I first noticed them early in my freshman year of college. In our Biology 100 class, we sat in twos and threes. They sat alone, looking attentively in the professor’s direction, taking neat notes to read and review at their kitchen tables. We dozed, fidgeted, and looked at the clock, confident we’d figure out the material by test day. We still looked like children: bony-kneed, clad in baggy pajama pants and the confidence that comes from being told how smart you are for the last four years. They were soft, wrinkled, conscientious, nervous, and maternal; the women who came back to school after taking a mothering sabbatical. I’m about to become one of them. I’m enrolling in an MFA in Creative Writing program, with the first class starting in a couple of weeks.
My life is comfortable right now. After more than a decade of moving every couple of years, we’ve settled in a town and a neighborhood and a house we love, and plan to stay here for a long time. My husband feels challenged (in a good way) at work. After 10 years of parenting, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m relatively confident about my mothering (granted, they’re not teenagers yet). I find a measure of personal satisfaction through running and blogging and writing, and have good friends with whom I can talk about almost anything. We’re even managing regular date nights. So why do I want to go and mess all of that up?
Most mornings, I run with friends. We put in six or eight early miles, which gives us plenty of time to talk, and somehow it seems easier to be honest under the cover of darkness. One day last week one of them said, “Shelah, why do you need another master’s degree? Besides, isn’t this writing thing just sort of a hobby for you?”
Going back to school feels selfish. While my three older kids are in school all day, I had to find a preschool that would take my three-year-old for two full days each week. My husband, mother-in-law and babysitters will pick up my slack. We hired someone to clean our house. I looked at my calendar last week and realized that in the next month I’ll miss a Mother-Daughter activity at church and the dress rehearsal for my girls’ dance recital. The whole family will sacrifice so I can try to transform my hobby into a potential career. After a decade of unrelenting selflessness, going back to school feels incredibly self-serving.
I’m also terrified. An edgy haircut and trendy jeans won’t hide the fact that I’m a dozen years older than the average student. I used to have academic confidence, but that’s been eroded in these mothering years, when I discovered that even though I could discourse at length about the relative merits of Henry Adams and Henry James’s expatriate novels, I was powerless in the face of a three-year-old who wouldn’t poop in the potty. A few days ago a professor sent me an email, requesting 10 pages of a manuscript for a young adult novel. Since then, I’ve been struggling with writing a little bit of the story each day, often with my eight-year-old reading over my shoulder. I worry that it’s terrible, a failure. Back when I was in school the first time, if I failed, I failed. I didn’t have a husband and four kids sacrificing on my behalf.
On the other hand, I haven’t felt this energized in a decade either. I’m dreaming plot twists. I’m eager to get started. The stakes are higher than they were the first time I went to school, but I have a feeling that there will be an upside for my family as well. I hope they see that fear shouldn’t keep them from tackling new challenges.
When have you “hitched your wagon to a star?” What have been some of the unexpected benefits and consequences of the risks you’ve taken?
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