Home School

Despite what many people think, I did not marry Chad Morgan. I don't mind the assumption, I just want to set the record straight. Because, since leaving my sleepy little hometown in rural Oklahoma more than 15 years ago, this is still an assumption people make when they hear me use my new last name.

Chad came from a family of athletes. He is the middle child of three smart, handsome, and talented boys, all well over 6 feet tall. John Carl is the eldest, Brett is the youngest. I met Chad in the first grade. He and I were the best students in Mrs. Williams' class. Sensing we were bored with the curriculum, she challenged us to a read-off. Whoever read the most books over the course of the year won a pizza party. Which, ironically, was to be shared with the rest of the class.

So for the entire first grade, Chad and I went to our corners furiously trying to read the most books. Sadly, he defeated me in what I think everyone agreed was a Cinderella story. I still vividly remember that I read 48 books to Chad's 52.

Later, in high school, Chad and I were both in advanced placement English and Calculus. English was my strongest subject (despite, or maybe because of, losing to him in the first grade); his was math. Over the summer we were assigned The Old Man and the Sea. While I read a dozen books that summer, Hemingway wasn't one of them. But Chad did read it. Maybe even twice. But on the essay test he got an 87% and I scored almost perfect having just read the book jacket. This angered him. He snapped at me, claiming this was so unfair. How did I do it?

Eh.

In Calculus, however, Chad didn't even have to try. Everyone in the class made A's, including two classmates whom I tutored, and I could still only eek out a low B. This upset my father greatly. Did he want me to be a mathematician? Did it embarrass him that I had the worst grade in the class? Even if that grade was only a f**king "B"? One evening after a horrendous test in Calculus, I proudly told my parents over dinner that I had made an 84%. My dad kept chewing his meat until it was finished, put down his fork, wiped his mouth and asked, "What did Chad make?"

I still have no idea if my dad was kidding in that moment. But joke or not, it's still an issue between us. When I graduated magna cum laude from college my dad leaned over and said, "Chad graduated summa." When I got accepted into my doctoral program my dad responded to the news by saying "Isn't Chad in optometry school? They make better money than professors." And in the hospital after the birth of my child, my father held my new daughter in his hands, tears streaming down his face and blubbered, "I bet Chad could do this."

When you grow up in such a small town, which appears to offer so little in the way of diversity, opportunity and experience, you can't help but be excited at the prospect of getting the hell outta there. To dream of challenges greater than Chad. I enjoyed growing up where I did. Was proud of my upbringing. Loved my childhood home and all the country air. I liked the people I grew up with and had class with, who I was in Girl Scouts with and whose birthday parties I attended for 17 years. I liked high school enough (though junior high can kiss my ass), and I thought we received a good education. But I just always felt there was so much more outside the tiny town. I think maybe we all felt this way.

In a town like this, friendships are formed in toddlerhood and carried through until adulthood. I've reconnected with many of my former classmates over parenthood. With several others I never lost touch. But growing up, it was a mission of mine to move away to a college where no one I knew was going. It was crucial that I studied abroad in a land far, far away. It was imperative that I started a career in a bigger city with lots of art and jobs and high rise apartment buildings. And it was not a question that I would marry someone who had never once been to my home town.

And during my time abroad I spent a weekend in Wales with my European friends. After horseback riding all day on a foggy beach, we all settled into the town bar for drinks. When the bartender asked where I was from, I rolled my eyes and said, "The states." More sheepishly I added, "Oklahoma." With my voice even lower, "A very tiny rural town with only two stoplights."  To which she replied, "My heavens, that sounds magical!"

And when I found a man to marry, a different Morgan, a man who himself was well traveled and educated and cultured, I was warmed by how truly important it was for him to meet my parents, to see where I grew up, to understand my childhood and to fall completely in love with it.

Where we live now does provide more opportunities than where I grew up. Maybe too many. Recently, a few of my friends have been struggling with where to send their children to school. The city's school district has 55 elementary schools, not to mention the 5 major suburbs, 3 private schools and a smattering of charter schools both within and out of the school district. Each school offers its own unique brand of teaching, from dual language immersion to how to knife someone during recess.

Urban sprawl has harmed the city's school district in a way that neighborhood schools are no longer prominent and lottery systems are set up in order to allow your kid ample advantage over all the other kids. Interviews with principals and school tours must be conducted to get at the root of the school's ability, and exceptions must be made to allow your child to jump neighborhood lines. It's not uncommon for people to rent apartments in desirable football districts just to have the right address. IEPs, Gifted and Talented programs, parental donations, sibling preference--it's a ridiculous game of who-you-know that lands your child in the best school. A school to give your child the upper hand, the biggest advantage, the priority. And ensure your child will be among many other children just like yours.

I myself worked tirelessly to get my daughter into a daycare that has literacy hour, foreign language lessons, music class, organic gardening, toddler yoga, expressive painting and daily water play. And I squeal when they send home progress reports and I marvel at the monthly curriculum, even though I know I'm still not making any headway befriending her classmates' parents.

Which makes me think of my own hometown. A town in which the parents have bonds that reach far beyond their children's participation in football. A town where the movie theatre only has three screens. A town with lots of mom and pop shops standing strong against Wal-Mart. A town where the sight of a person riding horseback down main street isn't unusual. A town in which you describe people not by the content of their character, but by their relationship to the postman. A town in which my father co-founded the Calf Fry Festival; the long-running, heavily-attended, event of the year in which local businesses vie for the best tasting fry battered testicles. I can't make this shit up. 

But the quaint, pastoral town, like any other town, isn't safe from poverty, or domestic violence, or racism, or ignorance or hatred or crime. So, thankfully, it only offered one option for school. Every kid--smart, dumb, rich, poor, black, white, sister-of-the-postman, never-heard-of-the-postman--were all collected in one building. And no amount of dual immersion, European-based, top-rated, nationally-certified, award-winning pedagogy can top what that provides its students.

In my class of nearly 100 people, there is ample evidence of success. A couple of doctors, a few lawyers, a college professor, a handful of teachers and nurses and dental hygienists, an abundance of people with advanced degrees, and lots and lots of people who stayed in the town and have started and maintained successful businesses. And most people have husbands or wives or loving partners, and lots have children of their own, some of whom are making their way through the same school district we all left a decade ago.

So now, when I go to the university to teach undergraduates in a town not far from my hometown, it shouldn't surprise me when I have students in my class with whom I went to high school. And it also shouldn't surprise me that their first question is: Did you marry Chad? Or, no, Brett? Oh wait, it was probably John Carl, right? It's not that people from my hometown truly believe that there is only one Morgan family in the world, or that they think Chad or Brett or John Carl were particularly well suited for me. It's more that they think of our town first, maybe only, and can't imagine why we would need to search for anything beyond it.

I always liked that everyone knew who I was because of my last name. They know my father, or my mother, or went to school with my siblings or maybe they even know of me personally. My last name was my connection to my home, my badge of honor, my stake in the land, proof that I existed once in a community that was as loving and inescapable as mine. I was worried I'd lose that a little when I took my husband's name. But, because of the identical nomenclature, Morgan ties me back to Chad, which in essence, ties me back home.

I know I should be wanting more for my daughter than I had for myself. For her to have a better childhood, a stronger education, more interesting friends, greater opportunities. But looking back at what I had, that just seems impossible.

Unless Chad one day has a child, with whom she falls madly in love and marries.


Or maybe just slaughters at the Science Fair.

Baggage

I think that I chose very well in a husband.

This is not to say that he necessarily chose well in a wife. But what's done is done and we all must live with our choices.

Jim is a sophisticated, beautiful, brilliant man who is pure in his heart and kind in his soul. And while he comes with little to no baggage, there is an age difference between us. Not a headline-making one, but one that sometimes catches the attention of people in restaurants. And one that I have to field questions for far more than I ever anticipated.

Like his father, Jim's hair started greying shortly after college, and, like my father, I have a baby-face. So, while checking into a Manhattan hotel on our very first trip together, the concierge looked at me and said, "So what are you, twelve?" To which I responded, "No, but this is the last time I'll wear this hat." His rudeness got us upgraded to the honeymoon suite, so fielding nosey questions isn't always in vain. But they are always directed at me. All Jim's ever gotten was a fist bump.  But I could see how age differences can be a problem in a marriage. Everything can be a problem in a marriage. Although I don't think a single person heard the news of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' divorce and said, "I bet it was the age difference."

Regardless of how little it affects our relationship (except when I get paranoid and send him to the doctor, who continually reports back that Jim is a case study on human health), it's certainly something we carry around. And people probably make assumptions about us when they see us in the mall shopping for purses. Now, in all fairness, it might be that they are questioning why a very patient man with ten purses hanging off either arm is standing next to a cursing woman, or they may be wondering how many years apart we are in age. It's always difficult to tell what people are thinking. Far easier to assume. Either way, we certainly got looks last weekend while trying to solve my bag crisis.

My husband believes I have an unhealthy obsession with handbags. And he is right, but not for the reason he thinks. Unlike his own obsession with comic books and Star Wars trinkets, I'm not actually trying to amass a collection of notoriety. I'm trying to end the madness.

Here is a little-known fact about women: we keep buying purses, not because we love buying them (we do, of course), but because we are always trying to find the perfect one. The purse to end all handbag buying for good. I buy a purse I think will work, only to carry it for a few months and discover the new thing I hate about purses--or the new thing I now know I need in a purse--so that when I buy the next one it will be the last one.

I currently carry four bags most all days of the week: 1) A purse. 2) A professional bag. 3) A backpack. 4) A diaper bag.

Let's unpack this, shall we?

1. Purse. The perfect purse for me would include the following characteristics. Characteristics, might I add, that I've come to learn over ample handbag experience.
    a) One strap. This is crucial, because if there are two straps, one is always falling off the shoulder, especially in winter when bulkier coats lead to inevitable strap-slip. I will, however, accept two smaller handles and a longer strap. I'm not a fascist.
    b) Structure. I love a good, floppy bohemian bag as much as the next granola-eating hippie, but try, just try to find your pen.
   c) Magnet closure. Zippers are the difference between getting the call and missing the call.
   d) Fun color. I'm not picky about leather or canvas. Skin an alligator for all I care. What I need is a color that isn't black or brown. I need yellow. Teal. Pink, if it's not annoyingly so. Print, if it doesn't look like grandma's curtains. Just anything that says, "I'm not trying to match my shoes. Aren't I spunky?"
  e) Big, but not huge. There's a fine line between a purse that holds all my stuff, and a bag that looks like I'm running away from home.
  f) Reasonably priced. I say this not to imply that I'm unwilling to shell out whatever it takes for a bag that meets my rigorous standards. But because I know in the back of my mind that the bag won't measure up, it just won't, I try to be slightly reasonable with bag purchases. Please keep in mind that my idea of reasonable and my husband's idea of reasonable are depressingly different.

So, mister know-it-all, does such a purse exist? No it does not. I can get most of those things, but not all. And I convince myself that giving in on d) and f) are ok because a), b) and e) are what really matter to me. But then three months in I discover that it's actually d) and f) that matter and the others are just perks. And it goes on like this, season after season.

Can I mention one other thing? It is truly frustrating to bend down to pick up your child and have your purse, that is securely on your shoulder, come swinging around from the back of you to the front of you, bashing into you and your child while your keys and phone go flying. And there is no strap length that this is not a problem for, so it's either get rid of your child or staple the bag to your armpit. I'm weighing my options.

2) Professional bag. Ok, so this is my most diverse bag, as I use it for teaching, work at the university and school. So depending on the day and what I'm headed to do, I have to change out a series of graded papers, folders of clients or text books. But, because this bag also has to fit my laptop and charger, I allow it some leeway on the things my purse can't have.

3) Backpack. Why, Meg? Why such insanity?! Shush. This one is crucial. It's for gym clothes. I'm fortunate enough to work at a place that has an incredible, and free-to-use, gym. It must be said that my recent need to work out (most) every day is something I am doing for mental health. Not that you should worry unduly about my emotional state, but raising a child while working on a dissertation is stressful enough, not to mention this current purse dilemma I'm having, so yes, I need to spend the last hour at work running, spinning, lifting or punching away frustrations. It's working wonders. But, this means I need another bag in which to put a pair of tennis shoes, socks, water bottle, workout clothes, ear buds, a towel and a sports bra. And this can't possibly fit in my non-enormous purse, and isn't professional enough for my professional bag, so I must carry a backpack. Satisfied?

4) Diaper bag. I think the diaper bag industry should jump up their own ass for perpetuating the myth that you can have a fashionable diaper bag, or a diaper bag that "doesn't look like a diaper bag." Because it doesn't matter if Versace makes the damn thing, it's going to have Cheerio crumbs and diaper cream all over it. You're packing an exact replica (to scale) of what you have in your house (food, toys, diapers, medicine, sunscreen, pacifier, wipes, camera, extra clothes, stuffed animal, blanket) even though at any given time, your child will only want or need one of the things in the bag and that, my friend, is down in the bottom. I've had four different diaper bags in the past year and have a list of needs as long as the one for my purse. And the most important item on that list is less pockets and dividers. Because trying to be organized while my toddler is crying, or running after a duck, is pressure I just don't need.

So, picture me. Let's pretend I've showered and look presentable. And let's assume it's a day that my daughter goes to day care and I have to work and teach and then go to class myself, after which I'll run off some steam at the gym. So out the door I walk with my purse on my right shoulder, a diaper bag on my left shoulder, my professional bag in one hand, a baby on one hip and a pack on my back. And from the looks of things, it's apparent I've misplaced my keys.

This leads me back to shopping last weekend with my salt-and-pepper husband. The man who accepts my neurotic behavior. Who acknowledges that I'm often both insecure and unapologetic about being in a more developmental stage of life. Who supports my numerous and attention-stealing endeavors. Who understands how hard I'm working to make it all work. And who is trying to make up for the one time he asked me to slip his wallet and Kindle into my purse.

So there we are in the handbag section with me spewing things like, "Jessica Simpson's name ruins the aesthetic," while he calmly points to other options deeper in the pit of leather. And, like every time, I come up empty-handed and grumpy. And as we leave the mall getting illegible looks from strangers, his wife defeated and his day misspent, my husband reaches out and grabs my current handbag and tucks it under his arm.



And we carry on.

Birthmark

I was holding my daughter in my arms one day, when she was nearly three months old, admiring the loveliness of her face. How large and bright her eyes were, how her lashes were long and dark and curled up gently to kiss her eyebrows. How her sweet little nose was shaped so much like mine. How the dimple on her right cheek was the mark of her biggest smiles. How her chin swept down into a soft curve. How her cheeks, like those of my father and all the relatives before him, were cherubic globes.

But as I looked at her, admiring what I'd created, I wondered how long it had been since I had given her a bath. I only realized she might need a good scrub down when I saw some dirt on her face. So I took her into the bathroom and attempted to soap off the darker spot. After trying everything but a Brillo pad I realized that our child was not dirty, but instead, had a faint birthmark by her left eye.

This excited me.

Babies are so pretty and pristine. New, fresh, painstakingly perfect. And Caucasian babies? Well, let's be honest. They all look alike. Now I not only had a beautiful, smooth, perfectly formed baby, but one with a distinguishing characteristic. Something that was hers and no one else's. And finally, something that would give me a quick visual sign that she was my baby so I would stop trying to leave day care with other people's babies in my arms. Seriously. All white babies look alike.

I also liked that she had this particular birthmark because I had several of the same kind scattered about my body. These marks are just slightly darker than my natural skin tone, and they only appear with some extended period of sun exposure. I have one on my wrist that looks like the Virgin Islands, and I have one on my chest that looks like Wisconsin. Lowery's, however, was far more striking and glorious than my American marks. As she aged and spent more time at the park, we begin to notice hers was an exact replica of Africa. 

On the middle of her bottom left eyelid is Algeria. Sierra Leone sits where her cheek raises for a smile and it sweeps beautifully off to the side of her face, with Angola, Nambia and the far southern tip reaching down just to the bottom of her cheek bone. And, with amazingly geographical accuracy, she has another smaller spot just south and east of Mozambique: Madagascar. 

This birthmark is only faintly noticable when you first look at her. Most flashes on cameras completely wash it out. When she spends a few days indoors it almost disappears. But when she faces the sun while splashing around in her kiddie pool, or waddles around the backyard chasing the dogs, it begins to appear, ever so slightly darker than her normally golden skin. And mine appear, as I sit beside her in the sun, and I'm warmed by the thought that we are bursting with colors together.

It never occurred to me that anyone would have looked upon this beautiful mark as anything but a representation of my child's own uniqueness and her genetic connection to her mother. But it should have. 

Because people can suck.

When I was a mere eight years old I was in a horrific car accident. Aside from broken bones and blurry vision, my face was severely mangled by the gravel and brush on the side of the road that I landed on after being thrown clear of the car. 

I underwent extremely invasive facial surgery to try to repair the right side of my face, my chin and my forehead. And though the doctors did meticulous and brilliant work, they left me with a patch of new, bright pink flesh on my cheek and told me it would never have freckles like the rest of my face. A gaping wound on the top of my forehead looked like old, minced, wrinkled flesh, and the gash on my chin--that runs vertically from the left side of my bottom lip and down--would be a scar I'd have to learn to live with. Don't worry, this story has the happiest of endings. Buck up.

Over time, the wrinkly wound on my forehead moved up into my hair as I grew, and I really have to search along my hairline to even feel it anymore. The pinkness of my cheek faded within a few years and--despite the doctor's medical opinion--freckles grew rampantly, blending in almost seamlessly with the rest of my rampant freckles. And the scar on my chin faded by the time I hit high school, to the pale shade of the rest of my face. The swollen, bumpy scar tissue subsided so that it no longer looked like I needed a spittoon. And while there is still a large scar there, it's pretty easy to cover most of it with a touch of makeup. I don't even notice it anymore when I look in the mirror.

But just because I fail to see it doesn't mean the world doesn't notice. For years, while I was still extremely traumatized by the car accident, strangers in stores would come up to my mother and her young, scar-faced daughter and say, "What happened to her?" I don't actually know how my mother handled these moments because I always took off walking in a different direction, leaving her to defend me. When I got older, strangers stopped asking my mother and started asking me. "What's wrong with your face?" One lady (yes, an adult) even asked me once if I had severe poison ivy. And if so, to stay away from her. 

Yep. People can suck.

And they can feel an extreme sense of entitlement by noticing something different about you and demanding you give them an explanation. 

But over time I came to field these kinds of questions quite well. "Oh, it's an old wound from a car accident 15 years ago." Or, "Bar fight." Or, "Go f**k yourself." But hearing the question still makes my eyes hot. I'm not sure that will ever go away. But even if it never does, I've accomplished the impossible. I fought through trauma and the vanities of junior high and I've learned to love my face. 

So I shouldn't have been surprised a couple of weeks ago at the craft store when the 90-year-old sales clerk looked at my sweet, precious daughter, who was saying "HI!" and waving feverishly, and exclaimed "Dear God! What happened to her face?"

I stopped dead.

"Whatever do you mean?" I said in what I know was pure bitch.

"Looks like she has a black eye. Was she injured?"

She was posing two questions here, yes? Or maybe just two statements. That my child looked different and that I might be beating her up a little.

"It's a birthmark. Certainly you've seen one before." I shot back at her.

"I meant nothing by it," she said flatly. "It just looks like she got hit."

Yep. As I said, people are the shits.

I could refuse to shop there I guess. Or call the manager. Or wait in the parking lot for her after her shift and jump her. But that doesn't take away from other questions Lowery might get every summer when her beautiful continent appears on her perfectly perfect face.

A few days later at Lowery's one year check up the doctor commented on her birthmark. I puffed up like a puffer fish and shot at her: "It's beautiful." She laughed and said "Yes, I agree. Gives her character." I sighed with relief until she asked, "But does she have any others?"

I looked at her strangely and said "Well, she has a very small one on her right butt cheek that looks like Saudi Arabia, and an even teenier one on her hip that looks vaguely like Iceland. Why?"

Turns out that 6 or more of the types of birthmarks that Lowery and I have can be a sign of neurofibromatosis. Which is a scary-as-hell disorder in which a child develops tumors on her nerves. So the doctor got out the tape measure and tried to see the faint spots well enough to measure them for a total number of birthmark centimeters.

As any normal parent does, I lost my shit. But the doctor explained that birthmarks, 90 percent of the time, are genetic. She asked if I had similar marks. When I tried to unbutton my pants and rip off my bra, she said she believed me and there was no need to show her. She also said that neurofibromatosis has other tell-tale signs, like being delayed in speech (Lowery started talking at eight months and hasn't shut up since), or a small head (I don't need to quote what percentile she's in; my vagina can confirm its mass), and we have no history of it on either side of our family. And even if she was one of the 1 in 4000 children who has this, there is nothing we can do until she's 5 or older.

But Lowery's doing just fine. Talks excitedly to every stranger in the grocery store. Kisses anyone who will stand still long enough. Talks in her sleep. Dances to any music, including cell phones ringing. Giggles at anything her father does. Wants nothing in this world but to be read to and tickled and to eat her weight in goldfish crackers. And even her teachers at day care insist she's the smartest, happiest baby in the class. 

I'm not going to let the rude questions of strangers, or the inquiries of my overly cautious doctor, distract me from my first thoughts about my child's health and beauty. And I won't let the trauma of my past be projected onto my child. Questions about her birthmark may not ever bother Lowery. There's not a traumatic story behind her lovely birthmark. It's not a sensitive subject for her. Though it's inevitable she'll grow up with her own touchy subjects like we all do. Go ahead, ask me if I breastfed or how much older my husband is than me.

More than likely, Lowery will grow up to be brilliant, accomplished, witty, compassionate, thoughtful and loved. And, inevitably, gorgeous. And maybe one day she'll visit Africa and feel so connected to it that she'll live there, make change there and maybe, just maybe, raise a daughter there.

But for now you can damn sure guarantee how I'll handle the next cashier who rudely suggests my child's birthmark is anything less than glorious.

I'll leave a mark on her ass, shaped very much like Italy.