Grown-ass woman on her first day of school.
This morning I stood looking at the backwards reflection of myself in the bathroom mirror - wrinkles around my eyes, greying sprouts in my hair, and asked, “what does a grown-ass woman do with her hair on the first day of school?” No, it’s not my kids first day of school, it’s mine! It’s my first day back as a college student after taking almost two decades off. Yes, a whole adult could have been raised in the time I’ve taken away from school. In those years I’ve managed to cultivate a life, a 19 year marriage, and three sons - ages 16, 15, and 9. Due to Covid-19 my first day back is not in-person so it really wouldn’t matter to anyone else what I did with my hair. But it mattered to me.
I think that sometimes, the uniform you wear can get you in the right frame of mind. This morning I needed to embody this new chapter. I needed to look like I didn’t just roll out of bed with the heavy breasts of a woman who is almost forty and nursed three kids. I needed to look like I didn’t just spend the first hour of my day neglecting my meditation practice in lieu of calming my nine year old after he had a colossal meltdown. I needed to look like I didn’t just walk downstairs, pour a cup of coffee, and open a computer. All of these things are real for me, but I also did my hair and put on a bra, monumental achievements for a mother of three who woke up this morning and became a college student again.
Whenever I tell close friends or family that I’m going back to school I keep getting the question, “What degree are you going back for?” which feels aggressive to me. It feels like the question grown ups loved to ask when I was younger, “what are you gonna be when you grow up?” I hated that. I couldn’t even buy cigarettes but somehow I had to decide the entire course of my life, on command? I always worked hard to come up with an answer, like a dog sitting for a treat, something that might encourage them to take me seriously, to know I was gonna grow up and BE something. Depending on the month, I answered: surgeon, pediatrician, psychologist, counselor, nurse, lawyer, teacher, midwife. I did not become any of those things. Instead I became a wife, mother, doula, photographer, writer, podcaster, pubic speaker, retreat leader. So these days when asked to predict my future, I am pleading the Fifth and continuing the work I have been doing: taking life one day at a time, working hard to be present to all the challenges and gifts the day brings, and then see where I end up in a few years.
It has been such a good day. I have cried happy tears and jumped up and down and opened my first textbooks and poured over the list of assignments that are due in the next few days with elation. I am so excited about homework! I know this sounds just a tad bit ridiculous but I have waited so long for this day. I have pushed it off for years, through newlywed life, motherhood, career changes, financial obligations, and peripheral passions. I have told myself I wouldn’t be good enough, smart enough, brave enough to go back to school. That loud, bullying voice of self-rejection has pushed this dream back further, year by year. This year I woke up, in more ways than I could list here, and I knew it was time. I now recognize that this door is opening at the exact time it was meant to for me, and I am giddy to learn every piece of what it leads to.
The weather in Missouri still feels like the devil’s hot breath is on my neck. Fall hasn’t come yet. My kids are still on the Summer break that started at Spring break, cuz-Covid. There will be no buying of a new backpack, no wearing it on one shoulder. And even if I had said Jansport backpack and was wearing it to the actual school campus, I’m literally too old to wear a heavy backpack on just one shoulder. Seriously, it would hurt. I would get back problems. This is what I told Jeremy in bed this morning, when he suggested I wear a backpack downstairs on one shoulder. Then he and I laughed about it until both of our eyes were wet. I am getting old. I am in college. I am so ridiculously grateful for both.
