The strange shapes the red crayon carved into the blank white paper looked like icing on the cake of the brown sugar, shag rug covering our playroom floor. My sister was sprawled out next to me, in a position of relaxed encouragement. She was quiet but attentive, offering possibilities or ideas here and there. The crayon was Crayola, well used and worn, but at that moment it felt very different, unfamiliar in my hand. My fingers curled around it like vines on a trellis, unlike the stabbing fist I was use to creating with.
On this paper, there were no dashed lines to follow or shapes to fill, only a white space. I started tentatively, hands shaky but resolve in tact, forming the upright foundation of a K, and then connecting the rest. Emily, three years older and in elementary school by then had graduated from crayons to thick yellow pencils. She could have dampened my victory with a ‘so what’ attitude. Instead, she sat upright and clapped with each line and curve until the page held the five letters of my name. We took a victory lap around our three-bedroom house, from the play to living room, where my parents sat idle. With our presentation, my dad gave a smile and a nod; my mom hastily picked up the olive green rotary phone to call her mom and share a milestone. Click. Click. Click.
Before this afternoon, I had drawn and scribbled with crayons plenty of times, but no product had provoked the excitement this playtime did. I was a part of them in a new way, and I liked it.
---------
Early in elementary school, I wasn’t good at much. I struggled with reading, disliked numbers, and recess or PE didn’t seem to count for much. Every morning I would protest the ritual of getting ready for school, faking illness, hiding in closets, throwing absolute fits. I saw no use in school and decided it had no use in me.
At school, I tried to follow along, wanting nothing more than to be able to do what everyone else was doing with such ease, but it just wasn’t clicking. My first grade teacher, Ms. Aldridge, was young, kind, and eager to listen as much as talk. At that time, we still had teacher aides in classrooms. Our’s was the yin to Ms. Aldridge’s yang. Ms. Groom’s straight, midnight black hair shined all the way down to the waist, ending where her sweater vests stopped and pleated khakis began.
I realized early on in the school year how little she liked or cared for us, me particularly. The mask of sincerity and patience she wore around other grown-ups could shift abruptly when she thought no one was watching. I remember her whispering small insults into my ear as she snaked through the room, evaluating and remarking from above on anything and nothing. Do you really think that is 1st grade work? Do we need to send you back to kindergarten? If you aren’t going to even try, why do you bother coming to school? We would need a decoder ring to actually read that. Is it supposed to be your name?
As an adult now, reflecting on these memories elicits a kind of anger I rarely experience, but at the time, I thought it was a part of the game of school you discover on your own rather than it being explained by others. I like a good challenge, so I approached Ms. Groom as such. Trying harder. Trying to figure out the game for myself.
Ms. Aldridge remained consistent as the head of our classroom, kneeling down next to our small chairs, quiet but attentive, occasionally offering suggestions and possibilities. But, of course, even teacher need sick days. In Ms. Aldridge’s absence, Ms. Groom was alone and in charge. The assignment involved a common photocopied worksheet: the outline of a lamb frolicking in a still black and white field with space below to write something, create meaning, about the lamb.
I’m not saying that I was a perfectly well behaved child who never required any kind of discipline. I could definitely be a brat. One time I packed as many books as possible into dad’s suitcase and tied myself to it with my jump rope after a babysitter said I wasn’t allowed to watch Dukes of Hazard. This story is still a source of shame and pride for me. “If you want me to go to bed before Dukes, you can try and carry me upstairs yourself.” I won, sitting on the suitcase in front of the TV, but I’m still fairly embarrassed by this little protest.
Whatever the cause, Ms. Groom sent me and my lamb to the classroom bathroom to complete my work. I sat alone on the cold, red, clay tiles of the floor and tried not to but started crying. Afraid the tears would make my lamb run, I wiped them from the paper with my sleeve, subtly smearing the cloud-like curves that formed his face.
The next year was better. I met several times with a lady with orange lipstick who always smiled when asking questions or assigning a task, and she gave you a piece of candy at the end of each meeting. The testing and talk revealed I was dyslexic. I remember my mom’s eyes watering when those orange lips said, “She can read, but she will never read for pleasure.”
A learning disability is not something I would wish for anyone, but I am grateful for the experiences it offered. It afforded extra support outside of the classroom and a kind of awareness or identification inside it. More than anything, it helped me understand that I could learn, I just learned in a different way. Throughout the rest of my k-12 education, I learned a lot about how I learn best. This knowledge is still evident in the pages of drawings and maps that fill my daybook, the highlights and doodles in the margins of my books, and the public places where I put on my headphones and work, contently, for hours.
My parents always pushed but never shamed me academically. With each report card, as my friends were getting grounded or berated because of their grade, my dad would call me into his office. Even with his posture relaxed, leaning back in his rolling chair, his straight face always caused me momentary panic. “We received your report card…” I stood still, feet planted but eyes wanting to wander around the room as he spoke again: “I have one question for you.” His voice remained flat. “Did you do your best?” I pause. Reflect for a moment: “Yes.” “Did you try your hardest?” The space between this Q & A shortened as I nodded, earnestly repeating, “Yes.”
The next thing he said was something he made sure my sister and I heard every single day: “I am very proud of you.” And he meant it.
----------
But, Lil [Dr. Brannon], I am not sure I have answered your question, and I am not sure I can. I think the neat narrative of support and victory I have woven so far is lovely but incomplete. This white-picket-fence self is one I mindfully construct and purposefully perform each day, putting a part of me that is no longer here in a separate place. Some days I feel like I am shaped by what is not here more than what is. On those days, I am a chalk outline of an unfamiliar person, stumbling across artifacts and straining to remember their significance, the story or person that once contributed meaning to it.
I could tell you about The Little Prince. About meeting my best friend Ruffin at Eppes Middle School and how we read that book together at least once a year, all the way through college, to remind each other to stay young, to laugh out loud without stifling it, to appreciate the delicate aspects of life as much as the rest. But, for me, those pure ideals died with him, hanging in his apartment’s closet.
I could ask you, “Have told you today that I love you?” I could tell you about my dad and how he asked me and my sister that question every single day. About how, early each morning before he left for work, he would open my bedroom door just a crack, saying nothing but blowing me a kiss. About how even after he died - when I returned home and slept in my childhood bedroom - in the early morning hours, I would still occasionally hear a kiss.
I could tell you about Catcher in the Rye and The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and Slaughterhouse Five. I could tell you more about my sister, Emily, and how seeing her reading those books drove me to try to enjoy reading. About how I tried anyway possible to be able to read with her. How she remained beside me - celebrating my college graduation with a trip to New York, my marriage to Michael with a Sex and the City-theme shower, and my pregnancy with Elliott with a storybook themed baby shower. And I remained beside her through surgeries and chemo and doctor visits. We were together when hospice moved in and converted her childhood bedroom into a sterile hospital room. How I read to her the last few weeks when there was no relief from the pain and how she never complained. I wrote for her, when panic filled her eyes after realizing her end was near. I furiously scribbled every word and every name on the yellow, legal-size notepad a letter of gratitude to our parents, our friends and family. And I read her letter to the stained-glassed Methodist church, filled by people there to celebrate her.
These memories are sharp and painful at times but persistent, and I feel as responsible for them as any other story, if not more. But this is an identity I’m unsure of. It is a risky construction. What if I put all of my pieces together to leave my most sensitive flesh hanging, vulnerable from the holes of what is left behind? What if who I love the most becomes another missing piece, again? Maybe this fear is why I have barely mentioned anything of my husband and son. The most important things are often the hardest things to say. What if the words I use diminish them?
I am much more comfortable speaking from or for others. It would be much easier for me to talk about how the theory of mutuality opened doors for me as a learner, teacher, and peer. Or how Judith Halberstam motivates me to take more risks and embrace failure when it comes. How discourse analysis was something I had been doing for as long as I remember but Gee and others provided a name for it while expanding the possibilities of how it could be used. I could comfortably talk about theory, research, methods, and methodology and practice the academic identity I am working to create. Instead, I’m deconstructing my self in some ways in order to construct the self I am today.
-----------------
I wish this end could be like the end of the last Harry Potter, and with the turn of a stone I would be surrounded by people I love. They would be with me everywhere I went. I want to be able to say that I am bringing all of them to class with me, but I just don’t know. I do know that there are small joys everywhere, if we decide to see them.
Joy in being my son’s quiet but attentive cheerleader with each of his small victories. Asking him, “Have I told you yet today that I love you?” and telling him, “I am very proud of you.”
Joy in getting lost in the messy process of creation and discovery. In approaching each new task and day with the confidence that I will be able to contribute to and learn from it. In knowing that I don’t necessarily learn or think like everyone else, and that is not a bad thing.
Joy in knowing what I want and in knowing there are things worth speaking up and standing my ground for. In tying myself to a metaphorical suitcase in situations when justice is not served.
Joy in reading a good book, for pleasure. In being able to capture thoughts in small sketches, scribbled notes, and the click, click, click of my keyboard.
Joy in opportunities when I allow myself to be vulnerable and share memories with people like you.
On this paper, there were no dashed lines to follow or shapes to fill, only a white space. I started tentatively, hands shaky but resolve in tact, forming the upright foundation of a K, and then connecting the rest. Emily, three years older and in elementary school by then had graduated from crayons to thick yellow pencils. She could have dampened my victory with a ‘so what’ attitude. Instead, she sat upright and clapped with each line and curve until the page held the five letters of my name. We took a victory lap around our three-bedroom house, from the play to living room, where my parents sat idle. With our presentation, my dad gave a smile and a nod; my mom hastily picked up the olive green rotary phone to call her mom and share a milestone. Click. Click. Click.
Before this afternoon, I had drawn and scribbled with crayons plenty of times, but no product had provoked the excitement this playtime did. I was a part of them in a new way, and I liked it.
---------
Early in elementary school, I wasn’t good at much. I struggled with reading, disliked numbers, and recess or PE didn’t seem to count for much. Every morning I would protest the ritual of getting ready for school, faking illness, hiding in closets, throwing absolute fits. I saw no use in school and decided it had no use in me.
At school, I tried to follow along, wanting nothing more than to be able to do what everyone else was doing with such ease, but it just wasn’t clicking. My first grade teacher, Ms. Aldridge, was young, kind, and eager to listen as much as talk. At that time, we still had teacher aides in classrooms. Our’s was the yin to Ms. Aldridge’s yang. Ms. Groom’s straight, midnight black hair shined all the way down to the waist, ending where her sweater vests stopped and pleated khakis began.
I realized early on in the school year how little she liked or cared for us, me particularly. The mask of sincerity and patience she wore around other grown-ups could shift abruptly when she thought no one was watching. I remember her whispering small insults into my ear as she snaked through the room, evaluating and remarking from above on anything and nothing. Do you really think that is 1st grade work? Do we need to send you back to kindergarten? If you aren’t going to even try, why do you bother coming to school? We would need a decoder ring to actually read that. Is it supposed to be your name?
As an adult now, reflecting on these memories elicits a kind of anger I rarely experience, but at the time, I thought it was a part of the game of school you discover on your own rather than it being explained by others. I like a good challenge, so I approached Ms. Groom as such. Trying harder. Trying to figure out the game for myself.
Ms. Aldridge remained consistent as the head of our classroom, kneeling down next to our small chairs, quiet but attentive, occasionally offering suggestions and possibilities. But, of course, even teacher need sick days. In Ms. Aldridge’s absence, Ms. Groom was alone and in charge. The assignment involved a common photocopied worksheet: the outline of a lamb frolicking in a still black and white field with space below to write something, create meaning, about the lamb.
I’m not saying that I was a perfectly well behaved child who never required any kind of discipline. I could definitely be a brat. One time I packed as many books as possible into dad’s suitcase and tied myself to it with my jump rope after a babysitter said I wasn’t allowed to watch Dukes of Hazard. This story is still a source of shame and pride for me. “If you want me to go to bed before Dukes, you can try and carry me upstairs yourself.” I won, sitting on the suitcase in front of the TV, but I’m still fairly embarrassed by this little protest.
Whatever the cause, Ms. Groom sent me and my lamb to the classroom bathroom to complete my work. I sat alone on the cold, red, clay tiles of the floor and tried not to but started crying. Afraid the tears would make my lamb run, I wiped them from the paper with my sleeve, subtly smearing the cloud-like curves that formed his face.
The next year was better. I met several times with a lady with orange lipstick who always smiled when asking questions or assigning a task, and she gave you a piece of candy at the end of each meeting. The testing and talk revealed I was dyslexic. I remember my mom’s eyes watering when those orange lips said, “She can read, but she will never read for pleasure.”
A learning disability is not something I would wish for anyone, but I am grateful for the experiences it offered. It afforded extra support outside of the classroom and a kind of awareness or identification inside it. More than anything, it helped me understand that I could learn, I just learned in a different way. Throughout the rest of my k-12 education, I learned a lot about how I learn best. This knowledge is still evident in the pages of drawings and maps that fill my daybook, the highlights and doodles in the margins of my books, and the public places where I put on my headphones and work, contently, for hours.
My parents always pushed but never shamed me academically. With each report card, as my friends were getting grounded or berated because of their grade, my dad would call me into his office. Even with his posture relaxed, leaning back in his rolling chair, his straight face always caused me momentary panic. “We received your report card…” I stood still, feet planted but eyes wanting to wander around the room as he spoke again: “I have one question for you.” His voice remained flat. “Did you do your best?” I pause. Reflect for a moment: “Yes.” “Did you try your hardest?” The space between this Q & A shortened as I nodded, earnestly repeating, “Yes.”
The next thing he said was something he made sure my sister and I heard every single day: “I am very proud of you.” And he meant it.
----------
But, Lil [Dr. Brannon], I am not sure I have answered your question, and I am not sure I can. I think the neat narrative of support and victory I have woven so far is lovely but incomplete. This white-picket-fence self is one I mindfully construct and purposefully perform each day, putting a part of me that is no longer here in a separate place. Some days I feel like I am shaped by what is not here more than what is. On those days, I am a chalk outline of an unfamiliar person, stumbling across artifacts and straining to remember their significance, the story or person that once contributed meaning to it.
I could tell you about The Little Prince. About meeting my best friend Ruffin at Eppes Middle School and how we read that book together at least once a year, all the way through college, to remind each other to stay young, to laugh out loud without stifling it, to appreciate the delicate aspects of life as much as the rest. But, for me, those pure ideals died with him, hanging in his apartment’s closet.
I could ask you, “Have told you today that I love you?” I could tell you about my dad and how he asked me and my sister that question every single day. About how, early each morning before he left for work, he would open my bedroom door just a crack, saying nothing but blowing me a kiss. About how even after he died - when I returned home and slept in my childhood bedroom - in the early morning hours, I would still occasionally hear a kiss.
I could tell you about Catcher in the Rye and The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and Slaughterhouse Five. I could tell you more about my sister, Emily, and how seeing her reading those books drove me to try to enjoy reading. About how I tried anyway possible to be able to read with her. How she remained beside me - celebrating my college graduation with a trip to New York, my marriage to Michael with a Sex and the City-theme shower, and my pregnancy with Elliott with a storybook themed baby shower. And I remained beside her through surgeries and chemo and doctor visits. We were together when hospice moved in and converted her childhood bedroom into a sterile hospital room. How I read to her the last few weeks when there was no relief from the pain and how she never complained. I wrote for her, when panic filled her eyes after realizing her end was near. I furiously scribbled every word and every name on the yellow, legal-size notepad a letter of gratitude to our parents, our friends and family. And I read her letter to the stained-glassed Methodist church, filled by people there to celebrate her.
These memories are sharp and painful at times but persistent, and I feel as responsible for them as any other story, if not more. But this is an identity I’m unsure of. It is a risky construction. What if I put all of my pieces together to leave my most sensitive flesh hanging, vulnerable from the holes of what is left behind? What if who I love the most becomes another missing piece, again? Maybe this fear is why I have barely mentioned anything of my husband and son. The most important things are often the hardest things to say. What if the words I use diminish them?
I am much more comfortable speaking from or for others. It would be much easier for me to talk about how the theory of mutuality opened doors for me as a learner, teacher, and peer. Or how Judith Halberstam motivates me to take more risks and embrace failure when it comes. How discourse analysis was something I had been doing for as long as I remember but Gee and others provided a name for it while expanding the possibilities of how it could be used. I could comfortably talk about theory, research, methods, and methodology and practice the academic identity I am working to create. Instead, I’m deconstructing my self in some ways in order to construct the self I am today.
-----------------
I wish this end could be like the end of the last Harry Potter, and with the turn of a stone I would be surrounded by people I love. They would be with me everywhere I went. I want to be able to say that I am bringing all of them to class with me, but I just don’t know. I do know that there are small joys everywhere, if we decide to see them.
Joy in being my son’s quiet but attentive cheerleader with each of his small victories. Asking him, “Have I told you yet today that I love you?” and telling him, “I am very proud of you.”
Joy in getting lost in the messy process of creation and discovery. In approaching each new task and day with the confidence that I will be able to contribute to and learn from it. In knowing that I don’t necessarily learn or think like everyone else, and that is not a bad thing.
Joy in knowing what I want and in knowing there are things worth speaking up and standing my ground for. In tying myself to a metaphorical suitcase in situations when justice is not served.
Joy in reading a good book, for pleasure. In being able to capture thoughts in small sketches, scribbled notes, and the click, click, click of my keyboard.
Joy in opportunities when I allow myself to be vulnerable and share memories with people like you.