Goodnight, Dissertation!

Hello, everyone,

Despite my love of literature for young children, I must confess that I never cared much for one of the most beloved children’s books, Goodnight Moon written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. It is a simple story, in which an old rabbit is helping a young rabbit go to sleep by saying “Goodnight” to the various things in and around their bedroom. I think I didn’t like it mostly because Hurd’s illustration style just didn’t appeal to me. It even struck me as a bit creepy. 

I felt I needed to keep this opinion on the down-low when I was getting my MA in Children’s Literature at Hollins University because Brown went to Hollins. There were frequent references to her throughout my years there. One of the main gathering spaces was nicknamed the “Great Green Room.” We wondered occasionally about the connections between the bunnies hopping around our bucolic campus and Brown’s multiple rabbit books. A professor talked about how she heard Brown speaking to her during her own writing process. Needless to say, I mentioned my lack of total appreciation of Brown and Hurd’s beloved book to only my closest confidantes. 

However, in the past few months, I have been reevaluating my earlier stance. Don’t get me wrong: I still am not excited about Hurd’s illustrations. But I’m starting to see that Brown’s text was rather genius particularly as a bedtime book. 

Many of you know that I have a habit of falling asleep quite quickly, perhaps in some awkward or inappropriate places. However, when I am in a particularly busy or stressful season of life, my mind is on overdrive, and it can take me quite some time to calm down enough to fall asleep. Let’s just say that between job searching, writing and defending my dissertation, transitioning to life in a pandemic, and continuing to consider how I can respond to the realities of systemic racism, there have been quite a number of thoughts racing through my mind in the last year. 

Several months ago, I started saying “Goodnight” to the various things that popped into my mind as I was trying to fall asleep: 

“Goodnight, Chapter 5 of my dissertation.” 

“Goodnight, Chapter 3 revisions.”

“Goodnight, advisors.” 

“Goodnight, news.” 

“Goodnight, Covid.” 

“Goodnight, email to … that person I have to email.” 

“Goodnight, telehealth appointment I need to make before my student insurance runs out.”

And so on, just like the young rabbit says goodnight to the moon, to the comb, and the brush, and the bowl full of mush. 

It may seem silly, but I found that once I had said “Goodnight,” to these different thoughts and concerns in my mind, I could let them go for the time being. One by one, I could put the items in my cluttered mind to bed. I wasn’t dismissing these thoughts; I wasn’t telling them “Goodbye.” That wouldn’t have worked because none of the things I was thinking about were insignificant. But by simply saying, “Goodnight,” I could recognize that we would rejoin company the next day, but for now, I needed my rest.

A few weeks ago, I successfully defended my dissertation, thanks to the help of more people than I can count who have supported me along this journey. After I made the revisions my committee desired, I finally submitted the final version of my project. It might seem that after all this time and work, I could finally say “Goodbye” to my dissertation, not just “Goodnight.” However, it is expected that I publish off of this writing in the coming years, and I’m eager to do so. 

This time, though, instead of saying, “Goodnight, dissertation (and see you tomorrow)!” I am needing to say, “Goodnight, dissertation (and see you in a few weeks),” because I have a new set of pressing thoughts to tuck into bed each night. 

I mentioned that over the course of the last year, I was applying to professor jobs across the country. After much work and discernment, I accepted a faculty position at Millersville University in eastern Pennsylvania in the Department of Early, Middle, and Exceptional Education. A while ago, Mike and I also bought a house in Millersville, although because I’m teaching remotely for the fall semester, we likely won’t be moving until the break between terms. I feel incredibly fortunate to be at Millersville—I have been welcomed and supported from Day 1, and I truly believe it will be a good fit for so many reasons. Speaking of Day 1, days after hearing that my dissertation was finalized, I jumped into the semester and just finished my first week of teaching on Friday. 

As I look back on the past few months, I am a bit exhausted, but I am also astonished and grateful at how things have fallen into place for us. I find myself saying new “Goodnights” each evening:

“Goodnight, syllabus.”

“Goodnight, neighbor boy who is mowing our lawn while we’re in Ohio.”

“Goodnight, figuring out how to host Zoom breakout rooms.”

“Goodnight, emails to students.”

“Goodnight, HR paperwork.”

“Goodnight, minor cricket infestation in a basement 7 hours away.”

“Goodnight, imposter syndrome.” 

“Goodnight, furniture we should maybe get rid of before we move.”

“Goodnight, grading.”

And so on. 

So, as I transition from one chapter of life to another, I am finding that Margaret Wise Brown isn’t exactly speaking to me, but her words are providing a structure for me as I speak to my own life. I’d be curious to know what words have done the same for you. 

Have a good week,

Sarah/Mouse

Stripping Away: Easter Monday 2020

The house Mike and I live in needs to be painted. We’ve found a company to do the job, and they’re scheduled to come and do the initial power washing this week. This will, of course, remove dirt and moss and other build-up, but it will also remove old bits of paint that are no longer adhering to the house. Without this process, when the painters apply the new paint, it will not go on smoothly and it has a much greater potential to chip or bubble. I imagine that, in addition to the power washing, the painters will also need to scrape parts of the house manually. So for a short time, before the new coat of paint, the house will look worse. It will look older and weaker. It will be laid (at least a little) bare. 

There is an irony in this: adding something (in our case, a vibrant new house color) requires taking something else away in order for it to stick. 

When I was in college, I went through a pretty rough period when I was afraid of losing something that I considered to be a big part of my identity. In thinking through what this might mean, I wondered who I would be without that part of me. I was essentially asking, “Without ____, would I still be me?” and “If I am not ____, who am I?” This led me to interrogate other aspects of my life I considered fundamental. One by one, I asked what I would be without those identities: If I am not a writer, who am I? If I am not an artist, who am I? If I am not a daughter, a sister, a friend, a roommate, a university student, who am I? If I am not a South African, a citizen of the US, a Washingtonian, who am I? If I am not a Christian, who am I? One after another, I was stripping away the various layers of paint that had joyfully and painstakingly built up over my two decades of life, as I tried to see the house underneath. 

It was only as I exhausted the list of descriptors I had been claiming, that I came to realize that I was asking the wrong question. “Who am I?” wasn’t ultimately what I wanted to know. Rather, I should ask, “Whose am I?” That has proved to be a much more fruitful question for me to ask in the years since then.

I think a similar phenomenon is happening now. 

In such a short amount of time, Covid-19 has stripped us of so much, and we have been forced to ask some pretty essential questions. Individually, we might be asking, “Without a schedule or any of my regular activities, who am I?” “Without physical contact with those I love the most (or without our normal stores of patience because of too much contact with them), what are my relationships?” “Without an office, a career, a paycheck, what is work?” As the number of deaths rise around the world, some are undoubtedly asking, “Without this person living in the world, who am I and what is life?” 

Collectively, we might be asking, “Without the freedoms of movement and assembly that we were used to, what is society?” “Without regular worship services, what is my religious practice?” “Without the abundance many have enjoyed in the US, what is a grocery store? A shopping mall? An ER?” “Without a building and classmates, what is school?”

Traditionally, when Christians celebrate Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter, they might fast or give up something for the season. People often give up physical indulgences like junk food or coffee or (less traditionally) Facebook. Recently, there has been a trend among some Christians to “add something” during Lent rather than “subtracting something.” I believe the intentions behind this trend are generally worthy. It attempts to engage Christians in the meaningful work of putting on the likeness of Christ, which requires us to live not as passive people merely following a limiting set of Thou-Shalt-Nots, but rather as active, participatory people.

But while I have no problem with people “adding something” during Lent, I worry that we miss out on one of the biggest gifts of the season if we don’t insist on also “subtracting,” on stripping away in order for Something New to come about. I worry that in a culture oriented around addition and acquisition, we are too easily convinced that if we focus on adding this 10 minute Christian podcast to our daily routine or that new prayer practice before bedtime that our schedules and our heads and our hearts will fill to overflowing. I worry that these (probably very good) things we want to add to our lives won’t have enough space to take deep roots until we clean up, throw out, strip away—a kind of spiritual Marie Kondo exercise, as it were. 

In the last few weeks, church leaders around the world have been trying to respond to the question they know their congregations are asking: “How do we have Easter during Covid-19?” But now, the day after Easter, we are left with another question: “What happens when we get through Easter and we’re still living in Lent?” Our painful period of stripping away hasn’t mapped onto the Christian calendar neatly. Is it possible to live “He is risen” lives in the midst of an “It is finished” world? Maybe you can manage it, but I cannot; my hope is too weighty to carry for very long. It is impossible.

But here is where Easter makes a difference. It allows us to move through the impossible: “Impossible unless…” “Impossible, and yet…” “Impossible, except if…” 

The only way I can reconcile hope and devastation, the exuberance of new life and the searing, enduring pain of loss—now or ever—is if I see hope as something to be carried together. I heard a priest recently pray for “those on the front lines of hope,” but we know that nobody should be on the front lines indefinitely. What if we share the burden of our hope the way geese fly in a V, taking turns as leader to provide a wind break for those behind? Even Jesus needed help carrying the cross. I can’t muster up enough hope to keep me going forever, but I can hold it for a while for others and trust that they’ll do the same for me. Who knows? Maybe we can build some herd immunity against despair. 

Fasting of one sort or another (whether forced or voluntary) causes us to be vulnerable and weak, dependent on the help and patience of others. It is in the gaps that are left when we subtract from our lives that we recognize not just who we are but to whom we belong. 

Recently, I checked in on a student teacher I was supervising whose field placement in a first grade classroom had been cut short when Ohio’s schools closed with very little warning. I asked him what he was missing about it, but then I asked what Covid-19 had given to him. He paused and told me, “I’m even more sure that I want to be a teacher now. I’m at home all day and I could spend my time however I’d like. But all I want to do is connect to my students and find ways to teach them.” In other words, this time has confirmed that he belongs, in a deep, abiding kind of way, to his students. 

What about you? Who helps you carry your hope? Whose hope do you carry? To whom are you finding yourself belonging?

Have a good (and safe and healthy!) week! 

Sarah/Mouse