Something New About Somewhere Old - Northwest Classen High School

Tonight Cora and I ran to the grocery store for a few things. When we got back to the car, Cora turned on the Into the Woods soundtrack. It happened to start at the very beginning. And to get in good listening time, we took the long way home. 

After weaving through neighborhoods and going a few miles around, we ended up at Northwest Classen High School. I have done this before with my girls, but as I took Cora around to the east side of the building to show her where my first classroom was, she asked me if she was born before or after I worked there. I told her she was born while I was working there. And then it occurred to me that I had never shared a very important part of the story with her....
This is actually where I went into labor with you!

(The arrow is pointing to the location of my classroom. NWC is HUGE.)

It's true. So I drove her around so we could look through the doors into the hallway where I realized something wasn't quite right on the morning I went into labor. School started before my doctor's office was open, and I was teaching a first period class, so I taught for 20 minutes, then went to call my doctor at 8. The nurse told me to go to Labor and Delivery to get checked out. I was only 32 weeks along. I went back to class, finished teaching, and then went down to the office. I needed a ride to the hospital, and Jake was in Norman at OU. My car had been hit on MLK Day 2008 while parked in the street in front of our house and was at the repair shop. Jake had dropped me off at work on this day, of all days, that it would have been helpful to have my own transportation.
(The stairway is lit up. My classroom is the two long sets of windows on the second floor just to the right of the stairway in the photo.)

I was quietly explaining what was going on to someone, and before I knew it, a message had been put out on the walkie-talkie that I needed a ride to the hospital. Soon several people were around me, including our principal who walked up asking if we needed to call an ambulance. No amblulance required. :) One of the assistant principals gave me a ride to Saint Anthony, walked me in, and made sure I got settled. Her act of love and concern still means so much to me. When I was hooked up to the monitors and checked by a nurse, I was dilated to a two and having contractions every two minutes. It was an Aha Moment - A contraction! That's what that sensation has been! On the second check, my cervix started gushing blood; I thought that sensation was my water breaking. I was immediately taken in for an ultrasound to make sure my placenta was attached and where it should be. It was. The rest of my hospital stay and three weeks of labor is a story I will save for another time.

Northwest Classen is where I became a teacher, and it also held many people who I love dearly and who were around me as I stepped into motherhood. I was walking down the hall when Joe Quigley said, "I hear you're in the family way." I didn't know what that meant; I had never heard it before. So, that is also where he explained to me what it meant to be in the family way. And I was glad he asked because I never quite knew how to break the news to anyone.
(The entry is lit up. Joe Quigley's old classroom is on the first floor just the the left of the entry and is where I did my first round of student teaching before moving to Northeast Academy for student teaching round two.) 

It was also where I whispered to Mickey Winn that I had started spotting when I was 10 weeks along with Cora. She grabbed my arm, gave me a hug, and covered my class when I went to the doctor to have my bloodwork done. My first pregnancy had ended in miscarriage at 12 weeks. I was actually miscarrying during my first week of student teaching with Joe Quigley at Northwest during my senior year of college. I was terrified that I was going to lose my pregnancy with Cora as well. After I left my doctor, I sat in my car and wept, pleading with God to let me keep this one. She stayed.

Becky Feldman and Mickey, both English teachers, were the perfect women to have around. They had both experienced such joy in motherhood. They had both been involved with La Leche League and were so wonderfully supportive and helpful with my breastfeeding journey, which had a few hurdles with Cora being born prematurely at 35 weeks. They visited me during the previously mentioned hospital stay. They visited me at home when I had a newborn. They organized a baby shower at work after Cora was born because I had been in the hospital in preterm labor when mine was supposed to be. They were always there when I needed them.
(Our neighborhood is at the very top of this photo, just east of (above) where Shepherd Lake used to be.)

Cora's face lit up when I told her I went into labor with her at Northwest. I retired from teaching after my first year there. I ended up staying home with my children for 7.5 years before returning to work. We haven't been inside Northwest Classen since Cora was a baby. I would love take my girls in and show them around. In addition to holding a tender place in my heart, Northwest is also a Midcentury dreamboat. So many reasons to schedule a visit. So many reasons I will always be grateful for this place. It's highly unlikely that I'm the only woman who ever went into labor there in its nearly 70 years of existence, but it was fun to tell that little part of our collective story tonight to an almost 12 year old who had quite the fanbase at Northwest ready and waiting to welcome her into the world.

The Day I Busted My Kid Out of School - My Real Life is With My Family

This week has been......

I don't know the right adjective. This week has been a rollercoaster. Not a bad one. I have been up. I have been down. I have been all around.

More on all of that later. Maybe.

Today I went and worked with my senior students at Feed the Children. I was in charge of helping take care of/breaking down excessive cardboard. I would be lying if I said I didn't make obstacle courses and airplanes out of what I was charged with breaking down. But my day started with painting. Before 8AM. And donuts. I don't even like donuts. But I have no self-control. Before this working with the senior class.... I taught one class and covered another for a colleague, who I love dearly, who needed to be away from campus this morning.

In my class, Literature & Spirituality, we talked about MLK and the Six Steps of NonViolent Social Change and the Six Principles of NonViolence. I have kept both of these things above my desk where I work for the last several years. They mean a lot to me. MLK means a lot to me. I try to live my life based on the principles he taught in terms of social change. The world would be a better place if we all tried to live by these principles. Especially now. I have such a long memory. But collectively we do not. In the class I was covering for a colleague, Juniors were watching A Raisin in the Sun.

This has been a week of facing what is possible. In so many ways. In my current world. And in a possible world. I applied for my dream  program for grad school. I was accepted. Despite receiving a five-figure merit scholarship, it is so spendy. Like so spendy. And so awesome. It was my top choice. I am accepted. But there is still a huge financial obstacle. I have been working on figuring that out this week. In most cases, those who are accepted to this program have institutional backing to help alleviate the financial burden. I live in Oklahoma. Financial backing here looks very different when compared nationally. There are so many things I love about living in Oklahoma. And there are so many things people and institutions outside of Oklahoma, including the institution to which I was accepted, simply cannot understand about the complexity of living in Oklahoma. And something about all of this reminds me how much I miss living by the Ocean. Like right there. All the time.

And so, at the conclusion of this week that has had me both beaming with pride and puffy-eyed with tears, I picked up my oldest daughter from school an hour early. She loved it. I loved it. I just wanted her. And she compared it to things like a "mental health day." One extra hour with her mom was the equivalent to a "mental health day." I'll take it. Over and over and over again. We ran errands. We kept track of a few things I needed to keep track of at work. We each had our choice of drink with the addition of boba. It was literally beyond her wildest dreams that I would show up at her school early and just take her with me. And being with her was beyond my wildest dreams as well. My children are beyond my wildest dreams. Even when it's really hard. It's so good to be reminded of this. She just wants me. That's all. Plain ol' me in my messy bun who didn't even take a shower today. I was the best thing that could have happened for her. And she was the best thing that could have happened for me.


In addition to the Principles of Nonviolence, I keep something else above my desk. It's a portion an article the New Yorker did with Toni Morrison. It goes like this:
1. Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself.
2. You make the job; it doesn’t make you.
3. Your real life is with us, your family.
4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.
My real life is with my family. And anything else can only be see as an extension of how much value I place in my home.

My real life is with my family.
My real life is with my family.
My real life is with my family.

MY REAL LIFE IS WITH MY FAMILY.

Belonging, Becoming, and Taking All of it One Step at a Time

One year and one day ago, Jake and I were out in the middle of gorgeous falling snow celebrating our 15th anniversary. The next morning we awoke with two excited girls who wanted to play in it. Magnolia and I went across the street to a steeper driveway and used a large piece of cardboard as a sled. It was so fun. Our own little winter wonderland. 
(January 4, 2019)


Later that evening I was abruptly faced with a new reality. My paternal biological family line, that I thought I pretty much had figured out, came to be something completely different. One can understand information as it is presented, yet it doesn't really make full sense until after the information has been processed. The shock is over, thankfully; I cried for weeks. And weeks. And maybe months. But who's counting? Yes, the shock is over, but the processing is not. I'm still working at wrapping my mind around all of the nuances of the change. 

I gained relationships for which I am grateful. But some relationships I had worked hard to build still feel very different. I'm holding out some sense of hope that perhaps this altered relationship will still include future growth. I once heard that a broken heart is how the light gets in. I believe that in so many ways, and I really want it to be applicable here. But I'm not there yet. 

I'm focusing on what I do have. What I do know. I know this. A man I'd never met rearranged travel plans and flew from Arizona to Oklahoma City to meet me less than one month after he found out I existed. We took a DNA test in my living room to prove whether or not we were related. We definitely are. He had lived with the same kind of unknowing I had. And we were both met with similar rejection. And this man I went from not knowing, to being aware of, to being his niece did the best thing he could have...

HE SHOWED UP.

At my door, in my home, after traveling over a thousand miles because finding answers and making connections meant just as much to him as they did to me. He came to me. I am not used to that; I have always been the seeker. It felt really good.
(January 26, 2019. After the DNA test and Jake returned from a recital, my new uncle and aunt took us out for dinner in OKC.)

Not long before winter break, my students did a poetry unit. I put together a poetry packet for them, and a stanza from one of the poems took my breath away. It couldn't have been more perfect. From "Happiness" by Jane Kenyon:
happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair.
Admittedly, I was a nervous wreck the night before my new uncle came to meet me at the end of January last year. There was a lot of crying (probably more like wailing) and a lot of tequila (the margaritas I kept making myself were just so good). I had no idea what to expect. I can't remember a time when I so desperately wanted to curl up in a warm, cozy spot and have someone hold onto me a little too tight. I had never been the one waiting before. But he came. And I survived. We both did. Life is different and better with this new familial connection. 

The hardest part of all of this is how differently I feel about my biological father. In all of the everything that went down in 2019, his reactions, responses, and withholdings are the things that broke my heart. I don't know how to give him the grace I used to be able to before January 4, 2019. Our relationship has meant a lot to me. Finding him and getting to know him when I was 14 meant a lot. He felt familiar. He felt like a kindred spirit. I want to believe that's what it all really was. But part of me knows that some of that was a little girl who had always wanted to know where she had come from viewing things through rose-colored glasses. Those lenses have been taken off, and I am left with what is. And two sides of the same question: What do I want our relationship to be; what do I need our relationship to be? And also, I guess, What am I comfortable with our relationship being?
(May 22, 2003. My biological father and his wife with me at high school graduation. Because I unknowingly went to high school with my 1st cousin, he and his father, my new uncle, were out there in the sea of people on the Apache Junction High School football field. My graduation was the third time in my life I had seen my father. And little did any of us know that he had an older brother he might have seen for a brief second that night.)

All of this is part of an idea that my friend Lisa introduced to me a few years ago: Ambiguous Loss. Often we associate loss with a finite event. Someone dies, we begin a period of grief, work our way through it, etc. There are two types of ambiguous loss, physical and psychological, but there's no finite event for closure - a divorce, finding out you have a sister and then realizing that the reality of that great desire was not at all what you imagined, a loved one who begins withholding from you, a family member with dementia, a kidnapping, etc. All of these are forms of losses that aren't always clear. Feeling the loss of something/someone when in some ways you can literally reach out and touch them. It's hard to make sense of what the loss actually is. I spent a lot of this year trying to make sense of something that will just never make much sense. I'm getting more and more comfortable with that. Sometimes it still really hurts. But it hurts less often. 

Last night Jake and I were out celebrating our 16th anniversary with our friends Regan and Casey. I was telling them part of all of this, and I said something like, "For someone who has spent her life searching for her family, I always sort of hoped I'd find a crazy liberal aunt in Berkeley or something so I could say, 'Oh, this is where I get it from.'" And then they said the very best thing in response:
You can be the crazy liberal aunt... in Oklahoma.
It still makes me smile! I had never thought of this. But I LOVE it. It's going on my list of top five compliments I've ever received, even if I consider myself more moderate. I am the thing I have always wanted to find. A total work in progress, that's for sure. But on the journey of becoming. 

Brené Brown said, "True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being part of something and standing alone in the wilderness." 

And Maya Angelou said this in an interview with Bill Moyers: 
Moyers: Do you belong anywhere? Angelou: I haven't yet. Moyers: Do you belong to anyone? Angelou: More and more. I mean, I belong to myself. I'm very proud of that. 
Coming every day more and more into my own. Belonging more and more to myself. Making my way through the hard things, one step at a time, has been my very best teacher. And I'm very proud of that.


(Here is the rest of Jane Kenyon's "Happiness")


There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.


And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.


No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.


It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
                     It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

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