Co-authoring New Lives

I’m the daughter of a journalist and I know the rule about not burying the lede. So, I’ll present the big news clearly at the beginning before going into some thoughts about it: 

Mike and I are happy to announce that we’re expecting identical twins in late (northern hemisphere) summer! 

There are so many thoughts and feelings that I’ve experienced since finding out first, that I was pregnant, and then, that we were expecting twins (TWINS?! From what I have heard, that means TWO babies!), but here, I’ll share just a few by way of—surprise, surprise—an academic metaphor. 

When I do research, I often like to work with other friends/colleagues (I like to call them “frolleagues” because that is a ridiculous word). When we publish, we are considered co-authors, and the official order the authors on the publication is seen as significant; if you are the first author, you get the most credit because it is supposed to mean that you have done the most work, though sometimes it can indicate that you have more status/name recognition than the other authors. 

I have two frolleagues with whom I work regularly, and we like to have as equitable a distribution of work as possible, so we simply take turns with authorship. I was second author on our first piece, I’m first author on our second, and I’ll be third author on our third piece, which we’ve already begun. For us, the title of “first author” is mostly logistical; someone has to take the role, and it simply indicates who the editors should contact.

However, I’m also working on a project with my advisor from OSU and a few other frolleagues, and with that one, my advisor is taking the lead in conceiving of and organizing the research. It is appropriate that she will be first author; she is doing the heaviest lifting and should get the most credit. 

I’ve been thinking of these two experiences with authorship a lot since finding out that I am pregnant. I have long been guided by the beautiful Frederick Buechner quote, which I’m sure I’ve shared here before: "Words are power, essentially the power of creation.  By my words, I both discover and create who I am.  By my words, I elicit a word from you.  Through our converse, we create each other." My graduate work on language at Ohio State only furthered my belief that we co-author each other into being. 

My religious belief system also involves ideas of authorship, namely that God is the Author of Life. And yet, paradoxically, many Christians believe that God allows people to participate in the authorship of their own lives. In other words, God is our co-author! How astonishing! How unfathomable!

I believe this to be true with any aspect of my life, but as I contemplate my new role as a parent, it seems especially relevant. My training and experience in early childhood makes it plain how profoundly significant parents and/or other caregivers are; clearly Mike and I will be important co-authors of our children’s lives. But we won’t be first authors. So, the question becomes, how do we both contribute to their unfolding narratives and surrender those narratives to themselves, to others, and to God, who we believe already loves them most and best?

This is, of course, a broader question about control, and as usual, I find I’m being asked to surrender control in so many ways. Those of you who have known me for longer than five minutes will have discovered that I am quite opinionated about how things should be. As I co-author my life with God, I am tempted to provide suggestions (which sometimes border on directives) on how things should be. At times, things do work out as I ask and hope. 

However, it seems to me that God has frequently heard my suggestions and gone in another direction, a better direction. Does that mean God is a perverse, authoritarian co-author, ignoring or even actively refusing my ideas? No, it means God knows the possibilities better than I do. It’s a bit like writing with my advisor: we are following her lead because she knows the field better than we do. One of my favorite things about getting older is that my list of times when God has surprised me for the better keeps getting longer, which makes it easier to trust when things don’t go as planned. The news of twins—albeit probably the biggest change of plans yet—is just another instance of my first draft of my life being revised. I can already see how I am being changed for the better by this experience.

Another, less academic metaphor that I’ve discovered recently is Alison Gopnik’s comparison of parents as carpenters vs. gardeners. There are parents who see their role as meticulously crafting a particular type of person and parents who want to cultivate an environment for their children to grow into whomever they will become. I want to be a gardener parent, but I know I have strong carpenter impulses. 

When we were expecting just one baby, I could feel myself getting into first author, carpenter mode. I felt my control muscles flexing in response to almost any aspect of our future child’s life. But then we learned that there was a revision (quite literally: I discovered the news only when the ultrasound tech changed the number of fetuses on the information screen from 1 to 2…). Once I could formulate some kind of thought, it was, “Well, it’s all hands on deck now!” I’m being asked to depend even more on my community, meaning that I will need to ask for and accept even deeper co-authoring relationships. I will need more help tending the garden in which our children will grow. And I’m finding that there is a surprising and delightful joy in my humble first attempts—first of many!—to release my desire to be the primary constructor of my children’s lives. 

I hope you have a wonderful week, and that any surprises you face rewrite your story for the better.

Sarah/Mouse