Friday, May 22, 2009

The Pull of Summer

I’m feeling springy! Summer’s just around the corner. I can see my discipline standing up to walk out the door. Other people are grading their last finals. Other people are eagerly awaiting their kids’ last day of school. I am trying to make myself believe that it’s important to read more Shakespeare in what I’m dangerously beginning to think of as my “free time” or “spare time.” I’m even tempted to lift my weeknight TV/movie ban to watch the new season of “So You Think You Can Dance,” but I’m not sure if our converter box will pick up Fox, and I think maybe I’m better off not knowing.


On good days, studying is a lifeline to a world outside of hurrying my son to the potty, changing diapers, preparing five meals/snacks a day, folding laundry, doing dishes, and wondering why the vacuum is still sitting out and the paper scraps and styrofoam crumbs are still on the living room floor. I’ll admit, that outside world is populated with long dead people and people who never existed in the first place, but it’s a world of larger ideas that I’ve traveled in before. It reminds me that this daily world I’m living with isn’t without the big ideas, it’s just harder for me to see them through the cobwebs on the windows.


On bad days, studying keeps me from feeling a connection to the larger culture--I don’t know what happened on Lost, I haven’t watched American Idol in years, I’ve missed the last few hundred great new books, and I get my news from listening to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” while I do dishes. My cocktail conversation, if I ever went to cocktail parties, would be limited to balance bikes and images of motherhood in 430 year old books.


But then my daughter walks up, says “I want some mama milk,” and I melt. I pick up my Shakespeare book and settle in to nurse.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You're a blogger too! You're a blogger too! Isn't it a hayride without the allergies? I love it. Thanks for your shout out. Love to know those mini-trev-maries are singing along.