Thanksgiving: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Morning

It is Thanksgiving morning. Roughly 6 am. I awake to a shooting pain on the top of my hand. A pain that is precise, small, deep and commanding. I am on my side, one arm under my pillow and the other up under my chin. My eyes flutter open to see, mere inches from my face, a black creature of some kind on the top of my hand. Not knowing what it is, and too groggy to process the information my eyes are absorbing, I instinctually--and with the adrenaline of a mother lifting a car off her child--raise my other hand up from under the pillow and swat the creature away with rapid and blunt force.

My eyes close again. The pain is getting worse. Tighter, smaller, but stronger. A specific point on the top of my hand where the crease makes my wrist. I try to ignore the pain and allow sleep to take back over. My mind begins to wander. What was that large, black creature I saw so briefly before heroically batting it across the room? It seemed black as night. And...triangular? Fan shaped? What if--I begin to panic and my eyes shoot open--it was a spider?

Thinking now of my two precious children sleeping down the hall, and fearing the spider--who has now been batted toward the door and could be making his way to their sweet fleshy skin--I sit up. I look toward the floor beside the bed. I know I swatted in this direction; where is he?

"Meg...." Jim grumbles through a deep slumber. "What are you doing?"

"Something bit me," I whisper, poised and ready to pounce.

"What do you mean...something..." He dozes momentarily before awakening to finish, "Bit you?"

With my eyes still combing the floor of our bedroom, I hold up my arm so he can see my wrist.

"It doesn't look like you've been bitten," he exclaims. "It looks like you've been shot!"

Only then do I think to finally look at my wrist. I bring it close to my face and see the damage. A large lump, swelling by the second, and in the center: the bullet hole.

"Mother of god!" I declare, and pull my legs up under me as though the bed is my life raft in a sea of sharks.

Jim springs and quickly makes his way around to my side of the bed, quietly and intently searching for the lone gunman.

"Well, how are we supposed to find anything over here?!" he exclaims. His eyes dart around the various piles of magazines, shoes, maternity clothes intended for donation, used contact lenses and an open piece of luggage I've yet to fully unpack.

"Are you freaking kidding me? Now's not the time!" I yell. "Find that creature!!"

Jim rifles through the mess, throwing up socks and scarves and magazines like a mower running through a pile of leaves.

"Found it!" he cries.

And there, against the baseboard, having clearly been batted across the room and slammed against the wall with the force of a maniac, twitching in a state of shock, was the biggest ass wasp you've ever seen.

Afternoon

The pain on my wrist is subsiding slightly. The swelling is waning. The bullet hole is closing. I'm rushing around to prepare the house and my little family for a Thanksgiving visit from my in-laws.

I sit for a moment with a pad of paper to go over my list of things to do today: I've put the finishing touches on lunch. I've cleaned the house from top to bottom. I've bathed both the girls. I've done two loads of laundry and a load of dishes. I've decorated the house with all my favorite holiday decor. I've lit candles. I've set the table. And, I've victoriously watched a four pound wasp spin around and around in circles as it made its way down our toilet.

I've nothing left to do but shower.

The girls are resting quietly upstairs. I contemplate a glass of wine, but think better of it. I make my way upstairs. I take a long, steamy shower, mentally enumerating what is left to do before my husband's parents ring the doorbell.

I realize I'm ready.

I get out of the shower and walk into our bedroom, still worried I'll find a hive, but instead, find my husband passed out on our bed. Poor thing, I think. He helped capture my predator in the early hours of the morning. He helped pull all the holiday decorations from the attic. He helped bathe the girls. And he was the executioner who pulled down the handle on the toilet after I happily tossed in the big, black creature by one of his twitchy wings.

I decide to let him sleep.

I dress quickly, towel dry my hair, and back out of our room. I carefully close our bedroom door and creep toward my oldest daughter's room. She's sleeping peacefully. Heavily. Beautifully. I stand in her doorway feeling tight in my chest.

Today is Thanksgiving. It's about being thankful. It's about family. I watch her chest rise and fall with shallow breath. I need to dry my hair. I need to put on makeup. But I can't seem to leave her doorway.

Impulsively, filled with the spirit of Thanksgiving, I decide I want to lie down with her and rest a bit. I tip toe over to her bed. She doesn't move an inch. I carefully shimmy my way onto the bed beside her. She doesn't move an inch. I carefully thread my arm behind her head and bring her close to my chest. She doesn't move an inch. We lie there, embracing, peaceful, calm. My eyes begin to feel heavy. And just as I drift off to sleep, thankful for this moment, reveling in my existence, my child's eyes pop open and she realizes I'm beside her.

"MOMMY!" she declares with the excitement of a thousand three year olds.

And as she lifts her body to hug me back, so happy I'm beside her, she rams her big, hard head smack into my mouth.

I cry out in pain. My lip immediately begins to throb and swell. I break our embrace and run out of her room and down a flight of stairs and into the kitchen to grab ice. I quickly wrap a cube in a paper towel. I hear my daughter crying from her bed, heartbroken she has hurt me and that our snuggle time is over.

I get the bleeding to stop. With ice melting in my hand, I make my way to the stairs, thinking I have time to get to my child before her sobs wake her father and sister from their slumber. As my foot hits the first step, the door bell rings.

I open the door to see my in-laws standing bright-eyed and ten minutes early.

"Oh dear!" my mother-in-law exclaims. "What happened to your face?!"

Evening

My in-laws have left. The welt on my wrist is nearly gone. My swollen lip has subsided enough that I no longer lisp.

The baby is sleeping peacefully upstairs. Holiday music plays softly in the living room as my oldest child paints quietly beside the fireplace. My husband pours me a well-deserved glass of wine.

Despite the feast at lunch, my child complains of hunger.

"I'll make you pasta," I say as I affectionately rub her head.

"Oh! I love pasta," she says, eyes as big as saucers.

This I know. Of all things I make her, she loves my bow tie pesto pasta the most. It secretly thrills me to make it for her, even though I truly hate to cook.

I turn on the stove and place a pot of water on it. Jim brings me my glass and we stand in the kitchen talking about the day.

His parents were good. The visit was nice. The girls were the model grandkids. We feel thankful.

My daughter wanders into the kitchen and hugs my leg as I pour the noodles into the boiling water. I bend down to kiss her. The day is winding down.

I pull a noodle from the rolling water, blow on it and bring it to my mouth. The pasta is ready.

"Go get in your seat, sweetie," I say to her and she makes her way into the dining room and crawls up into her chair.

I turn off the range. The flame extinguishes. I find the lid to the pot and place it on the top. I bring the pot to the sink and prepare to drain the water. But as I tip the pot up on its side, my stung wrist begins to throb and my hand slips slightly. Instantly, boiling water is rushing over my other hand and I yelp, jumping back in pain. As I do this, my finger touches the boiling hot pan and is instantly seared.

I throw the lid, and the pot, and what's left inside of it, angrily into the sink. I storm out of the kitchen holding my finger.

"Run it under cold water!" Jim yells from the kitchen as he gathers wet, hot noodles from the sink.

Minutes later, my finger--still beet red--feels better. Good enough to carry out the rest of my child's favorite meal. I stir in the pesto. I scoop out a portion for my daughter and put it in front of her at the table.

There I sit, wasp stung wrist, fat lip and burned finger, watching my child inhale the pasta I made for her.

"How's your wrist?" Jim asks across the table.

"Better," I say somberly.

"And your finger?" He asks, looking the ice pack I have resting on it.

"Better," I shrug.

"And your lip?" my sweet child asks between bites.

"Better," I respond.

"Good," she says with her mouth full. "I'm sorry I did that."

I laugh. Impressed by her in a whole new way.

"And mommy..." she says quietly.

"Yes," I say, bringing the wine to my lips.

"Thank you for this," she says, pointing to her plate.

And for a moment, I almost think her sweetness, her innocence, her beauty and her kindness are enough to erase all the pain I have endured today.

And it just almost is.

For that, I am thankful.

Overreaching

When my husband was in high school, he asked his parents if he could go to New York City during winter break. They had agreed, back in the days before cell phones and Giuliani’s clean up of Times Square, to let Jim experience NYC all by himself.

The jury is still out on whether or not this decision makes my in-laws amazing parents or outright negligent, but off their teenage boy went to the Big Apple solo.

While there he stayed in a cheap motel in Yonkers and got up early every morning to ride the bus into the city. He would spend 12 hours each day walking alone in the city, eating at restaurants, attending plays and riding in taxis, before catching the last train back to the suburb.

When Jim was a junior in college, he decided he wanted to attend film school. For a top film school, he needed to go to NYC or LA. Having never been to the west coast, he opted for Southern Cal. And so, despite having grown up in small-town Oklahoma, despite having lived at home all through college, and despite having never been to the west coast, Jim applied and was accepted to USC. And so, he set out to live and attend graduate school in the gang-ridden South Central area of Los Angeles.

There, living in the slums, Jim graduated top of his class with a Master of Fine Arts degree in film and television production. He then randomly found his way onto the ABC studios lot for a guided tour of the stages. There, right in the middle of the tour, he befriended a scriptwriter for General Hospital, and a few days later was offered an internship on the show. A few months following, the internship turned into a writing position and he spent years helping write the show and earn it—and himself—two Emmys.

Later, having decided to leave behind the fast-paced and outrageously expensive life in LA, Jim moved back to Oklahoma to buy a house, find a wife and have some babies. But before he did the latter two of those, he saw a job announcement seeking a television scriptwriter for the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE). Or as Jim calls it, soap operas for sweaty men. Having long been a fan of professional wrestling (I know, I know), and with experience in long-form story telling, Jim applied for, and was given, the job.

So, despite having just bought a house in Oklahoma, he took off for Connecticut, at 6-feet-tall and 130 pounds, to sit in a room full of 7 foot-tall, 350 pound professional wrestlers and draft their stories from week to week. At the time Jim was writing for two of the most famous wrestlers—Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock—for the highest rated cable show on TV: Monday Night Raw. There sat my slender, smart, sophisticated and soft-spoken husband—between hulking, aggressive and powerful men—pitching ideas of how they could poetically bash each other over the head with metal folding chairs.

In general, I have a level of unfounded confidence that gets me through most of the bigger challenges in life. But there are also moments of intimidation and insecurity in which I feel perhaps I’ve overreached my potential. Out-stretched my abilities.

When I was high school, my parents insisted I enroll in advanced Calculus. They had forced this on my sister and brother several years earlier, so I knew I probably wouldn’t escape this absurdity. So, as a senior in high school, I was in class with 15 other students who I came to understand were not there because their parents demanded it, but because they had tested extremely well and earned their seat in the classroom.

Our calculus teacher, despite being among the greatest teachers I’ve ever had, did one truly traumatizing thing: she posted our grades on the wall. And while only our social security numbers identified these grades, there was only ever one grade lower than an A in the entire class. So not only did I feel like the idiot in the classroom, but now a large group of really smart people had my SSN.

It took years of self-love and therapy to see that, while I didn’t make an A in advanced Calculus, I also didn’t do horribly. In fact, I finished that course with a B and have gone on to have a fairly normal and productive life.

When I studied abroad in college, I felt instantly I had overreached. Every part of leaving my home country to live for half a year in a foreign land--even an English-speaking one--was difficult. When our plane touched down in London that first day, I was full of enthusiasm and energy. But when we arrived on campus, my roommate and I were told our dorm room was not yet ready and to come back in a few hours.

She wandered off to buy a cell phone and some other toiletries, leaving me to roam the city all alone in my first day in another country.

While I’d like to say that I went skipping through London drinking tea and looking for the Queen, I actually sat down on a park bench and cried. I was homesick and terrified. Lonely and afraid. And I was fairly certain that I could not survive six solid months in this strange land where cars drove on the other side of the road and it rained constantly.

While looking back on my time studying abroad is only thought of with warm feelings and pleasant memories, the first few weeks were brutal. I used my showers every morning to cry. The early days abroad had me truly believing I was pathetic. I had stretched out my arms for this amazing adventure and felt I couldn't quite grab hold of it.

But after I tackled the first month, I began to find my rhythm. I stopped crying in the shower and started drinking at the pub. I went with my roommates to plays on the West End, bars in SoHo and markets in Piccadilly. We started planning trips to France, Switzerland and Italy. Before the month was up, I dreaded returning to the U.S.

This past week I attended an academic conference focused around my field of study: nonprofit governance. There in Denver, Colorado, the top researchers in the field gathered together to share ideas, papers and teaching strategies. For three solid days I attended session after session in which highly accomplished scholars shared the newest and greatest research being conducted in the field.

Now, as junior faculty I don’t expect to know what these scholars know. I’m not expected to present such sophisticated research at this stage in my career. But I am expected to at some point. And so, with every session, I saw my future unfold and felt my skin break out in a sweat. Beyond that, I often feel a bit of a fraud when I’m teaching to students who are in their 60s or when a student asks if I’m old enough to have any experiences in the field. Despite graduating with the right degrees and securing a faculty position, I often feel my arms aren't long enough to envelop it all.

And don’t get me started on how much I overreached when I became a mother. Even three years in, I feel a bit under qualified to raise these strong and beautiful girls.

The other night, while out to dinner, I asked Jim about his time in New York and LA and Connecticut. Mostly, I wanted to know how he was able to continually put himself into situations in which he was clearly reaching beyond his potential. How did he manage to always extend his arms and grab the things that were just beyond his reach? And, more importantly, why did he never see himself as overreaching?

He shrugged.

“In high school, before I left for New York, I read something in a travel book about how to survive as a tourist in the city.” He responded. “Guess it just stuck with me.”

“Oh?” I asked. “What did it say?”

“When you reach your destination, you’ve earned the right to be there.”

Tabling the Discussion

My three-year-old daughter is a shrewd negotiator.

One of her many schemes is to convince us to let her reserve something for later if we won’t let her have it in the moment. She’ll come to us and ask for a piece of candy. The answer is usually no. She’ll nod respectfully but then ask for the same thing in a different way:

“Can I put a piece of candy on the table?”

When we inquire why she wants to do this, she explains that perhaps later, maybe after dinner, it would be all right for her to have the piece. And if it is, the candy will be ready for her.

This is surprisingly effective.

At any given time in our house, the dinning room table is littered with objects or treats over which my child is in current negotiations. And yet, by bedtime, the table is always magically cleared of clutter.

In my beginning years of teaching at the college level, I unknowingly developed a bad habit: I favored the male students. While this was completely unintentional, I came to the realization a few years in that I was constantly deferring to the men in my classes.

Now, in my flimsy defense, there were many reasons why this was the case. For starters, during the first five years of teaching I was an adjunct and taught undergrads at night in a different town. Often, I was the only person in the entire building late at night with my 20 or so students. To some degree, both conscious and unconscious, I felt a tiny bit of fear as a young female with so many male students. One night in class, during a particularly heated debate about gun control in which two male students became verbally threatening, I actually had justification.

Aside from that, I’ve always gotten along really well with men. In the romantic comedy of life, I am continually type-cast as the protagonist's funny best friend. I was a friend to boys growing up. I was a friend to boys in college. And I worked better with men than women in my first few jobs out of college. So, as an instructor, I naturally gave them the attention I’d always given them.

All of that is on me.

But, the other side is that the men naturally behaved differently in class. They talked louder. Interjected without fear. Effortlessly criticized my thoughts or the thoughts of their classmates. Blurted out without thought. And never struggled to speak their minds. This is an intimidating and powerful thing to watch from the perspective of the instructor. No wonder I favored them; they gave me something to favor.

And yet, the women in my class were consistently better writers, more effective public speakers, more thoughtful debaters and kinder classmates.

So when it finally occurred to me, on the long drive home one night after class, that I was more likely to pay attention to the men—because of fear, intimidation, interest and awe—I knew I had to change my ways.

The next class period I publicly apologized to the students. I spoke to everyone but only made eye contact with the women. I said that while I knew I had been fair in grading, perhaps I’d been too quick to defer to the louder, deeper voices in the class. And, from that day forward, I pledged to be the biggest advocate the women in the class ever had. I offered them private meetings, reference letters, job counseling, or to buy them a copy of Lean In. And then I challenged them to speak up. Sit on the front row. Interject more. And not be overrun by the men in the class as I had been.

Everyone stared at me blankly.

After class that night I felt foolish. How arrogant of me to assume any of the female students needed my advice, let alone wanted it. Maybe my favoritism of the men had been invisible to them. Did I just draw their attention to something they’d never even noticed? Did I offend the women? Alienate the men?

Yet the next day I received two emails, both from female students asking for letters of recommendation. A third asked for career advice. And a handful of others added me as a friend on Facebook.

Currently—having moved on from long commutes and late night classes, to a full time position with office hours—I find myself in very different terrain. And my relationship with my female students is quite different.

Teaching at the graduate level provides a very different student dynamic than the undergraduates to which I’d grown accustomed.  For one thing, women don’t struggle in class to compete with the men. They contribute equally. I don’t find myself deferring to the male voices, as they never overpower a woman’s. Happily, my female and male students are equal in the classroom. Both genders interject without fear. Challenge each other. Both are strong writers, good speakers and kind to each other.

While there isn’t much difference between my male and female students academically at the graduate level, there absolutely is at the personal level. My female students are struggling with a host of concerns that my male students either don’t feel or don’t express.

Emails from my female students pour in about missing class because they are stuck at home with a sick baby and no childcare. Or crying after class about a bad grade; the result of a lack of time to study between work and mothering. I see my female students tackle more behind the scenes. Struggling to juggle more. Attempting to excel in more. And feeling deeply passionate about it all.

The biggest mistake I see my young female students make is in thinking they can’t get everything they want out of life. They tend to stop themselves just short of going after it all. I see them settle for a mediocre relationship because they have a great job. Or become mothers and abandon their professional ambition. Give up on the idea of having kids because their future job will require so much travel.

When I was just starting off as a commuting adjunct, I was married but had no children. And it’s clear to me now that my perception of women at that time was born out of my lack of knowledge about them. What I knew of women was that they were kinda mean in junior high, desperately trying to fit in during high school, fun as hell in college and competitive as coworkers. It was the gender to which I belonged. The gender of my best friend. My mother. My sister. But in many ways, I didn’t necessarily feel a kinship.

So it wasn’t just the powerful voices of the men or the fact that I was friends with boys that was driving my favoritism in the classroom. It was that my own relationship with women lacked depth and strength.

Luckily, that’s what motherhood has provided for me. I instantly saw the differences in how my husband and I were treated as parents by outsiders. I saw the ways in which women struggled to achieve balance. Felt their selfishness conflict with their maternal instincts. Worked not to resent the men who didn’t feel the same, or as much, pressure. Or to hate the women who seemed to be handling everything better. I had my own, often insurmountable, struggles with balance, body image, depression and discrimination. I've earned the ability to relate now to others.

While some women understood the need to support and love each other from a very young age, it really took the birth of my children to gain insight into the extremely dynamic and complicated role of being a woman. Any woman. Children or not. Married or not. Undergraduate or graduate. Team Tina or Team Amy.

Now, I spend many of my student interactions advising young women who are struggling to balance school and motherhood. Or trying to maintain a healthy marriage while coping with stress. Or worried about how having children will affect their careers. Or wondering what exactly to think about Lena Dunham.

So when I hear a knock on my office door, and turn around to see one of my bright female students standing in the doorway, I’m ready for her. If she’s coming to me about a class assignment, I talk her through it. If she’s coming to me for help selecting next semester's courses, I give my feedback. But, if I’m lucky enough, she’s there just to talk about life.

And if that’s the case, I rely on the wisdom of my demanding, opinionated, negotiating three-year-old daughter at home—begging for a cookie to put on the kitchen table until after dinner—because she has taught me the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned as a woman:

Ask for everything you want. Never take no for an answer. Find a way to have it all.

And leave nothing on the table.