Yesterday, my Creative Nonfiction professor gave our class ten minutes to write about a job we’ve had that we didn’t like:

November 1984

Lids drooping, 2:09AM, four hours, fifty-one minutes to go. Visions of clean sheets, a soft pillow, and a dark room swim in my head. The red light flashes and my earphones beep.

“United Airlines Lost Luggage Department. May I help you?” I chirp while I shake my legs awake, stare at the computer screen, and place my icy fingers on the keys.

“This is Jeremy Montrell, and I have a job interview tomorrow with one of the biggest law firms in the nation. You lost my luggage, and I don’t have my suit. What are you going to do about it?” He spits venom as he angrily accuses me of being a good-for-nothing conspirator in a quest to keep him unemployed. I sooth him with a promise of reimbursement for new clothes when secretly I want to tell him he would make a shitty attorney given his recent accusation. This is the eighth professional attire call tonight along with missing fishing poles, golf clubs, guitars, gowns, sheet music, wigs, baby shower gifts, and presentation materials.

Stale mouth, dry eyes, chilled body, and achy back, I stand, stretch, and survey the Star Trek-like arena of stations. My friend Renee smiles at me as she sooths an angry passenger from the other side of my cubicle wall.

I return to my George Jetson and Jane-his-wife-chair, scoot up to the desk edge, and jam my palms into my sleepy eyes. 3:16AM. Three hours, forty-four minutes to go. My head bobs, the red light flashes, the audio tone buzzes to indicate an incoming call. I long to yank out my headphone leash that keeps me from floating in this astronaut atmosphere.

“United Airlines Lost Luggage Department. May I help you?” I force a smile as I speak because I heard that happiness might sneak through my voice if I try this trick.

“I am so pissed! I don’t have any of my dresses, sandals, or make-up! I shopped and packed so carefully for this once-in-a-lifetime trip to Hawaii. What am I supposed to wear to tomorrow’s luau?”

Before I can give my automatic, rehearsed reimbursement response, a man laughs with glee and says into the phone, “Don’t worry about it. We don’t need any clothes. This is our honeymoon.”

Present

Yesterday, I read my short free-write aloud in class, and the Valparaiso University undergraduates looked at me in dismay. I simply said, “Let that story encourage you to get to the Career Center today.”

Grief can be a road or a roadblock. Its debilitating power can rob joy, stifle creativity, and foster a sense of “what’s the point?” Or its despair can be riddled with gratitude and hope. C. S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed journals his personal turmoil toward acceptance, faith, and love. I’m convinced that he got to the final conclusion because he had such incredible love for his wife, and he knew she felt that love in her whole body and soul. When my brother Danny died a year ago, grief suffocated, stifled, and ramrodded me into a year of painful self-reflection, guilt, should’ve/could’ve/would’ve’s, self-loathing, self-doubt, and regret. Did Danny know how much I loved him? Did I tell him enough? Could he feel it in his body and soul? I doubt it. Hence, the remorse which has now blossomed into hope, determination and love. I’m grateful to Danny for teaching me that love is not to be messed with, to be hidden, or to be taken for granted.

Now, after a year of bottled emotions and ominous fear that I may burst into tears at any moment, it’s time to gently lift the seed out of the rocks and carefully plant it in rich soil, shining Light, and tender love. There is no growth in darkness, and somehow, through all of this, others have managed to show me that I am worthy of God’s love. That precious love is channeled through my husband, my children, my friends, my family, my loved ones, my students, my colleagues, and even the cashier at CVS. And if I am ever in doubt about love’s incredible impact, I need only watch my joy-filled granddaughter Eileen with Tim. It is a beautiful sight to behold.

I’m going to try to write again. My Aunt Aggie e-mailed me last April, nine months ago, and said she missed my creative writing.  I made a lame excuse about having trouble finding time. It didn’t seem appropriate to share with her that I was experiencing a tremendous dip in life and self-esteem. She’s been through enough of her own grief not to hear about mine.

Thanks for asking, Aunt Aggie. Here goes. You never know when a nudge will move a mountain.

A year after posting Danny’s eulogy, I’m ready to try again, to trust, to share, to love, and as Mary Oliver encourages, “Pat attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

what would you do? What would you be? Would doing something different make you different? Why did you become what you are? Are you what you do? What do you do for fun?

Over the last few weeks, Valparaiso University students have interviewed me as part of a first-year course assignment that requires them to question professors about their journeys. Students have asked why I became a teacher, and I’m sheepish about saying that after Brendan was born, I hoped to work and be home with the kids after school. Tim and I had a long-term dream of having all of the kids earn college degrees, and back in 1990, the expense seemed insurmountable. Little did we know.

In spring 1991, I enrolled in MA Program in Education at St. Xavier University in Chicago. Rock star teachers and nuns not only taught me content, but they exemplified educators who really cared, who really engaged students, and who challenged them. I wrote paper after paper, and I loved it. Over the course of raising Katie, Bethy, Brendan, Brigid, and Kevin, much of the curricula in graduate school applied to parenting. The family daily goal was to learn or do something new or creative. There were not specific learning objectives, but we were all about reading and exploring.

According to Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist, “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.” Back then, I dreamed of being a teacher, and now I dream of being a writer. I still teach, but  I stopped writing. Instead, I went back to school to pursue a second Masters in Digital Media, and the technology is killing me. Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign keep me from my beloved wordsmithing, and I am losing my mind trying to work on a Mac when I’ve used a PC my whole adult life. (The damn computers weren’t around in my youth.) Last week, the twenty-three year-old who sits next to me in my Video Communication class arrived wearing a cap pulled low over her face and headphones, and she never once glanced my way. I was completely lost, and I am sure frustration radiated from my entire being. As a leader in VU’s Persistence and Success Program, I mustered up every pep talk imaginable not to not click “withdraw” on my student profile and head to Dairy Queen to calm my nerves with a chocolate pecan cluster blizzard.

My leadership course is causing me to analyze eloquent speeches of great leaders, yet I long to write them myself. Every time I think of withdrawing from a course, I ask myself if I am learning. Because the answer is yes, I stay with it, but deep down, I wonder if I am sabotaging my dream.

So I’m back at the blog because if I could do anything, I would write. I would be a writer, and it would make me more reflective, more creative, and more at peace with myself. I don’t know if I became who I am because I chose it or if I am a collection of all of the experiences, interactions, and influences that shape me and have ‘conspired’ in forming me. I do know I’m forever grateful for all those who touch my life, including students who make me question my own identity and vocation. I am not what I do. At least I hope I’m more complex than that. As for fun, I run . . . and read, and visit, and dance, and play with Eileen. Somehow these blog posts manage to circle back to that spitfire of a little girl.

Eileen Oct. 1, 2016

Eileen April 24, 2016.

Kevin – Spring 2011

The Joy of Being in College

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.” ~ Mary Oliver

To take that awareness, that energy, passion, warmth and complete presence and transfer it to all we are and do, now that would glorify God!

Eileen and Katie – Spring 2016

Eileen has mastered E. M. Forster’s message in Howard’s End.

Linus cherished his security blanket. Brigid Walsh fingered the satin trim of a blanket. Maggie Scannell clung to an old warn Bunny. Tommy McCann poked his belly button. 

Eileen sinks into peaceful reverie by sucking one thumb and twirling an ear. If necessary, she’ll grasp her own, but she prefers the ear of the holder.  When she looks me in the eye and grabs hold, she owns me.

My ear is open and ready for Eileen – for anything.

Bubbles, cardboard bunny books, cutesy stuffed animals, alphabet games, beach balls, sand buckets, plastic eggs.

Sidewalk chalk, coloring books, kites, paddle balls, water color paints, puzzles, storybooks, marshmallow peeps, plastic eggs stuffed with jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and one large hollow bunny from the Dollar Store.

Picture frames, sketch pads, charcoal pencils, deodorant, razors, tennis balls, plastic eggs stuffed with jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and one large hollow bunny from the Dollar Store.

Socks, Starbucks’ gift cards, journals, mind puzzles, jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and one large hollow bunny from the Dollar Store.

This year, because they don’t have cars, we picked Bethy and Kevin up in Chicago before taking them to Grandma Scannell’s for Easter brunch and then to Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary Pat Neylon’s for dinner. Like the old days, the kids got to see both sides of the family. Unlike the old days, the kids received a new twist on the Easter basket.

Dwarfed by the large wooden art table, nine-year-old Kevin and I slide into desk chairs across from his fourth-grade teacher as she looks over her gradebook.

With dread, I review the latest report card and quietly ask, “What happened in math?”

“Kevin doesn’t turn in his homework,” she replied with conviction. 

I bravely proceed, “What about English?”

“Kevin doesn’t follow directions.” She pointed to the circled verbs on a quiz that called for underlined action words.

Puzzled, Kevin looked up at his previously regarded mentors, and gently commented, “You’re only looking at the bad grades.”