This is an assignment for school, but Imma draft it here.
List 3-5 potential crucibles from your life path [prior assignment].
- Older half-brother dying, and family/friends moving away.
- Going to college at 17.
- Moving to Arizona.
- Becoming a parent.
- Working with young children.
Write a story of your most impactful crucible.
- Write a letter to yourself that tells the story of your most impactful crucible.
- Write one continuous draft allowing as much space as needed to tell your story. Have a beginning, middle, and end.
- Set the stage and narrate the high points. Include details. Find the most salient points.
- Have fun with the story. Write something you'd like to read again and again.
- No matter how painful it might be to relive these important moments, ignoring them is not an option if you want to better understand your journey to self-reflection.
What lessons about yourself did you learn from your crucible story?
Hey sir.
I know you're pretty busy with everything right now, but I need to talk to you about something. And I know you've done a lot of listening over the years, but I just need to write you one more letter. It's supposed to be kind of like a story, so I'm going to tell you the story of how I started working with young children. I know, I know - who'd have thought it?
So anyway. Remember how I used to run the children's department at Barnes & Noble? Well, I absolutely loved it. I loved reading books as a child and my mom used to run drills in the house. She'd have us stand at the far end of the house (which was small, to be fair) and practice reading aloud so that she could hear us in the living room. I have many fond memories of this. So, naturally, I loved reading picture books aloud to kids. I was really good at it too - still am! Running storytimes became a part of life, and helping parents and caregivers select the perfect book for their child became a part of my everyday. Got an elementary-school-aged kid who hates reading but loves potty humor? Try Captain Underpants! Got a teenager who's trying to transition from Harry Potter to teen fiction? Try The Hunger Games! You get the picture. Well, eventually I decided to try to make a living wage working just one job, and that meant going back to coffee. But young children weren't scary anymore. They were...kind of fun!
Fast-forward to to 2012, right? I moved to Alaska, and was trying to figure out how to work someplace that paid enough to cover my bills, was a positive work environment, felt meaningful, and had a consistent work schedule so I could dance on the side. Rehearsals at that time were Mondays and Wednesdays from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM (or something else equally bananas) and if you work retail, it's understood that having a consistent schedule is a farfetched pipe dream. So I put some feelers out. K told me to look for a job at Providence. I applied for a few "patient service representative" jobs and one called "assistant teacher" for children infancy to preschool-age. I truly didn't think anything of it. I was casting a wide net.
But then, I got a call for an interview. And another interview. And - I think- a third interview. I had to ask people to be my references. And then they actually got called and had to tell someone if they felt like they'd be comfortable with me watching their kids. Not that that's laughable, exactly, but I certainly didn't expect it. there were drug tests and fingerprinting and lots of getting lost in the hospital on the way to and from appointments just to get hired. And at the end of it I was...a teacher.
The first week was terrifying. I was in the baby room and it was the first time I'd ever spent extended time with babies and suddenly I was in charge of tracking what they ate, how much they ate, when they slept, how much they slept, and bouncing them to sleep on big bouncy balls. I was told to go cover a preschool teacher's lunchtime during naptime and having no clue what that meant. I eased the door open and slipped into the darkened room. The kids were spread out on mats all over the place. Some were snoring, and others were laying on their mats, eyes wide open rolling around wildly. They hustled me that first naptime. Asking to go to the bathroom a million times. Drinking water. The very idea! I would learn that these were strategies to get up off your mat - do anything other than sleep. Then even later I would learn that these were not strategies; you just become more attuned to the thrum of your thoughts and your bodily needs if you're made to stay in one (quiet) place for two hours and cannot go to sleep.
I learned lots and I learned fast. Routines, schedules, new terminology; never before in my life had I considered calling a stuffed animal a "lovey", thought about the necessity of raingear, cleaned up poop explosions or sung so many children's songs. I was immediately expected to do what I now know to be ABA therapy with a three-year-old, and got advice from everyone I could. The best thing I could do, I was told, was to learn the parents' names. Not just Jayden's mom or Keeva's dad. Their actual names.
So I did. And I kept learning. The child part of me was delighted. I think she fantasized that she was getting to do all these things with these kids. With my lead teachers. With me. With my assistant teachers. There were logistical pieces, of course. But I kept coming in every day so I could see the kids learn and grow. So I could help them. And, to my surprise, I could help them. It was a little like that scene in Beetlejuice where Lydia tells that one couple that she, herself is strange and unusual - and that's why she can see them. I, myself, had a lot of unprocessed trauma from childhood and could see the roots of that in others. I swore to never tell a child that they couldn't feel sad or angry or banish them away for having a feeling or reaction or need. I swore to always address the needs of a child if I possibly could. I stressed over children's disagreements with each other, hurting each other, little dramas and fallouts. Stayed up late getting ready for family-teacher conferences over and over again. Saw families parent in vastly diverse ways. Those kids and their families taught me so much more than I could ever teach them.
There was so much to learn, so many heartbreaks, so many beautiful moments. This assignment is about life's crucibles, and crucibles are experiences that change a person. There's a lyric from a hymn that always comes to mind for me when someone says the word, "crucible": thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine. And although I still haven't returned to my religious roots, I find the notion very significant. That experiences, even if they are unpleasant - or a mixed bag - can transform you.
Eleven years with young children (the last five with my own young child) changed me. Made me softer, more open, more patient, less judgmental, more aware that humans exist in the context of their ecosystem - their families, environments, and the bodies and brains they were born with. It raised lots of questions as well; can you predict the needs a child might have based on the professions of their parents? Can you ever adequately support a child or family? How do you prevent burnout for adults in a child's life? Can you have compassion for yourself, even when you're not parenting/caregiving exactly right? How, in the words of my therapist, do you repair so as to move forward?
I suppose, if anything, from this experience I learned that I am adaptable. That I do have the capacity to stick with a difficult profession - and even excel. I learned that I am capable of connecting with other people and supporting them for years on end. I learned that who I am as a person is hard to relate to, perhaps, but actually valued in this context. And because, as you know, I've typically struggled with feeling inadequate, an outsider, and fundamentally unaccepted these years were very healing for me.
Okay, that's it for now. I hope you're doing okay!
