreciated how much my parents, who did not have the financial resources to afford Hutchison, had to do in order to make sure that my sister and I were able to go there. It required a lot of help from a lot of people, and a lot of sacrifices. I can't tell you how many nights our dinner was a box of macaroni and cheese, or tortilla chips with a can of chili poured over them. My mom and dad worked so hard, and were so exhausted at night, yet they still found a way to put me through 15 years at Hutchison and pay for 14 years of piano lessons as well. I grew up wearing hand-me-down clothes and driving to school in old, sometime beat up vehicles. Since both my parents had to work just to keep a roof over our head, I was a latch-key kid by the time I was 12. My parents desire to make sure I went to Hutchison was the reason that I had three hours every afternoon in my house by myself, and I spent almost every second of that time practicing piano. My mom and dad did everything they could for me to get the best possible education. In return, I paid them, and Hutchison, back by getting a full scholarship to college--yes, a substantial music scholarship, but the vast majority of the scholarship money I received for college was based on my ACT and SAT scores, thanks to the skills I learned at school. Hutchison gave me the strength to fight for what I wanted to achieve, the skills to attain excellence, and the drive to become whatever I wanted to be. That school gave me the foundation to build my future on, and an unforgettable, and irreplaceable, group of women to share it with. I am extremely proud to be a Hutchison girl, and eternally grateful for the gifts that Hutchison, and my Hutchison sisters, gave to me.