Words, study

It has been almost a whole summer since I've blogged, a summer spent transitioning from my tenured professorship and into an intensive course in Anatomy and Physiology, starting a new volunteer position at a local midwife practice, and taking the GREs—twice. The left brain is twinkling and bright like a Christmas tree—and I use that cliché with intention. Lights, sparkles, colors, icicles, tinsel, and a star at the top that is the sweet, sweet encouragement and inquiry and love. I love it back.

Even as I type now, my Chemistry, Biology, and Nutrition homework awaits. It awaits before I get on the train to the midwife practice. It awaits and I await it, excited and nervous to tiptoe into these first chapters of the semester. Anticipating quizzes and exams. Working through an evolving understanding of medical records. Observing. Wondering about how "well" I will do, how the landscape of my mind will continue to shift over the months. Eager to continue to put it all together, in my imaginings of moments in clinical hours and in midwifing a mother through her birth and in becoming even more educated about what's happening under our skin, under the skin of my partner and children.

It's many, many, many new words. Erythropoietin, hemolysis, greater tubercle, mediastinum, stratified squamous epithelium, mandible, ethmoid, anterior median fissure, postganglionic. Words bitter and sweet and sometimes sour...and all the time digesting, digesting. Becoming part of my own epithelia. Tough skin, delicate skin, an integration of brand. new. knowledge that is shaping me for a brand. new. career. I wake up in the morning both anxious and longing to breathe through the synthesis of this material and emotion in my practice. And I conclude practice with full heart, clearer brain, calmer belly. Ever the grateful yogi.

In the meantime, my smaller child stumbles into and tills and paves out his own language road. Unfurling blends and phrases linked to phrases make us—and his older sister—marvel. How unexpectedly wonderful to share this surprise with my daughter, to see the two of them in a growingly complex dance of conversation. The words like boxcars on a train move through our interactions with one another, and I am compelled to list some of the many:

"I need help with this."
"That's too much tight on me."
"I need it—whole time."
"I love you, Mommy." (and Daddy, and sister)
"I need breakfast." (dinner…lunch)
"I got a bug bite."
"I can't reach it."
"You tired? I tired, too!"

So many "I"s…an illumination of self in relation to his world. A crystal clear understanding—even at two—about self and otherness, what the self wants and how the other might be able to provide it or keep it away.

And in the meantime of this meantime, my daughter has begun to integrate that verbal struggle to express what she means—you know, um, like, gestures. She rolls her hands and fans her fingers and nods her head as she simultaneously tries to express her full meaning—"So, you know what I mean, like, sometimes…"—as she searches for recognition in her conversation partner, a kind of acknowledgement that the two, whether that partner is 5 or 55 or 85, have a mutual understanding of human experience. She, too, owns the "I" as she works to express the uniqueness of her self: "Sometimes, you know, I get a cough like this…" or "It's so strange [gestures of incredulity] how I can do THIS…and then also do THIS!"

All the while, my partner smoothes our language and worries with jewels from his great memory bank of quotations and inspiration. No less a learner, he plows through the dense discourse of his profession, extracts the essence of what's going on in our political world, examines the children's growth and measures it against something spiritual and quantitative and aesthetic that is beyond us. And, just at the right time, he finds the wisdom of his words to calm us.

And in this family we are all old souls—I can feel it when we engage in dialogue. I can see it in my children's eyes, in my own, in my partner's. We reach for these words to explain who we are, who we are becoming, how we connect to one another. And so we study together, our unique studies.