Resonant Dissonance

Dearest Darling-

For a week, you were mine.

When I saw it on that Saturday morning, the plus sign, I was elated. I immediately took a picture of it with my phone and sent it to your aunt. I had to tell someone (I didn’t want to wake your dad). She was at soccer practice. She said she couldn’t see it in the light. This deflated my joy. But hours later she got home. She texted I SEE IT! With smiley heart eye emojis. We started planning your future. Your dad and I were so excited to become a family of four.

For the week you were mine, I thought about you constantly.

I thought about whether you would be her baby brother or sister. I thought about how she would love you completely either way but how she has really been asking for a sister named Rose. I don’t think she even knows you both had a Canadian great grandmother with that name.

I thought about how you needed to grow. I thought about every bite and sip that crossed my lips. I instantly almost completely quit coffee which is a feat when there are only 3 weeks left in the semester. I gave up lunch meat which wasn’t that hard. I tried to eat eggs again, which was harder. I thought about how my first festive beverage in the future would come right around New Year’s 2019 as I toasted your arrival. It was when you were due. I knew the wine in our cellar would keep.

I thought about all the sleep I would lose soon. No one tells you how much you lose during pregnancy. I was ready for all of it because I knew that in the wakeful moments before you arrived, I would be feeling your life blossom inside of me. In the times after you joined us, I would be nuzzling your soft head.

most weirdly, I actually thought about your immunity. I projected when you would need to enter daycare. I tried to calculate when your dad and I would be able to take leave and when I would be able to go back to work, calculating how much teaching load I have in the bank. I wanted as many months as I could steal with you without throwing you into the mixer. I was optimizing conditions in my mind.

I thought about how I would tell everyone all about you at our upcoming family vacation in Florida. I just knew your grandmothers would be elated. A new baby in the family would make everyone more joyous that week. I thought about how I would need to enjoy that trip because I likely wouldn’t be making too many more as we waited for you.

And then the ominous signs of Friday came. I had meetings all day. I kept sneaking out of them to the restroom to see if it had stopped. It didn’t. Your aunt texted me to relax. She knew it could be fine. But as the day progressed, other things did too, and by the night, I didn’t really feel fine about anything. I tried hopelessly to sleep on it.

By the morning, it was much worse. I called the advice nurse in desperate need of advice. She told me things could still be fine but that I needed to go to the ER. The ER I said? Really? She said yes they need to check your hCG levels and do an ultrasound to establish a baseline for monitoring your growth. Again, she encouraged me it could all be fine. She said do not go alone.

Since the nurse had said it was just to set baselines, I didn’t see why I needed to ruin your sister’s morning, so I took her to gymnastics watching her swing from the monkey bars and balance on the beam. I took her to my favorite Mother’s Day weekend event, the edible schoolyard plant sale. I picked out tomatoes and peppers for our summer garden. We ate a lovely lunch before we left your sister with your cousin and headed out to the hospital. Tears welled up in my eyes as we left your sister smiling at the door. She didn’t know about you. I hadn’t told her yet. She just said, “It’s ok mommy!”  I said thank you baby, and I knew it could be.

It was a bright sunny day as we entered the hospital, but I couldn’t look up. I saw expectant moms and babies in arms, so I couldn’t look out. I just looked down. The triage nurse was wearing a black t-shirt that said Mom Bod, clearly 4-5 months along. It seemed I couldn’t look anywhere.

The waiting was agonizing, but they finally took us back. They drew my blood. Then I rode on a gurney though the hospital keeping my sandals on as they stuck out under my blanket. I don’t know why I kept them on. I don’t know why I thought they would let me walk gowned to to the ultrasound. The technician took so many pictures, I didn’t think there was any way they couldn’t all be of you. It turns out she has a really great poker face. She should take it to Vegas.

While we waited for all of the results to be analyzed by the doctor, the receptionist came in to take my information for insurance and billing. She took my copay, showed me where to sign. I was so out of it, I noted it was three o’clock but I wrote down all the dates in March. She wished me Happy Mother’s day as she walked out. I know I am a mother, but did she not realize why we were here? I teared up again in anxious anticipation.

After reviewing all the blood work and ultrasound pictures, the doctor came back in. He said, “Did you have a positive pregnancy test?” I said, “Of course, last Saturday.” I knew it then so I just only half heard the rest. He said my hCG was at 5 and that the pictures I had thought were all the first ones of you were just empty. He said with a positive test a week ago but with the levels now only at 5, I had had a complete miscarriage. I was in shock. I didn’t know if he was implying you had never been. Your dad held my hand comforting me after the doctor had left, gently saying he thought the doctor awkwardly just meant for me to know you never would be and not to seek the second opinion he had also told me was within my right to find. We both wished he had had a bit better bedside manner.

I have spent the day since, my fourth Mother’s day as a mother, fighting back the tears of your loss. I feel empty, a fact that has now been medically confirmed. I miss you. I had no idea I could be so attached with only one week connected to your not quite yet heart. Your sister doesn’t know why I keep crying. She asks me why, and all I can tell her is I lost something. She asks what, and I say it is hard to explain, but it was something very very special. I had the brightest future for you in my mind. For a week you were mine, and I hope you know, you were so deeply loved.

Love-

Your mother

This is what depression feels like. Being here, in the middle of love and light and laughter and feeling like you are observing another world.

You know that world is real and your world isn’t. You want to be a part of that world. But you don’t know how… you don’t know how to bridge that gap and cross that void.

It’s lonely here, on the outside looking in. It seems like an easy thing to stand up, to join in. But there’s a weight, an anchor, dragging you backwards. There’s a cloud of self-deprecation taunting you, telling you not to even bother to try.

This picture was taken at my cousin’s perfect wedding. I remember loving the love, the perfection. I also remember feeling like an observer. Like I could never be part of the dance floor.

———————

I’ve always had it all. I do not deny the fortune with which I am blessed. I grew up in an idyllic family. I have never wanted for a need. I am surrounded always by love. I am smart, I am driven, I am capable, I am physically healthy…

Yet, I struggle. I struggle against something I don’t understand. Nothing has broken me; I was born this way. I was born with this little broken part, this tiny hole, that leads to a chasm of loneliness and sadness. I was born with this gateway to feeling too much, too deeply, to absorbing and holding on to too much emotion.

There are times when I can close the lid, cover the hole. There are days and weeks and months and sometimes years when I can seal it off. But there are also times when the latch breaks, when the seal loosens.

When this happens, I can sometimes push the feelings down, dull them. Sometimes this is done with staying busy. Busy, busy, busy and I don’t have time to feel. There’s not a chance to wallow in the murk when I don’t slow down enough to fall in. The problem is that I can’t go forever, I can’t run away because there is an elastic leash, and when I get to the end it snaps me back, deep into the hole. When I fall, I am drained. There’s no energy left to push back out.

Sometimes I can close the lid by numbing. Eat until the hole feels closed. Eat until the only thing I feel is full, no room to feel the emptiness of the hole. This, too, only lasts so long until misery and reality set in. When I realize there’s no end to the hole, no way to pack enough in to close it, I just feel sick and sad and even more defeated than before.

Sometimes I close the lid by sleeping. When I am sleeping, I feel nothing. When I am sleeping, I am alone, in a made up world where anything is possible and nothing is real. It’s glorious but, paradoxically, exhausting. The more I sleep the more I want to sleep. The more I sleep, the less I let myself feel anything real. The feelings don’t leave, though. They are waiting by the bed; they are lurking in the room. And the real world does need me. I must get up; I must face the day.

There are things I know: I know none of this makes any sense. I know I have so many things to be thankful for, to enjoy, to embrace. I know I am loved. I know I should be happy.

Somehow, knowing this sometimes makes me feel lonelier, worse. It makes me feel like hiding, because I can’t get should be and am to come together and I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t want others to think I’m not grateful or that I don’t care. I don’t want people to give up on me.

_______________

People like me, we need your patience. We need your support. We need you to stand strong beside us even when we push away a little. We need you to throw us a rope, a lifeline. Help us scale the walls of this cavern, one step at a time. Sometimes we may move slowly, make little progress. I know we will frustrate you. Sometimes we may resist, get sucked back down a bit. We need you to fight for us.

Please know we are trying. Please know we see you; you give us strength. Please know we are fighting, too.

For me, she hung the moon. Here is my black mother hugging me at an event honoring my graduation from college summa cum laude and First Honor graduate with a degree in chemistry. You don’t get where I got on this day very easily without a good start. My parents hired her solely to care for me. I was born as my dad started his practice and my mom managed his office. My sister was in a preschool program, and I was a very busy child. My mom needed a little help, and she was all mine. She held my hand, allowed my free spirit to soar, and encouraged most every early whim as I explored my brand new world. She became such a fixture in our family that my dad later hired her as an assistant in his office. She would joke with the patients as she took their vitals. I could see her every time I came home. In many ways, she was such a part of my family.

As such, I found it hard to live in the rural south where there were still so many elements of society that appeared segregated and belief in racist stereotypes was so commonplace. Who among us southern white people has not been in a social situation generally not of your creation and someone says something uncomfortable, ignorant, or misinformed about people of color?

I can say that anyone who knew me or knew my family never ever assumed I would be sympathetic to a comment like that. But it was hard to fathom the ignorance that went into many of the stereotypes of black people in my community, as somehow ignorant or all criminal or government moochers, from the perspective of black culture that my parents and grandparents provided. With them, I celebrated at black weddings, I mourned at black funerals, I worshipped in black church services, I visited friends in black homes. Black women cared for me, my cousins, my great-grandparents, my grandparents, and now help my parents. We never considered these women just “help”. Many of these women are considered members of my extended family.

I found the black people of my community always opened their doors and their hearts to me and my family. They lived lives that were not so different than white people in my community. Working one-two jobs or side jobs, or volunteering in their community, going to church every Sunday, every Wednesday, and many other days for good measure, playing with friends in the neighborhood, spending a lot of time with family, reunioning at the local parks.

The difference was that black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods were largely segregated and it seemed like few people socialized in both. I lived in a home that was on the border of the largely white community as it transitioned into the black community. As such, based on racist stereotypes, you would think my parents would have bars on the windows and multiple locks on the doors, but for most of my childhood, they left both cars unlocked and frequently the house, and we were never robbed.

When I was in high school, I went into the low income housing units of my small town to tutor football players in math. These young men aspired to get college scholarships. It was pretty powerful to work with these gentlemen in trying to reach their goals. It was also pretty informative to observe their families on the periphery, siblings caring for siblings or mothers coming in from job number two to get dinner on the table. These were hard working people supporting their families and welcoming me into their homes as I helped their child reach for his dreams. My mother always told us that we could do whatever we dreamed, and with role models like my parents and their siblings, I never doubted I could do or be anything I wanted to be, regardless of my gender, if I just set my mind to it. It really wasn’t until I actually regularly visited homes where dreams were going to be so much harder to attain and where impediments to success instead of visions of success were the norm that I began to appreciate the fallacy of the bootstrap argument and how certain segments of society were always going to have a harder time pulling on theirs. I never asked for any money. I felt completely enriched by the experience.

When you are like me, it is hard to have conversations about race in the south especially with white people. I grew up in a family that desegregated the local school, at that time West Point High School. In the interim while my dad was at college and then medical school, a private school was created that recruited many of the white students from my small hometown. When my dad moved his young family back to that same small town to start his practice, we went to the public schools. I was one of 4-5 white people in any class in elementary school but I actually only really recognize that now as I look back at snapshots of my classes at the time. In my mind, in my youth, it was just my school. When I want to high school, some of the most influential people in my class, black and white, were alumni of West Point Elementary. It was an amazing place to learn and a proud place to reflect upon.

Realtors who show homes to affluent people interested in moving to my town like to show them that private school. They do not tout the amazing work of the teachers at the local public elementary school, my alma mater. But you would be hard pressed to start a conversation about how that private school conspicuously founded in 1970 allows a segregated school system to persist in our community. It would be a challenge for you to communicate to these affluent people of my home town the value of receiving their education with all members of their community, not just primarily the ones of their same socioeconomic stature. It would be hard for your to discuss how a solid education isn’t merely “book learnin'” but also an appreciation for the status and challenges of your community, how all children in your community could benefit from the collective experience early childhood education can provide. You would be considered offensive. People would not want to listen. So it largely goes unsaid. And yet, the patterns persist in small towns and urban areas alike across the nation, not just the south. In this way, the rural and the urban aren’t all that different. In this way the south and the rest of the country aren’t all that different.

I now live in a medium sized town of El Cerrito in the Bay Area. My town feeds a high school whose students in large part hail from towns built by oil and shipping industries. The high school is incredibly diverse. The facilities are immaculate. But the standardized test scores are lower than the high schools in the neighboring town of Albany. Consequently, property values in Albany are $100-$200K higher for comparably sized homes just 500 yards away from ours. So the population of the Albany school system is largely caucasian and asian. In all parts, there are numerous private options. People ask us where our kid will go. It isn’t even a question to me; she will attend the lovely Harding Elementary just three blocks away from our front door. She will learn and love with the children of our neighborhood. She will be fine.

I will likely walk her to school. It is after all just down the street. But when I was a child, a lot of learning happened on the bus. The stop was in front of my grandparents’ house, so I learned to run to be on time. There was a lot of vying for position on the bus. I remember it was the only fight I ever got into, defending my sister for some silly reason long forgotten. I doubt I was very good at violence which is why I never really tried it again. The black children on my route were picked up first and dropped off last, so though they never saw it in the morning, every day they passed a large plantation home at the top of the hill where my street begins. Did anyone on that bus ever ponder the history of our neighborhood symbolized by this antebellum relic? Did anyone ever consider the blood, sweat, and tears sown into the soil beneath its streets? Do the parents of these children ever discuss these periods with their young ones? My parents did and they didn’t. It is hard to believe how much history happened in their high school years that I never thought to ask about until I was much much older.

Children on that same bus ride these days must have noticed the emergence of yard signs that say “Back the Blue.” Before you tell me these are absolutely to show support for local law enforcement, tell me if you saw a single one before the Black Lives Matter movement began. To me, these signs are just a window into the impulsive white resentment to the increasing visibility of the fight for social justice and the ascendence of our first black president, a resentment that Trump masterfully harnessed in his rise to power.

In a way, the occupants of homes with these signs have done me a favor. They have shown me that they need to hear about the ways that police disproportionately target black and brown people for things like traffic violations. They should probably learn about the statistics that show that these are exactly the types of incidents that all too frequently escalate to senseless violence and death disproportionately for those same black and brown people who are all too often maimed or killed when their only crime is being in any way perceived resisting unnecessary force, if that. And all too often they are teens. I wonder how they would react to the research on how cops even in Oakland CA treat black people differently in routine traffic stops, from their language to their mannerisms. They probably don’t want to hear about how rarely, if ever, are the law enforcement officials held accountable for their crimes. They definitely don’t want to acknowledge how the disenfranchisement of black felons has kept the solid red colors in voting across the south. And that is why the word black matters. I wonder how they would engage in a discussion of the appalling and egregious inequalities that are especially acute for the long wealth and earning potential of black men in this country studying demographic data for all Americans in their 30s. What was their reaction to the appalling and embarrassing incidents of the last week where two men were arrested for the crime of being black and early to a business meeting at Starbucks or the two men evicted from an LA fitness for being black and active. There are real conversations about race to be had, especially by white people in this country with other white people. I could link to a hundred other topical articles and books that could and should stimulate local conversation to improve cultural awareness and promote the value of the movements for social justice and equality in this country and elevate the message.

What do the children on that bus route see today? As I have said, my parents live on the border as the white neighborhood transitions to a blacker one. Do the young black children feel afraid as they enter the neighborhood? I find it as unlikely they have never noticed the signs as I do that they all treat them with indifference. Do the young white children accept the signs as unquestionable support for law enforcement?  Is there ever a moment that the parents of all of the children on that bus ride discuss the current climate around the color of justice in our country? I find it as unlikely that those conversations ever have begun as I do that the emergence of the signs themselves has gone unnoticed by the people of color who live nearby, child and adult. I guess ultimately those signs show me why starting those uncomfortable conversations is vital to breaking so many of these patterns that leave our communities separate, unequal, and no closer to the dream.

It’s true that I’m no longer in the classroom, but I am still on the front lines of public education. This is my fifteenth year in education. My job now is to support teachers. I’ve seen a lot; I would venture to say I know a lot. I don’t know enough to solve all the problems of today’s schools, but I do know this: Parents and teachers have to work together. We are losing teachers, good and passionate teachers, because they don’t feel trusted or valued.

As a parent, I am worried. I am worried that there won’t be enough passionate teachers left to steward my daughters all the way to college. My older daughter wants to be a teacher. I am worried for her. We need more good teachers. But I also want her to feel valued in her career. I just want her to be happy. It makes me feel torn, and then bad for feeling that way too.

So, this is my open letter to parents of school-aged children, from my former classroom teacher self…

Dear parents,

Thank you so much for entrusting me with your most precious gift. First and foremost, I want you to know I respect you as the most important person in your child’s life. I want you to be your child’s advocate. You should fight for your child. No one will fight for your child quite like you.

But I also want you to know this: I am your child’s advocate, too. I WILL fight for your child. I will do whatever I can to do right by your child. All I’m asking for is your confidence and your trust.

Today’s school climate can kind of feel contentious. It seems like there is suspicion on every side. Is the teacher being fair to my child? Are the parents being fair to me? I want you to know that I am someone you can trust. I am someone you can approach with questions or concerns. I want to hear your side.

I want you to know that I am making the best decisions I possibly can. I fully admit that I am going to make mistakes. I know that you and I will not always agree. I respect your views, and if we disagree I want to know quickly and respectfully so that we can resolve the struggle and continue to work for your child’s success.

I know how much you love your child, and I want you to know that I also love your child. I think about your child’s needs, wants, fears… in a way your child is mine, too, if only for a borrowed school year. I will dry your child’s tears. I will hold your child’s hand. I will comfort your child’s worries. I will nurse your child, coach your child, counsel your child the best I can.

But I can’t do any of this without you, parent. I need your partnership. I need your reinforcement. I need your help.

I would never dare to say I am more important than you, or that my opinion matters more than yours. I just ask you to listen to my opinion. We may have different views of what success looks like for your child. We likely know different versions of your child. I need to know your version. You need to know mine.

I want you to have an open mind. Please don’t assume everything your child says is the only version of events. I promise to do the same. Please remember I am an adult, even if I am a younger adult than you.

If your child tells you something that makes you question my actions or intentions, I want you to bring it to my attention. You could say, “My child said ___ happened and that bothered me. Could you tell me your version of what happened so I can better understand the situation?” You might still not agree and I need to know that. You can say “I feel this way ___. How can we work this out differently next time so we all feel ok with the outcome?”

I became a teacher because I love children. I love the light in their eyes when they “get it”. I love their little quirky senses of humor. I love their weird little ways of reasoning things out. I love hearing their passions. I love knowing their dreams. I love seeing their innocence. I love shaping their lives. They may not remember much about me when they grow up, but I promise you every single one of them has made an imprint on my heart.

I only want to work with you for the success of your child. I can only do that if I have your trust. I want you to know that I realize trust does not mean we agree 100% of the time. Trust means I want to know your side and I want you to know mine. I want to work out a path to agreement; I want a way to meet in the middle.

Thank you, again, for loaning me your most precious gift. I hope you know now how much I cherish that responsibility. I can’t wait to see what we can accomplish together this year!

I teach at an open access community college. When I applied for this position, I actually googled open access having little concept of what it truly meant. I was responding to the supplemental questions for the job application, which were designed to illicit responses that showed I belonged in the community college environment and knew the mission and the purpose of my role. I have no idea how what I said to that question at the time was responsive to the people who read my application because it is only after having been immersed in my position for almost five years that I truly know what those words mean.

When I applied for college, I applied. I wrote essays about my qualities. Who even knows what I thought those were at the time? How I wish I still had a copy of those precious mementos of a young, innocent, optimistic premed with a love of chemistry and an interest in herpetology. I only applied to the two state schools. The Hope Scholarship was going to fund my tuition and a science book. And since I was a female in the south who wanted to study chemistry and had a 4.0 GPA, I got everything else funded through scholarships as well. So college was free. I worked in college out of minimal necessity to fund some fun in jobs that were in my discipline, lab assistant and then teaching assistant. It only took one semester in college to show me research, not medicine, truly suited my passion and talents. I was surrounded by my home state’s brightest and best. When I graduated from that state school, I went to another state school for graduate school. It happened to be a top tier chemistry research institution. I spent five years feeling like a poser as I was surrounded by our country’s brightest and best. But I earned my degree. I have never been prouder of my ability to persist.

Then I started my career in medicinal chemistry research. But my post doc was not that lucrative and tutoring at night and on the weekends for undergrads seemed very fulfilling. It was the beginning of Obama’s first term, so government austerity was en vogue. Grant money was hard to come by. I made a decision. I was going to reenter education. But I wanted to focus on teaching. I did not want to dilute my focus by trying to be everything. I was hanging up my lab coat and molding the bright minds of the future. So I applied to all full time jobs available. I thought I would get some experience at community college and help a lot of students. My college is known for transfer in science, and since we are Berkeley and Davis adjacent, that is where so many of our students go. I knew what it takes. I had taken it. I could help these kids see that vision.

Before I took this position, my husband warned me. He said, “Ellen, you have a big heart. Make sure you don’t see every cause as yours. If you do, you are going to kill yourself.” My husband knows me well.

I started teaching Organic Chemistry, my wheelhouse. My first class was probably the best class I will ever have. I could get 10 of them to hang out with me on Fridays at an office hour coming to campus on a day most of them don’t even have class. I wasn’t supposed to do committee work, I was supposed to teach. I taught the hell out of that class. I made the craziest problems and learned so much about myself and my college and the experience of highly successful community college students. I was spoiled.

My second year was harder. I was still in organic chemistry, but the class wasn’t quite as eager. The Fridays were a total flop, so I stopped them. But I immersed myself in some of the work of the campus. I joined the steering committee of the newly forming MESA program, a learning community intended to support first generation financially challenged STEM majors. I helped develop a plan of action, an application, a recruitment program, an interview process, get a physical space, and become established. I met some amazing motivated students with real challenges. I have since left that committee but I marvel at the success it is bringing to such deserving students and still work to support its mission through my other roles on campus.

My third year I had a baby and switched to our introductory chemistry course. This course serves many masters. It is a GE class. It is an option for nurses, dental hygiene, and allied health. It is also a prerequisite for our General Chemistry course for science majors. I had a full spectrum. There were kids in that class who had never lit a match. In their lifetime. Some were challenged by most everything I threw at them while others were bored out of their mind by the slow pace. Others were skating by with minimal engagement and less successful than they would have been because of their lack of effort. It was a challenge to keep all of them buying in.

Many worked one or two jobs, many were parents or supported their families by providing child care or elder care. I began to realize just how selfish my college experience has been. I just left home, moved into a dorm, removed myself from the daily needs of my family. I didn’t have to worry about getting my grandmother to her doctor’s appointment or picking up my cousins from school. My students were trying to do it All: finance the education they were seeking and supporting the family that housed them. Well those that had a home to go to. That year I had homelessness, bankruptcy, and emotional collapse from grief all plague my students. They pay more for my textbooks than they do for the units they get lectured from me, but the bill can still cripple them and the stress of college science even at the introductory level can break them. I began to recognize the nature open access to college science.

My fourth and fifth years have been in our first semester of General Chemistry course. My first Fall in that assignment I had some of my C students from the previous semester. I was so flattered they wanted to learn with me again. Then, two weeks in, we all were crying. The class has an intensity unmatched in the courses I have taught. It was my first time in it, so I had no idea what to expect. I tried my best, but I saw so many of my students from my intro class flounder. I had such little idea how to bridge the gaps between the courses but knew my mission must be to figure out how to ease the transition into full blown science major for the raw talent that finds a seat in my classroom. So that spring I enrolled in a class to improve my teaching methods. While I was teaching, I was also learning about research into the best practices for turning novice learners into motivated experts.

I have spent the past three semesters teaching this same class, designing a classroom on the premise that to be learned chemistry must be interesting and social, improving my discussions, growing as a teacher facilitating deeper learning. But this semester is providing my biggest challenge yet. I am working with a student who has almost no vision. In chemistry. It is challenging my perception of the visual nature of each and every learning objective. It is forcing me to anticipate more fully simply anything I might want to do or say in class. Is my doing or saying that providing meaningful learning experiences for this student? It is challenging my perception of anything I require in assessment. Is it fair to ask that of this student? Is doing so holding all students to the same standard?

The thing is, this student is damn inspiring. They are so motivated, so engaged, so eager to share in their love of science, anxious to tell you about this one other blind chemist they heard of who provides an endless source of motivational fuel. Representation matters.

We were talking about the energy of the atom. I brought in the lamps and the diffraction gratings to demonstrate line spectra. This person attempted to hold the grating, swore they thought they saw the line, squealed with excitement. I am not sure what they really saw, but I am pretty sure it wasn’t the tear in my eye.

We got to molecular structure last week. I seriously almost went to the store to get puffy paint and lentils to make a kit until a desperate plea for help hooked me up with a campus technologist. I spent hours designing and hand drawing the kit with atom label in English letters for their scribe with Braille letters for them. I worked with the technologist who took my hand drawings into raised dimensions with a puffing printer. I made the kit have XXs for lone pairs instead of dots so as not to confuse the Braille. I had bonds made that could show multiple bonding and dashed and wedged bonds. I know there are molecular models but you have to have a good Lewis structure to get there. I had to get them to see the picture.

We pulled out the kit in Lab. I held their hand. Showed them the features. I taught the scribe the design elements. They were elated. The student had had the Intro course and said they simply didn’t understand this topic. My kit brought it to life. Our hands worked to help them grasp the shape of water. It was a great day. The biggest flaw was how much the pieces moved around. I thought about going to the craft store and getting felt and velcro, but I just didn’t have the time. The kit has a hundred pieces!

The student came the next day to my office hours. I was working extra hard with the kit and the models and a set of structural scaffolds I had had printed with the puffy machine. I was trying so hard to get them to understand dimensionally the molecule and the 2D drawing convention of dashes and wedges. It took an hour rotating through the modalities, holding their hands on the models and raised graphics, and their Braille-note machine. I am not sure it worked but I tried so hard. Afterwards, my coworker said she overheard the session. She said, “Ellen, it was magical. You are like Annie Sullivan if Helen Keller wanted to be a chemist.”

That is the opportunity teaching at a community college gives. We take all comers. We welcome all people, no application necessary, to join us on their educational journey. We invite you to explore your passions but we hold you to our standards because we know what your road holds.

I am sorry if I haven’t really written much this semester. I mean I totally embraced this new opportunity to grow and help, but none of my other professional obligations to my class, my committees, and my research went away. I am exhausted. I have been fully immersed in the work of shepherding young scientists from my community with such a diversity of life experiences including one in particular through one of their first huge steps on their path to a rewarding career in science. I completely love my job. I am exactly where I am supposed to be. A lecturer position at UC Berkeley posted recently, and though several people forwarded me the posting, I didn’t really consider applying. Sure, I could be working with amazing young minds at one of the premier universities in this country, but I could never be someone’s Annie Sullivan. In truth, my colleague is too nice as I am closer to feeling even with all the effort, I am still not making my class accessible enough. But we are both giving it every ounce of effort and creativity to bring the world its next engineer, each finding joy in the small breakthroughs like grasping water’s simple, beautiful shape.

            (Emily & Will, circa 1983)

This world is so loud.  But maybe it’s time to be quiet and listen.

So many people are speaking so loudly, trying to be the MOST RIGHT person.  It’s like people think if they say things loudly enough and often enough, then everyone else will just suddenly understand and agree with that point of view.  So many, many people are vying to be heard, and really, that’s the issue. No one is willing to be quiet and listen.

We are all passionate human beings.  We feel things. We personalize things.  We internalize things. And the beauty of it all is that we are all so brilliantly different.  No two of us are exactly alike. Take a second to marvel at how amazing it is that every single person you meet is a unique being, with unique experiences and unique perspectives. We might not agree on all things, but that doesn’t make any of us any less brilliant.  We all shine.

What I don’t know is why different is equated with bad.  What I don’t understand is how people decide that someone’s opposing opinion is a personal attack against them.  I don’t have to agree with you on how you feel, but I cannot argue that you feel.  There isn’t a way for feelings to be wrong, only different.  People are so busy telling others that they hold the wrong opinion, that they feel the wrong feelings.  How can that even be true?

Why do we feel so threatened by each other’s emotions?  Why are we so reluctant to stop shouting AT each other and start listening TO each other?  Why do we put up walls and fences instead of laying the groundwork for bridges?

It seems to me like we aren’t making much progress with our brash, sweeping proclamations.  It seems like all we are doing is widening the gap between our human experiences. We are creating US and THEM, when really there is only US.  There is no Planet B. This is the only one we get and we are all on it. We have to protect it, but we also have to cohabitate on it.

I have two children, raised in the same household, immersed in the same culture, sharing largely the same experiences.  Even with all these sames, their outlooks, their personalities, their feelings, their expressions couldn’t be more different.  Neither of them is wrong; they just each live their own truth.

What makes us think, then, that others from other houses, other cultures, other experiences should conform to our way of feeling and expressing?  Is our truth any more true than theirs? Why should they be expected to live our truth?

When I hear people say they are tired of others being offended by everything, what I really hear is someone unwilling to listen.  What I hear is someone who has decided he or she has found the ONE TRUTH, has built a wall, and is standing armed and ready to fight for it no matter the human cost.

To see the other side, you must be willing to be vulnerable, to make mistakes, to engage in a messy process of understanding through truly listening.  Because all anyone really wants is to be heard. All anyone really wants is to know that you want to understand and truly HEAR, even if you don’t and likely won’t agree.  All anyone really wants is to be validated and not to be dismissed and silenced.

And they won’t always listen back; this I know.  They won’t always offer you the same courtesy of respecting your truth in return.  That, to some, can be the deal-breaker. That, to some, will be the signal that all the yelling and division is actually the only answer.  And to that end, we will have more of the same. We will have YOU and ME, we will have US and THEM, we will have LEFT and RIGHT, we will have WHITE and BLACK and ASIAN and HISPANIC, we will have RICH and POOR, we will have CHRISTIAN and MUSLIM and JEWISH and ATHEIST, we will have STRAIGHT and GAY, we will have all the things all apart, and we will all glare at each other across the great divide of noise.

It’s not easy to be still and quiet.  It’s not easy to be humble and listen.  It’s not easy to admit that maybe, just maybe, you don’t know all the things there are to know and you can’t see all the ways there are to see.  I will admit, I’m trying, and I do get trounced. I get dismissed, I get silenced. It’s really part of the process… model what you want to get, work for the way you want it to be, stop talking, be quiet, lean in and listen, really listen, truly reflect.  

 

Keep building quiet bridges.  I’ll meet you in the middle.

People work really hard to have their Christmas cards reflect their idyllic family life. Some book photographers, others coordinate outfits, still others seek the perfect natural backdrop. In 1987, my parents chose the main entrance of my elementary school. It was the last year all of their children would attend the same educational institution. We all loved this school, we attended it with pride, my parents were active in its PTA, my dad coached its Academic team, my loud laughter resonated through its halls. None of us ever said goodbye to our parents at its doors worried about our safety. We only ever had an occasional precautionary fire drill, nothing like the lock down drills of today. It was 1987. Columbine wouldn’t horrify parents for 12 more years.

I was in first grade in this picture. I had an amazing teacher who was incredibly encouraging. I felt she was incredibly warm and caring. She was in the twilight of her career, her methods informed by decades of experience in the classroom. I am not sure what she would have done in an active shooter scenario. She was older; I wouldn’t describe her as nimble, and yet, my class was the same age as the one mowed down in a small town in Connecticut. But it was 1987. It was a simpler time. The atrocities of Sandy Hook wouldn’t horrify parents for 25 more years.

What happened in the interim?

Gun laws are such that federal law prohibits you from purchasing a hand gun until you are 21. However, since the assault weapons ban of 1994 was allowed to expire in 2004, most state laws permit 18 year olds to purchase AR-15s . (AR-15, aka: the type of weapon used to annihilate a freshman class this week as they exited their classroom in the wake of a false fire alarm triggered by the expelled assassin.) What do hand guns and AR-15s have in common? They are both designed specifically to kill people. They are not for hunting animals. They are used exclusively for homicide. How do they differ? AR-15s are much more efficient in this task. While classified as semi-automatic, they can be retrofitted easily to be even more deadly.

The other thing that has changed is the rise of the internet where sullen teens can find camaraderie with radicalized white nationalists who empower them with militia drills and a president who gives this divisive viewpoint a national microphone. Such was the case with the Parkland shooter. He trained with a Florida militia before carrying out his premeditated murder of former classmates. He is wearing a MAGA hat in his online profile picture. The president didn’t start this trend. He just legitimizes their fringe voices for personal gain. Elections have consequences, and one of this last one is that a lot of hateful speech is getting a more powerful microphone.

In the wake of the rise of school shootings, many K-12 schools have instituted active shooter drills, just like the radiation drills of the 50s, in response to the existential threat posed by the ready availability of guns in this country and its stable of troubled white males. My sister teaches in the same school where her daughter is in second grade. I can’t really imagine if one of these scenarios played out at their school. I am quite certain my sister would selflessly shield any proximal children while also being paralyzed with fear about the potential fate of her own. But here is the thing, I am a teacher too, and I feel my school is underprepared.

I teach college chemistry. If you want to be amused but suddenly quite alone, go to a wedding and pretend to be a college chemistry professor. You will immediately bring a very visceral sense memory to the surface in a larger percentage of partygoers than you might think. If you are sociable and kind of humorous like myself, you will catch many of them entirely off guard. You will watch their countenance contort as they try to reconcile their brief amusing interactions with you with an educational experience that for them was entirely unfun.

As a professor of chemistry, I push people. I push them sometimes to their limits. It is my professional obligation to promote the transition of novice learners from the status of regurgitative to innovative. I like to say I teach an applied mathematics class, but I also teach a foreign language class. As chemistry professors, we demand you have the math competency but that you also develop an intuition based on empirical evidence of physical properties and chemical reactivity. To the uninitiated, it can be maddening. When I considered taking this job, a mentor of mine from my alma mater recommended that the first thing I buy for my new office was a box of tissues. At the time, I did not realize just how prescient he was.

I am new to this profession, but when events like Parkland happen, I already have moments in my career that make me shudder. I teach at an open access community college. I have a broad range of students who come to my classroom from diverse backgrounds with a spectrum of preparedness for the intensity that college science demands. Every time an event like this week happens, I cannot help but reflect on students I feared could become that next headline. But I also cannot shake the feeling that my employer has not prepared me for such a scenario.

A year ago, active shooter training was mentioned at a meeting of leaders in my division, but since that mention, no training has been offered. My college has installed the boxes with intercoms last semester, but I have received no training on how to use it.  I have no idea where the signal goes and what response time I should expect if I ever press its button.

My classroom doors lock from the outside.

In my role, I am a teacher of adults. These adults can have access to weapons. Some of them have had military training. I have definitely had veterans almost every semester. I can’t shake the feeling that in my role as a professor in courses that by their challenging nature weed students out of potential career paths, I might be providing the stress that breaks them. Perhaps my anxiety is misplaced. I mean, Virginia Teach was almost 11 years ago.

I kind of completely don’t understand the perceived injustices under which young white teen males labor. I completely don’t understand the reflexive defense of the unassailable civilian right to bear any and all arms in the wake of a river of blood shed by school-aged children.  I always thought it would take something truly horrific, something truly indefensible to shift the chilly climate on gun reform in DC, and then the mass loss of innocent first grader life in CT moved no one.

How many more of these moments will we allow to go unchecked because “freedom”? How many educators will enter their classrooms on Monday considering their students’ best exit strategies in the event of a threat? It doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. I have called my elected representatives every day this week to register my concern and support of any and all efforts to bring the conversation even remotely close to a middle ground which is supported by the majority of my fellow citizens. Many times I have fought off tears of fear and anxiety.  I love everything about what I do to bring my students to a greater appreciation of science and of their potential to better themselves. I just pray I never have to become a human shield in defense of them their right to pursue it.

But I am not just going to sit around and twiddle my thumbs. I am making a new syllabus for classroom policies around student stress. I detail all of the psychological and financial supports our campus offers for students in crisis. I know there are lockable doors from our classroom that lead into spaces with no windows, so I detail a plan of evacuation for if shots ring out. But lastly, I implore them to be vigilant. They are on the front line with their peers. Students admit more to each other than they ever let on to me. I outline a procedure to follow if one suspects a fellow student needs support. I encourage every instructor who has not received training and whose students are not continually drilled in such scenarios to confront the harsh reality that one might arise and take the available measures to inform students of their options. Let Parkland, with its chilling cell phone coverage student terror, be the clarion call to action.  Let it call to action people like me, who were underestimating the power of their denial that such an event could occur to subvert common sense measures that would make everyone in their classrooms feel marginally safer. Now is a time for action, and like all meaningful change, it begins at the local level with honest and earnest human interaction.

This is me with my daughter circa age 5 months. We were out brunching with her daddy as I wasn’t yet back to work full time. We were enjoying these peaceful moments of early parenting before our kid was really mobile or vocal and was generally chill and excited to be out and watching the happenings in public.

As a new mom, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved motherhood. I am an anxious person by nature, so before she arrived, I was certain I would be quite lousy at this. I was blessed with a very happy inquisitive child who made my early momming look so easy. My own mother was famously quoted as saying to my sister, “Who would have thought Ellen would be such a good mom?” And as poorly as it sounded when it came out of her mouth, I knew exactly what she meant because it was a sentiment I shared.

As much as I enjoyed early motherhood, I no longer knew my body. After spending 9 months as an occupied territory and the first 6 months postpartum as almost her sole food source, pretty much everything in my body hurt, exercise time was hard to find, and I was experiencing huge hormonal swings in my moods that I remember left me sobbing after an episode of Law and Order feeling sorry for a police officer who kidnapped a child because his wife couldn’t carry one. In short, I was a terrible wife. It wasn’t my fault because it wasn’t my focus. Early motherhood was all consuming, as it should be, and my relationship with my husband was, well, changed.

He never faltered. He let me treat him distantly. He let me snap at him from the stresses of extreme sleep deprivation. He held me when I cried. He cleaned my home, maintained our yard and car, shopped for and cooked our dinners. He was what he had been for the decade before her arrival, my constant.

On January 12, 2018, The Wall Street Journal broke the story that the president had purchased the silence of an adult film star with whom he had an affair in July 2006. The payment occurred in October 2016 to buy her silence before the now fateful election in November. If true, this affair would have happened when his youngest son Baron was merely 4 months old. The president stepped out on his wife for a fling with a porn star at a time when his new wife (they were married in 2005) was experiencing probably very similar body insecurity and hormonal swings as I was. Unfortunately, Melania didn’t have a quilt of a decades worth of memories with her husband to keep her warm as she built her relationship with her new child.

And yet, this story completely flew under the radar. It wasn’t even the most shocking news story of the week. It was a week where we learned of the “shithole countries” and when Oprah was floated as a potential candidate in 2020. People heard shithole on NPR for the first time and were certain they were experiencing the apocalypse. It was a week when some senators claimed they just heard shithouse which gave them plausible deniability to call other senators liars. It was a week where a false missile alarm in Hawaii sent natives and vacationers alike into 30 minutes of decidedly unrelaxed island living which revealed the administration has no plan for such a scenario.

So the president buying the silence of a porn star with campaign funds for an affair that happened while his wife was nurturing his newly born son wasn’t even a blip on the radar. Furthermore, white evangelicals are just giving him a pass, because of course they are. The son of Billy Graham takes to the air waves and says the president is a changed man from the man in 2006 or the man before the election with simply no supporting evidence in the public record. He said the president has a “concern for Christian values.” I guess it shouldn’t surprise me to see how far the evangelicals have gone in defense of the indefensible.  The evangelicals lament the emptiness of pews each Sunday. But who would want to go share a seat with someone who can defend behavior like that listening to sermons from a man who would basically condone the bad behavior of the president from their pulpit? How far this group has sunken to advance their social conservative agenda dispensing of the need for a moral compass and family values in the leader who can deliver it to them. Baby Baron was 4 months old at the time. How can you as a Christian fully embrace a man who walks out on his wife in her most vulnerable early motherhood months for a fling with another woman who enriches herself by the depravity you claim to deplore?

Ironically, the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause, the same people who secured jail time for John Edwards after it came to light that he had used campaign funds to buy the silence of a woman with whom he had had an affair in the run up to his bid for the presidency, has filed another complaint with the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission this time against Donald Trump. The complaint alleges that the amount of money $130,000 vastly exceeds the minimum amount any individual can contribute to a campaign ($2,700) and the source of the money has not been revealed. By current law, any person contributing more than $200 to a campaign must be identified.

How far we have come as a country that this bombshell story didn’t even make a blip on the news radar. It seems every single day there is some detail of this administration more sordid than the last, some corruption in the heads of the federal agencies more inconceivable than the previous, some new racist or bigoted policy intended to increase the margins separating already marginalized populations. If you are news hound like me, at this point, you are practically numb. Nothing makes any sense and you pray for the day it will all end, but you know the scar tissue is there. You don’t know how this country you love will emerge from this period and realize the potential you thought it had in it. The stature of the nation you love has fallen so far on the world stage that you wonder what if any impact it will have in the largest issues that plague our planet like geopolitical instability in the middle east and the warming global climate. In fact, you are certain in this administration, they mean more harm to both than good.

Congressional leadership has shirked their responsibility to check the excesses of the executive branch because it means they craft and pass historically unpopular policies like sweeping changes to the tax code in almost total isolation. It means they can further their ultimate legislative agenda of dismantling the social safety net that protects millions of the most vulnerable Americans to give more money to the already ludicrously rich ones. They seem unconcerned about the regular scandal that engulfs the White House. They seem blind to the corruption, deaf to the excesses, complicit in their steady resolve to deny all of it. How far we have come in eroding the prestige of the office and our nation’s global influence. How far will we have to go whenever this crooked road ends?

#electionshaveconsequences

The Children’s Health Insurance Program or CHIP is a program that provides health insurance to 9 million children whose parents are too rich for Medicaid but too poor for anything else. It is the other hostage in the debt crisis. It easily could have been funded way back in September with a clean bill and overwhelming bipartisan support. It could be passed today as a clean standalone bill. But that isn’t how the GOP rolls. They call themselves pro life but they hold these children and their families hostage, leverage in a fight that isn’t even about these children.

It is amoral to do this.

The maddening thing is, Trump could have had it all. He could have gotten 1.6 billion for the stupid boondoggle wall. He could have saved the hostages, the children and the Dreamers. Even on Friday in a one on one meeting with Chuck, he was going to get this bill of love and his precious wall/fence/flight of fancy. But he says one thing, then he talks to xenophobic nativists and sows enough confusion that there is clear evidence you simply can’t negotiate with him.

So Chuck Schumer is negotiating with terrorists. He was nice enough to compare them to Jell-O, but I am not. The nativist wing of the GOP is pulling all the strings. These people are terrorizing immigrants who came here at the average age of six years old. They have lived here for decades. They are simultaneously terrorizing millions of poor children and their families who receive letters threatening the loss of healthcare for their beloved child as an early Christmas present. Chuck and Dick before him think they have deals, and then hours later, the president is singing a markedly different tune.

Paul Ryan isn’t in the business of passing bills the Senate would clear because he has an unfortunate medical condition of been not born without a spine. Mitch McConnell isn’t interested in putting clean DACA or CHIP bills or even a bill to protect military families and death pay during the shutdown because he has the unfortunate medical condition of being born without a heart.

There is one party and one party only who believes there are valuable government solutions to the plight of regular Americans and who fights to protect social programs that elevate the poorest among us. The other party decries the futility of government solutions and makes its bread and butter on lamenting its lack of function. Give them unfettered control, and look what they do: create facts on the ground.

These people can’t be trusted. Let’s wave them goodbye from Congress in record numbers in 2018, so their fearless leader can get evicted in the next.

#electionshaveconsequences

Early in my career I met a coworker who was a vegetarian.  I made fun of his choices.  I said the standard cracks like “If we weren’t supposed to eat animals then why are they so delicious?”  He was unfazed, held his ground, and calmly hinted that if I knew what he knew I would not be so sure of myself.

But here’s the thing… I didn’t want to know then.  I imagined animals living on farms and eating grass and yes killing them was a sad thing but that’s what they were here for… right?  Besides, I didn’t really like vegetables so much and people needed protein and everyone I knew ate meat but this guy so… he was the weird one.  

As the years went by I continued to try to improve my health through exercise and a variety of fad eating plans like we do.  Eat every two hours!  Eat carbs every four days only!  Don’t eat past 7:00!  Track every bite you put in your mouth!  Eat only these 3 specific meals over and over!  And it got really old and nothing really ever worked anyway because it was all so unrealistic and just left me feeling frustrated and like a failure.  I decided I did not want to count every calorie. I just wanted to eat healthy things and feel ok about myself.  

Somewhere in all the reading I kind of accidentally discovered the truth about eating animals.  I guess I always knew that it was weird we loved dogs and cats but ate pigs and cows, but I kind of categorized that and justified it by saying to myself that pigs are “eating animals” and dogs were “pets”.  And we need meat right?  Protein?  We are supposed to eat animals…!

But why?  (Plants have protein, FYI)

And even if I still believed that to be true, there is no way to justify the ungodly horrors that the meat, dairy, and egg industries  impose on the animals while they live.  I always thought the killing was the worst part.  It’s not.  That’s horrific and inhumane but over fairly quickly.  It’s also the life of pain and misery that I can’t bear.  It’s the fact that animals aren’t seen as living things in the factory farming culture.  Animals are a means to a profit.  You crowd as many into as small a space as you can.  You beat them into their tiny stalls.  You stack them so tightly they can’t turn around and they just have to walk over their dead.  You take their babies and harvest the milk and pretend it’s all normal… and you make it so.  No one knows or thinks about it because you package the meat and eggs and milk with happy farm pictures on them and lead everyone to believe it IS so.

There is such irony in seeing people consumed with dog and cat rescue who have no problem eating ham, burgers, and chicken.  I got turned down for cat adoption recently because in the past I had a cat that lived inside and outside.  This rescue would not even let me have a cat for fear it might ever in its life go outside.  There are a million cats needing homes.  Yet, my home was not good enough.  

A cat could do far worse than life in the northern Atlanta suburbs with a loving family.  Maybe a cat could visit a pig farm and see mother sows pressed into crates so small they can’t turn around.  Maybe a cat could compare life in a cozy home to life as a piglet getting castrated without pain medicine or really much thought or care.  Maybe a cat could compare its life exploring all three stories of my home with the life of a chicken having its beak seared off because it might peck other chickens in its tiny confinement.  Or maybe the cat could compare itself to the male chicks who hatch and get thrown into the grinder alive.  I mean– they can’t lay eggs so what is the point?

It’s seriously an animal holocaust.  When you know, you can’t un-know.  When you know, it seems silly to hear people say “I just really like meat” or “I just don’t like vegetables that much.”  It just seems like eating a salad with no meat seems worth saving an animal a life of suffering.  It doesn’t seem too much to ask.

I’m not perfect by any means.  I know, though, that every choice I make is a choice for kindness or a choice to contribute to a nightmare.  I know that, intelligence-wise, the dog I love and cuddle and dress in sweaters is no more or less intelligent than the pig who had its tail cut off (without painkillers) because the other pigs would be bored and chew it off in the tiny enclosure.

Your choices are yours and I don’t judge you.  We each must weigh what we can accept.  My family knows these things and chooses meat.  I love my family.  I hope one day they will all see that we can nourish ourselves and respect the lives of our fellow creatures.  I hope one day the texture of a lettuce leaf will seem a small price to pay to save another being from the nightmare.  

PS: .  When you want to know,  go to Mercy for Animals and follow them on Facebook.  Google the video “Earthlings” on YouTube.  Google “factory farming”.  Read  Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U. S. Meat Industry or CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories.  Read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.  It’s not hard to find if you open yourself to looking.

PPS: My sister Ellen says I should give options for sustainable meat and humane farms.  I truly considered this request.  I decided against it because that’s not my platform.   I choose to avoid meat and eggs and I am working hard on avoiding dairy.  For me, that’s easier and I don’t have to wonder how humane the humane farms really are.  If you choose otherwise, certainly you can look for more humane farms.   I look for them when choosing meat and dairy for my family.  Some stores like Whole Foods label meat by the level of cruelty the animals endured.  It’s more expensive, but you are using your dollars to show you care about the well-being of farm animals while they are alive.