ROSEANNE MAKES ME LAUGH…

…AND CRY

This is probably one of the hardest chapters to write because it is so humiliating and difficult to be honest.  Every time I put a word on the page, I am tempted to quit or to at least make it sound better than it was.  I roll around in the chair, get up for a cup of coffee, check the garden to see if it is still growing, and finally…sit down once again, to try to face myself and write.

It may be hard for you to believe this picture of your mom, even though there are tiny signs of the picture visible even today.  When I spill red soda on the carpet and slip with a, “Oh, s…”  When a car nearly pushes me off the road and I slip with, “D… it, be careful.”  These are slips that remind me I once had a mouth like a truck driver.  Now, I don’t know many truck drivers, and the ones I do know are very kind and respectful people.  So I suspect the phrase “mouth like a truck driver” was created by people like me who don’t want to take responsibility for our faults.  Truthfully, I deserved to have my mouth washed out with soap daily.

This couldn’t have come at a more inappropriate time of my life.  I was a junior high school teacher.  Now wait.  In class, I spoke with great caution and correctness.  Behind closed doors, with my friends, I let loose.

It is tempting to blame my faults on others or on circumstances.  I only tell you about the others and the circumstances to let you know how decidedly the blame rests with me.

I was freshly out of college, 5 foot 2 inches, 105 pounds, and long straight hair.  I looked young.  (Yes, young!)  In fact, when seated or when standing, near a group of 13-year-old students, the office runners would have a hard time finding me the teacher when they came into the room.  If the office runner was a new student, they would sometimes ask me directly, “Where is the teacher?”  I would smile.

Part of this was also due to my 60s wardrobe and attitude.  Back then, it was OK…more than OK…for teachers to be relaxed in the classroom.  Jeans and knit shirts were commonplace for teachers.  I added to the confusion about my age by wearing clothes that failed to separate me from the kids.

Like many identity confusions, it was sometimes fun for me to see a person mistake my age, and it gave me an interesting view of the world.  One day, a lunchroom worker yelled at me when I accidentally (of course) dropped my lunch tray.  I was walking alongside a tall, elegant, obvious-teacher, but the worker immediately assumed I was a stupid, not-elegant obvious-student who needed to be browbeaten into good behavior.  She yelled at me, the “student.”  I responded to her, as the “teacher,” while cleaning up my mess.  Oh well, even that was a slightly amusing situation.

The other part of me wanted to make sure that people  knew I was a grownup, all 23 years of me.  I had finished college and passed finally out of the ranks of student and into the real world of the adults.  I was one of them…a member of the grownup world…finally.

As it happens in so many schools today, now working as a teacher, there were problems exacerbated with the challenges of identifying me as adult or child.  In my first assignment as a junior-high English teacher, I taught with a group of ten teachers in the English department, old and young, men and women, new and experienced.  Unfortunately, these differences led to conflict…choosing ideas and ‘sides’ of the conflict…and they led to warring factions of teachers.  There was plenty of provocation for swearing.  And there was plenty of swearing.

In my demented mental state of the day, I found many good reasons for letting loose with foul language.  Other teachers, older and more experienced than I, were using it.  The perfect profanity could express not only the words of anger at what was happening, but it shouted out the intensity of the anger.  It told people off.  It made them respect me, they couldn’t push me around.  And it made me grown-up.  I was no longer a young child held back by rules.  “I have the right to do ‘my own thing,’ to stand my ground, and to live my own life.  I am a grown-up.”

Gail was right.  At the time I dismissed her as a goody-two-shoes.  “We don’t have to lower ourselves to their standards.  Then we’re no better than they are.”  Who is she, I asked myself?  She’s just afraid of them.  She lets them get away with putting her down, ridiculing her behind her back.  I don’t have to take it.  Haven’t they heard of women’s lib?   They deserve a good taste of their own medicine.  Besides, I’m not going to let them push me around.  If she won’t tell them off, then I will.  I’m not a child anymore.  Time moved on, years passed, and – thankfully – I continued to grow up.

Two years ago – twenty years later – Roger opened my eyes to one of my biggest problems in life, a problem that extended all the way back to my junior high English teacher’s workroom, 20 years ago.

Roger had told us in the Bible study class of the church ladies offering him an anti-abortion petition, expecting this God-fearing man to immediately sign.  As a Christian, abortion was disheartening to him.  As a policeman, his days were filled with events caused by the effects of children being born alone, without parents, babies addicted to drugs, without lifelong love and guidance, children who grow up to join gangs, enter the drug culture and live a loveless, hurting life.

Roger looked at the ladies with the Anti-Abortion petition and asked them, “I know you are against abortion.  We all are.  But what are you for?”  In our Sunday School Bible study he asked us…what are we doing for pregnant teens, for children born addicted to drugs, for children born to abusive parents, for  children pulled away from dangerous lives and put into foster care?

I had needed Roger’s question put to me as a teacher those 20 years earlier.  From the start, I had been really good at knowing what I was against!  I was against them. They’re rude, foul-mouthed, insulting, conceited, people.  They lie, hide teaching materials, harass other teachers openly, snicker and insult people behind their backs, in front of co-workers.  I’m against all of that and I “have a right” to let them know.  Those b——-!

But – what was I for?  Well, kindness, courtesy, honesty, of course.

And where did I think all of that was going to come from?  Gail was right.

All these many years later, you, my two children, you both taught me that Gail was right.   As tiny babies, you were a delight for me to hold, with your laughing, giggling, babbling, bubbly sounds.  Your first words came at a trickle, followed by a deluge of words over the years.  I was so proud that three year-old Jamie knew the word applique and could properly apply it. Most importantly, I knew there were words I’d better not use around you.

Like all kids, you eventually learned the power of the word why.  Sooner or later, all kids turn their faces up to mom and dad and ask, “Mommy, why are you doing that?  Saying that?  Why can’t I do that?”  I realized I didn’t have a good answer, unless I wanted to pull “adult prerogative” out of the hat, as we adults often do.  “You can’t do ‘that’ because you’re not an adult yet.”  Roger finally put an end to that drivel.

Roger makes it hard for me to watch Roseanne.  I love her show.  She and her family deal with real life problems.  They don’t try to make real life perfect with perfect moms and dads who fix everything by the end of the show.  They let us know we’re not alone in our weaknesses…we fail together as part of the human race.  We are petty, silly, stupid, dishonest, and yet…we are also, loving, caring, wise, kind and insightful.  We are a wonderful package of human frailty.  If we can laugh and watch ourselves with open eyes and hearts, see our blemishes, and still love ourselves, maybe there is hope for us.  Hopefully, we will face each day with the good cheer and insight to improve ourselves and become better than we were.