2021

 2021...

May you not crumble upon the weight of gazillion expectations...

I have been knee deep in reading.  Among them, This is the Story of A Happy Marriage, by Ann Patchett.   I have officially declared her to be my favorite author.  I have not had a favorite author since R. L. Stein in fifth grade.  Back then I wrote a letter to him.  Maybe I'll write a letter to Ann.  Yes, we are on first name bases.  After reading her book of personal essays, I have seen her soul and we are soul sisters.  It is that simple.  

I am listening to Becoming by Michelle Obama.  I am curious how to raise little Michelle Obamas.  I was listening along, semi-engaged, doing dishes and folding laundry.  Then, out of the blue, she says "kids know at a very young age when they are being de-valued, when adults aren't invested enough to help them learn.  Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness.  It's hardly their fault.  They aren't bad kids.  They are just trying to survive bad circumstances."  De-valued.  Is that what that feeling was all those decades ago growing up in a cut throat academic environment?  It's hard for anyone to imagine me as unruly, but back then, I was definitely not "good".  Once a teacher told me to my face that I will never amount to nothing.  Till this day, ask my parents, they will tell you through clinched teeth who that teacher was.  Clearly, as I sobbed in the kitchen today, I still carry that burden with me, all these years later.  It is why I stay on top of Olivia's school.  She is five.  It's not because I want her to be top of her Kindergarten class.  I'm trying to spare her the feelings of inadequacy, of devalued.