What I do matters

The first thing that ever lit me up, inside and out, was music. Close behind that was French. We were exposed – woefully late, I might add – to French and Spanish in junior high. I liked both, would go on to study both, but the language I fell instantly, head-over-heels in love with, was French. Thanks to two marvelous high school teachers, Ms. Griffiths and Ms. Chester, I was able to cram five years of study into four, and actually got pretty good. I chose a college with approximately one goal in mind, study more French and go to France. Nazareth College gave me a scholarship to do just that. When my time there was almost up, my trusted and beloved mentors, Candide, Ruben, and Octave, encouraged me to try for grad school. Since all I really wanted to do was keep speaking and reading French, this seemed like a plausible option, so I did.

When I arrived at Indiana University, I still wasn't really sure what exactly I intended to do, other

than get a degree or two in French. I had a teaching assistantship, but subbing gigs at my local high school had suggested the classroom might not be for me. Still, I reasoned, I'd get to speak French. Besides, it paid the bills.

I loved it. Turns out teaching college is exactly what I'm supposed to do. I remembered Octave and Ruben and Candide and began to believe that like them, I could maybe make a difference, see that my love affair with French didn't begin and end with me. Less than two years after finishing my PhD, I landed at Cumberland College, where I've been ever since.

It's not all roses, though. This love of mine is subject to more or less constant attack. I've gotten flak about my francophilia pretty much from day one, right up until the present. Not that I've much cared, being a) stubborn as a mule and b) convinced this is what I was born to do. I've been interrogated about what it's good for, admonished that everyone speaks English, had so many stereotypes rammed down my throat that I'm surprised I've not yet choked. I still don't really care. France and French are just my "thing." Quitting them would be like quitting oxygen.

I could spit out a bunch of numbers, use math to explain why French matters. I won't [although if you're interested, you can check out the AATF Fact Sheet here]. I didn't learn French for the numbers. I did it for love. For love and for the stories. The blueberry grower at the Paris agriculture exhibition. The World War II pilot shot down in the center of France who decided to make his life there. The journalist who flew on the actual Concorde. The couple camping in the American West when they encountered their very first skunk. The businessman who needed a French-English speaker to get through the immigration line in India. He in turn got us to our connecting airport minutes before the airport closed due to monsoons; without him we would have been another day late in meeting our son. These aren't just ways French has proved useful; they are tales of human connection, stories that never would have happened if I hadn't embraced a language and cultures beyond those into which I was born.

To many such things don't matter, including those in my own back yard. Our governor began disparaging my life's work years ago. Then my daughters' high school began an attack of its own, replacing a talented teacher of first-year French with a second-rate computer program that is leaving students further and further behind. I know French, and I know good instruction. This software offers neither. Nor can it. When is the last time you heard a computer, of its own free will, share a compelling story or make a deep connection? I guess such a machine could exist, but I've not seen it here.

Worst of all, French has turned out to be the canary in the coal mine. Education itself is on the chopping block, in my state and across our land. Libraries, universities, and especially teachers are undervalued to a degree I have never seen. Teachers have seen their benefits cut, then found themselves bullied by the government for daring to protest. Every time I think things cannot get much worse, they do.

It doesn't have to be this way. There's a time to be heartbroken, and a time to say, "enough!" Let's stand up for the things that matter, not (just) the numbers, but also the stories. Especially the stories, all the stories. They may be the only thing that saves us now.

About that wall...

Photo by MabelAmber on Pixabay

Since November 2016, there has been an awful lot of big talk about walls. Got to protect ourselves, right? There are a lot of bad hombres out there, after all.

Here's the thing. I get it.

Keep reading, please. I'm still the same center-left tree-hugger – or far-left liberal nutjob, depending on your lens – that I've been far longer than most of you have known me.

Still. I know a thing or two about walls. And I bet if I pushed hard enough, you'd admit that you do too.

Think about it. Walls aren't all bad. It's March 8 in the South and I'm sitting here watching it snow. I'm pretty dang grateful to have a set of sturdy walls between me and all of that.

Or take my cats. True, they are not fans of walls unless said walls can be climbed. But walls sure come in handy when they won't stop fighting and need to be confined to separate corners!

It's not really snow or cats that are leading me down this thought-path, however. I'm thinking more of the times walls don't work.

Like border walls.

Like school walls.

Photo by Oladimejj Odunsi on Unsplash 

Like the walls we build around our personal space, both physical and emotional.

I don't know about you, but I've got a few too many of those walls. I'm talking several layers thick, like some kind of medieval fortress for my soul. It's a wall made of a lot of different materials – the election, yes, school violence, yes, but so much more. Things like the disaster that was my marriage. Learning that "innocent until proven guilty" is just a pretty phrase unless you have the right combination of color, cash, and connections. The lonely exhaustion of solo parenting, knowing I can never come close to being everything my kids deserve. The dozens of betrayals, large and small, the relationships cherished and lost, the fear of being hurt again. None of these building blocks are necessarily all that effective on their own, but stacked together, they're pretty hard to breach. If you add that I'm a natural introvert, perfectly content to be left to my own devices, well, if I'm not careful my self-made fortress can suit me awfully well.

Photo by Angello Lopez on Unsplash 

The thing is, even introverts are not made to live alone. A house built for one is not necessarily much of a home. I know this, and so I'm trying. Through heartbreak, trial, and error, I think I've found my tribe, the ones who are still and always there when the dust clears after life's many storms. Even when I wall myself in for self-protection, once I start tearing that structure down, I find them there on the other side, patiently waiting for me to emerge.

I've not yet been able to quit my wall habit. Maybe I never will. But I am happy to report that I am losing my touch. The walls aren't as thick as they used to be, and it takes less to knock them down. It's a work-in-progress, though. I still have a mean perfectionist streak that would love to stack every block so perfectly that nothing can get in.

If 40+ years on the planet have taught me anything, though, it's that perfectionism is overrated. Life is fuller, richer, better in the gaps, the places where you leave a way out... and in.

Photo by MissEJB on Pixabay