You’ll shoot your eye out!

I am very lucky to live in the Northeast corner of the United States. This region has everything. Mountains if you like mountains, beaches if you like beaches. We have all four seasons in all their glory. And the most glorious is the fall. The foliage here is unique and according to one of my coworkers who teaches biology, only here and some place in China puts on such a display, such an explosion of color. This fall has been one of the best. Driving to work in the morning I have been amazed at the brightness of the leaves. The golds were more gold, the reds deep rich and almost purple. Even now that we are past peak the leaves cannot be described as brown they seem to be holding on to hints of their former glory as they meet their decline. This fall has been a rich reward for the hot summer and lack of rain.

Fall for me is a time of adjustment, like the leaves struggling to change, hoping to impress and ultimate becoming a nuisance. We do after all, have to rake up all that gorgeous color when age and gravity overtakes them and their fate lays at me feet. I made that sound poetic but raking leaves is hardly a poetic activity. In reality the foliage is all I have time to enjoy this time of year. The first quarter of the school year is a mad rush of activity. If it was only the courses and grading that would be enough, but there is so much else that goes on during this time of year. Being a private school we have to hold recruitment Open Houses, usually on a Sunday afternoon. There are school trips, assemblies, professional days, liturgies and prayer services, shadow days for perspective students, PSAT/ PLAN testing, letters of recommendation to write, sporting events to attend. This first quarter will end this week with the fall pep rally on Friday and another Open House on Sunday. Oh and grades close this week and are due next Wednesday.

And that is just my job…the one I am paid for…I have the whole home life to take care of also. Which this fall has been blessed with a broken dishwasher (fixed) and a broken oven (condemned by the gas company) and a husband who drags me out of bed to gym four mornings a week at 5:00am…and he SINGS while doing it.

Can't a girl catch a break and get some studying done?

I am still attending my Russian class twice a month. I love this little island of language. Thankfully we are at the immersion stage, sort of, about 80% of the conversation is in Russian. And sometimes it does slide into what one of my students (in describing her Spanish class) referred to as "Life lessons with a side of Russian." In many ways I a treading water, and many times over the past few weeks I have really questioned why I am continuing. When I do write in Russian I still feel like I am making so many mistakes, sometimes stupid ones so the whole task of learning and reaching my goal seems impossible. Doubt creeps in and begins to take over. And worse I hear the voices saying "Who do you even think you are to do this?" Actually those are not voices in my head; those are real voices from Russians who do not know me as well now suggesting that I am on a fool's errand. If this is only as far as you are after 3 years maybe this is not for you.

Then I had the dream I was sitting in my high school guidance counselor's office. I had just finished telling him my life plan. How I was going to travel to Russia, Uzbekistan maybe even Ukraine and work as an ethnographer and write books about people's lives, and maybe a book or two about my experience doing research in the former Soviet Union. The life of a researcher and writer my enthusiasm cannot be contained! He looks at me sternly from across the desk: "You'll shoot your eye out." I woke up with the very real fear I had become Ralphie.

(for my Russian friends: Это известный и смешной американский рождественский фильм. )

And why do I even think I could or should do this anyway? I struggle with this all the time. Is this a hobby? Is this an interest? If that is all it is if it is; no more than stamp collecting, (not that there is anything wrong with that) why does the study of this language, at the heart of it, seem to speak to a deep longing, a hope of future fulfillment, and maybe a key to something new? If all this were true why then do I feel so stupid for even thinking about this as a possibility? Maybe I should be comfortable and just say- It is what it is, it is a hobby nothing more. Slow down and give yourself a break. But somehow this would be a denial about a very real truth that I can feel is happening as a result of this "simple language study".

I remember another dream told to me when I was taking Hebrew in graduate school. Professor Carole Fontaine told us this story about a dream she had when she was studying Hebrew at Duke University. She had this dream that she had a set of keys shaped like letters of the Hebrew alphabet and a huge hallway of doors. I had a dream like this early one which I think I have mentioned. One was that I was on a train from Moscow to Kiev and was struggling with a crossword puzzle in Russian. I was not allowed to get off the train until I completed it. In the second dream I had landed myself in a jail in Tashkent. All I had to do was decline 10 feminine nouns and I would be released. When my friend arrived at the police station and was told what I had to do to win my release he sat down and said "I can wait, she can do it."

Dreams are very interesting. My ethics students just finished watching the film "Raising Arizona"; an excellent depiction of the conflict and compromise between Kant's Categorical Imperative and Mill's Utilitarianism. At the end of the film the main character H.I. McDonough has a dream about all the people in his life and a reflection on the adventure he has just been on. He is at in many ways a crossroads in his life, he may wake up and the marriage will be over because stealing a baby from a family, even one that may have "more than they can handle" takes a toll on a relationship. At the end he dreams about him and his wife. He sees an old couple being visited by their children and grandchildren. He says a lot in this passage but then he questions: "And I don't know. You tell me. This whole dream, was it wishful thinking? Was I just fleeing reality like I know I'm liable to do? ..It seemed real, it seemed like us." When I wake up from a dream when I have had an argument with my high school guidance counselor or get lost in a Moscow library, or any number of dreams I have had with language study as a central theme I feel like H.I "It seemed real, it seemed like me."

So which is it? Is this some interesting side trip or something more? Am I going to shoot my eye out? Am I fleeing reality? Is this wishful thinking? Either way I need to find a better way to carve out time to do the work I need to do to find out. There are no magic bullets, secret strategies or tricks for me in the process. I can find times to study and I can find people to practice with. I am lucky that my family does not see this as "that crazy thing my mom does" but as "that cool thing my mom does." What I wish I could let go of is the fear that surrounds this process. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure. Fear that I really will shoot my eye out and that all of this is a vain illusion.

(To be continued)