Translate

Friday, January 1, 2016

1/1/16

Some 1/1's feel brink-like, standing over the chasm, wondering if your wings work. Some 1/1's feel wrapped in that over-sized, over-worn, tattered sweater you can't bear to slouch off yet. Regardless of what 1/1 feels like, surprises are going to come.

My brink of 2014 had a new husband, red wedding amaryllis still blooming, but by the end of the month, also had a breast cancer/melanoma diagnosis. My brink of 2015 held as clean a slate a post-treatment patient can have, along with the inevitable ravages of surgeries, chemo and radiation, both body and brain. 

By spring, though, a new project first hovered around me, even as far as Seattle, then landed home at the semester's end: an enormous, immeasurable chasm of possibilities and potential for social change in education. I often ask myself what I was thinking; why didn't I want rest and routine and recovery? Was it flattery for being asked or fear of going back to the same old? 

But teaching is never "same-old" - one of the best things is the perpetual potential for continuous revision and renewal. Revision and renewal can come with opportunity, too. So while I'm teetering on the brink of the second half of this project, the years of what has come before, the knowledge and experience, is lofting up the work of this first half year; we have been building the plane while we are flying it, but it is flying. Endlessly exciting.

Do I know what I should to go forward this 1/1? I've come to know some of the most committed and engaged and fascinating faculty and administrators around this state, a state I didn't really get to know until now. I've learned to turn the other cheek, deflect the shot aimed at the messenger, keep my friends close (and "frenemies" closer...?) I've learned that having lived through cancer is pretty good preparation for a project that is filled with questions and unknowns, requiring trust and engagement with people you never knew, and that some of the same things help: family, friends and colleagues to hug and laugh with when it works and when it hurts, plenty of self-forgiveness, and the positive benefits of getting sleep. 

Adopting an alternative haircolor means there is always an ice-breaker at the ready, perhaps only psychologically possible after extreme baldness. 

So the gift, breast cancer, that keeps on giving is still giving this 1/1/16.  And 16 is my lucky number. Happy New Year.