Pussy Willows and Apologies
In her poem "Pussy Willow (An Apology)," Susan Mitchell writes of being late to see a friend because she becomes enthralled with pussy willows outside the florist shop on the way. "I had to take off/my gloves, and I would have/taken off my skin//(for why should I put/a barrier between/myself and anything?" she writes, "...because I cannot/keep my hands/off the world/and the world out of my breath."
The poem is about how every choice we make to be present with one thing means, necessarily, that we are no longer present with something else. Each hour I'm at work and S is at home, my heart struggles--I want to be with her, but I also want to do my job well, to manage a program that makes a real difference in the community and in students' lives. I'm able, somehow, to keep that larger goal before me when I'm meeting with faculty, students, and community partners, to continue to feel the excitement of the potential results of those meetings (though this means I'm often disappointed by how things turn out--the faculty member decides not to do service-learning after all, or the student finds that she can't commit the time she'd expected to a project).
When it comes to time with S, I've been having trouble lately, again, being present in the moment and not worrying about the future. As she processes the fact that her case will never go to trial, as she realizes just how different she is from her peers, that having close friendships or relationships with them is not really feasible at this stage in her healing, as she tries to come to terms with her own academic and potential professional limitations, as we say goodbye to the college buddy who has been a rock in her life for the last two years, she is depressed. Sometimes this means she's weeping inconsolably in my arms; other times, it means she's acting out, refusing to get off the computer that she uses to escape or refusing to do her chores or refusing to finish homework.
I've come to the point where I am realizing it is not possible to continue working at the current pace and to parent her well. I am talking with my supervisor about this in a little over a week, something that is scary in these particular budget times--even though the office has been cited as a priority, my job class is the most vulnerable class for cuts, because I don't have the protection of either a union or tenure.
Meanwhile, S told me she needs more time with me. We looked at my calendar and realized that it is true--I have been away from her more this semester than ever before. We sat down and I blocked out more time to be with her--but the fact remains that there is no way I could do my job in the hours she is at school; it's simply not possible. And there's no way she can be left alone; not only does she get lonely, but she also makes terrible decisions, like deciding to visit me just before I am to give a speech, with our dog, or like creating an ebay account and spending $100 she does not have. And even though I was attentive to her concern and enacted an immediate solution, this does not mean I am really giving her the time she needs to keep growing--there needs to be a bigger, more systemic solution to this problem of her feeling abandoned and needing more time with me.
In some ways, it feels like she's regressing, but I don't think that's it exactly. I think some of her security has disappeared in the last year and she is not sure how to manage all the changes. I think that the brave act of telling her story sustained her--until she learned that no one had really listened, that nothing would come of it. I also think that the last two years of high school are scary for anyone, but especially for someone like her who refuses to take a realistic look at what the future holds.
I don't have the time to manage her IEP in the ways it needs to be managed, or to help her with homework in the way she really needs help, or to meet with her teachers regularly, or, basically, to do all the things that her special ed team should be doing but never actually does. I don't have the time or energy to continue battling the school--I fought for an IEP I could live with that at least included some specific goals related to social skills and career planning/college prep, but I've been lax in making sure they are actually happening. They are, sort of, but at a very slow pace and very haphazardly. I am frustrated but don't even have the time to feel the extent of my frustration, much less to act on it.
And so, I find myself in the cliched dilemma of so many parents, one that I swore I'd never have: at what moments do I put my job first, and at what moments do I put S first? I thought I could always put S first, but I have a lot of pressure to build a good program at work--otherwise, I'm expendable. Aside from that, I put a lot of pressure on myself to make real differences in people's lives--and I think all of us should put that kind of pressure on ourselves, so that we don't become satisfied with our comfortable middle class lives and forget about the suffering in the world. Still, how do I do it all?
I have such contempt for so many parents I know who clearly put their careers before their children, who talk about splitting the weekends between spouses so they can each get 10 hours of work in on Saturday and Sunday, who talk about the victory of getting their kids to bed at ridiculously early hours so they have the evenings to work. This is the norm in academia; people talk about their kids as problems to be negotiated rather than people to be raised. That's not to say the people who talk like this aren't good parents--I've never had occasion to talk with them about why they had kids, or how they are raising them, or any other important questions. I realize I can't see the whole picture because I interact with them mostly at work.
And now I feel like I've become one of those parents, calling S's college buddies to say I need just one more hour, saying yes to meetings after 5 or 6 or even 7 because I want to have my hands in the project, even if that means that S gets less time with me. I have no time to actually reflect on all the projects I'm involved in or to do my own grading/class planning--if that happens at all, it always happens after 10, when S is in bed. So I'm also not getting enough sleep. And when I have the opportunity to actually talk to another human being, it's also always after 10, and I always say yes or am the one who invites that person to come, because I so need the interaction. I have an open door policy after 9 anyway--so people know that's the time they can come to talk with me, to reflect on their day, to be there for me and for me to be there for them. I want to keep this--in fact, I need to keep it for myself--but each day when I do have a visitor I don't get work done that needs to get done.
Mitchell writes, "What/does the world want (anyway)/of me with its pussy willows, with/its tears and angers//its greeds and splendors, its/petitions of/skyscrapers and waterfalls?//And what do I want with/its famous and forgotten? And is/this the purpose of my life,//to figure this out?"
I feel like I am at a critical place where I have to look carefully on what it is I want to accomplish. Maybe that's because I'm only a few months away from 40, or maybe it's because S is 1 1/2 years away from graduation, or maybe...I don't know. I do know that I can't go on living at this pace in this way for much longer and keep myself sane.
In answer to her own question about whether the purpose of life is to determine what the world wants of us, Mitchell goes on, "Or is it/to touch and be touched? And if/I love the world more than any one person, or if I love/one person more/than the world, what/does this say of me?"
This is a critical question for me. My decision to adopt S came out of a realization that I couldn't do as much as I wanted to do for any one person of the many who needed a real investment in his/her past, present, and future. Because I could not ever make a big enough impact in any one person's life, I thought adoption would give me the chance to do that. But the reality is, the rest of my life had to go on. I had to keep a job that was dedicated to students, many of whom still seek me out for guidance, and social justice work, which simply cannot be done from 8 to 3:15, or even 8 to 5. So there is a conflict here, and yes, the easy thing would be to close my door, to not be present for people other than S. But I tried that for a year, and my student evaluations were disastrous, and I felt angry and mean all of the time. There is no middle ground for me--I either give my heart and soul to what I'm doing or I am so closed off I can't be effective at all.
Mitchell's resolution, if one can call it that, is, at this point, beyond my full comprehension. She writes, "And what do I say to friends/when they keep me waiting,//Oh, dally, friend, delight/so that I may rub/it from your body//its furs and gewgaws, its/horrors and sweetnesses, so you may/deliver it to me, you//the messenger, the unwinged,/the prosaic in all/its scratch and bliss?"
There is a reversal here--the speaker is no longer the person who stopped to examine and touch the pussy willow, the one who was late for an engagement with a friend--instead, she becomes the one in the position to forgive the latecomer. The "it" here is the pussy willow, of course, but it is also all the "its" that all of us carry--our private griefs and joys, how everything we experience is both light and dark, both uplifting and full of loss. In our lives, the "it" is the loss of my father, the upcoming loss of day-to-day contact with our dear friend J, the memory of walking along the river or in the wetlands examining each wisp of prairie smoke, each blossom, and the changing colors of the prairie grass. The "it" is everything we carry with us when we encounter each other.
Mitchell seems to be suggesting--and it is a suggestion only--that we not worry so much about time, but that we think about how to be present with each other in the time we have to connect. That we take the time to take in and really see each "it," each "pussy willow," but that we also take the time to encounter those "pussy willows" that we carry with us. That we touch each other (not necessarily physically, but with our souls--though physical touch is also critical), and that we are present for each other's truths.
Maybe some people, myself included, are more interested in making appointments, staying on time, and remaining goal-oriented--on having answers to the big questions about what the world is asking of us. But maybe it is enough to be present.
Now I feel like a broken record. Haven't I written this a million times before?
But being present isn't possible if there is too much stuff in our lives that gets in the way. So I'll meet with my supervisor, try to come up with a plan to narrow the focus of my office, possibly to either get some time off for reflection or to get more help. It is a first step, but also an important one.
The poem is about how every choice we make to be present with one thing means, necessarily, that we are no longer present with something else. Each hour I'm at work and S is at home, my heart struggles--I want to be with her, but I also want to do my job well, to manage a program that makes a real difference in the community and in students' lives. I'm able, somehow, to keep that larger goal before me when I'm meeting with faculty, students, and community partners, to continue to feel the excitement of the potential results of those meetings (though this means I'm often disappointed by how things turn out--the faculty member decides not to do service-learning after all, or the student finds that she can't commit the time she'd expected to a project).
When it comes to time with S, I've been having trouble lately, again, being present in the moment and not worrying about the future. As she processes the fact that her case will never go to trial, as she realizes just how different she is from her peers, that having close friendships or relationships with them is not really feasible at this stage in her healing, as she tries to come to terms with her own academic and potential professional limitations, as we say goodbye to the college buddy who has been a rock in her life for the last two years, she is depressed. Sometimes this means she's weeping inconsolably in my arms; other times, it means she's acting out, refusing to get off the computer that she uses to escape or refusing to do her chores or refusing to finish homework.
I've come to the point where I am realizing it is not possible to continue working at the current pace and to parent her well. I am talking with my supervisor about this in a little over a week, something that is scary in these particular budget times--even though the office has been cited as a priority, my job class is the most vulnerable class for cuts, because I don't have the protection of either a union or tenure.
Meanwhile, S told me she needs more time with me. We looked at my calendar and realized that it is true--I have been away from her more this semester than ever before. We sat down and I blocked out more time to be with her--but the fact remains that there is no way I could do my job in the hours she is at school; it's simply not possible. And there's no way she can be left alone; not only does she get lonely, but she also makes terrible decisions, like deciding to visit me just before I am to give a speech, with our dog, or like creating an ebay account and spending $100 she does not have. And even though I was attentive to her concern and enacted an immediate solution, this does not mean I am really giving her the time she needs to keep growing--there needs to be a bigger, more systemic solution to this problem of her feeling abandoned and needing more time with me.
In some ways, it feels like she's regressing, but I don't think that's it exactly. I think some of her security has disappeared in the last year and she is not sure how to manage all the changes. I think that the brave act of telling her story sustained her--until she learned that no one had really listened, that nothing would come of it. I also think that the last two years of high school are scary for anyone, but especially for someone like her who refuses to take a realistic look at what the future holds.
I don't have the time to manage her IEP in the ways it needs to be managed, or to help her with homework in the way she really needs help, or to meet with her teachers regularly, or, basically, to do all the things that her special ed team should be doing but never actually does. I don't have the time or energy to continue battling the school--I fought for an IEP I could live with that at least included some specific goals related to social skills and career planning/college prep, but I've been lax in making sure they are actually happening. They are, sort of, but at a very slow pace and very haphazardly. I am frustrated but don't even have the time to feel the extent of my frustration, much less to act on it.
And so, I find myself in the cliched dilemma of so many parents, one that I swore I'd never have: at what moments do I put my job first, and at what moments do I put S first? I thought I could always put S first, but I have a lot of pressure to build a good program at work--otherwise, I'm expendable. Aside from that, I put a lot of pressure on myself to make real differences in people's lives--and I think all of us should put that kind of pressure on ourselves, so that we don't become satisfied with our comfortable middle class lives and forget about the suffering in the world. Still, how do I do it all?
I have such contempt for so many parents I know who clearly put their careers before their children, who talk about splitting the weekends between spouses so they can each get 10 hours of work in on Saturday and Sunday, who talk about the victory of getting their kids to bed at ridiculously early hours so they have the evenings to work. This is the norm in academia; people talk about their kids as problems to be negotiated rather than people to be raised. That's not to say the people who talk like this aren't good parents--I've never had occasion to talk with them about why they had kids, or how they are raising them, or any other important questions. I realize I can't see the whole picture because I interact with them mostly at work.
And now I feel like I've become one of those parents, calling S's college buddies to say I need just one more hour, saying yes to meetings after 5 or 6 or even 7 because I want to have my hands in the project, even if that means that S gets less time with me. I have no time to actually reflect on all the projects I'm involved in or to do my own grading/class planning--if that happens at all, it always happens after 10, when S is in bed. So I'm also not getting enough sleep. And when I have the opportunity to actually talk to another human being, it's also always after 10, and I always say yes or am the one who invites that person to come, because I so need the interaction. I have an open door policy after 9 anyway--so people know that's the time they can come to talk with me, to reflect on their day, to be there for me and for me to be there for them. I want to keep this--in fact, I need to keep it for myself--but each day when I do have a visitor I don't get work done that needs to get done.
Mitchell writes, "What/does the world want (anyway)/of me with its pussy willows, with/its tears and angers//its greeds and splendors, its/petitions of/skyscrapers and waterfalls?//And what do I want with/its famous and forgotten? And is/this the purpose of my life,//to figure this out?"
I feel like I am at a critical place where I have to look carefully on what it is I want to accomplish. Maybe that's because I'm only a few months away from 40, or maybe it's because S is 1 1/2 years away from graduation, or maybe...I don't know. I do know that I can't go on living at this pace in this way for much longer and keep myself sane.
In answer to her own question about whether the purpose of life is to determine what the world wants of us, Mitchell goes on, "Or is it/to touch and be touched? And if/I love the world more than any one person, or if I love/one person more/than the world, what/does this say of me?"
This is a critical question for me. My decision to adopt S came out of a realization that I couldn't do as much as I wanted to do for any one person of the many who needed a real investment in his/her past, present, and future. Because I could not ever make a big enough impact in any one person's life, I thought adoption would give me the chance to do that. But the reality is, the rest of my life had to go on. I had to keep a job that was dedicated to students, many of whom still seek me out for guidance, and social justice work, which simply cannot be done from 8 to 3:15, or even 8 to 5. So there is a conflict here, and yes, the easy thing would be to close my door, to not be present for people other than S. But I tried that for a year, and my student evaluations were disastrous, and I felt angry and mean all of the time. There is no middle ground for me--I either give my heart and soul to what I'm doing or I am so closed off I can't be effective at all.
Mitchell's resolution, if one can call it that, is, at this point, beyond my full comprehension. She writes, "And what do I say to friends/when they keep me waiting,//Oh, dally, friend, delight/so that I may rub/it from your body//its furs and gewgaws, its/horrors and sweetnesses, so you may/deliver it to me, you//the messenger, the unwinged,/the prosaic in all/its scratch and bliss?"
There is a reversal here--the speaker is no longer the person who stopped to examine and touch the pussy willow, the one who was late for an engagement with a friend--instead, she becomes the one in the position to forgive the latecomer. The "it" here is the pussy willow, of course, but it is also all the "its" that all of us carry--our private griefs and joys, how everything we experience is both light and dark, both uplifting and full of loss. In our lives, the "it" is the loss of my father, the upcoming loss of day-to-day contact with our dear friend J, the memory of walking along the river or in the wetlands examining each wisp of prairie smoke, each blossom, and the changing colors of the prairie grass. The "it" is everything we carry with us when we encounter each other.
Mitchell seems to be suggesting--and it is a suggestion only--that we not worry so much about time, but that we think about how to be present with each other in the time we have to connect. That we take the time to take in and really see each "it," each "pussy willow," but that we also take the time to encounter those "pussy willows" that we carry with us. That we touch each other (not necessarily physically, but with our souls--though physical touch is also critical), and that we are present for each other's truths.
Maybe some people, myself included, are more interested in making appointments, staying on time, and remaining goal-oriented--on having answers to the big questions about what the world is asking of us. But maybe it is enough to be present.
Now I feel like a broken record. Haven't I written this a million times before?
But being present isn't possible if there is too much stuff in our lives that gets in the way. So I'll meet with my supervisor, try to come up with a plan to narrow the focus of my office, possibly to either get some time off for reflection or to get more help. It is a first step, but also an important one.
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