Hope..never stops at all?

1969--I am born and named Hope, a proper noun I somehow mistake as a missive and then a vocation.

1987--My senior year in high school, our English teacher, Mr. Scarpinato, asks us to choose a poem which describes the best quality of our best friend and then choose a poem which describes the worst quality of our best friend. Amy Erb, my partner and dearest chum, stands up and reads Emily Dickinson's "Hope is A Thing with Feathers" in voice filled with deepest love and admiration, bringing me to the kind of tears only teenage girls can share. She pauses and repeats the poem again, emphasizing every word in irritation, grinding her teeth as she spits out the final stanza, AND...NEVER...STOPS...AT...ALL, ending as the classroom erupts in laughter. She hits the nail on the head. My gift and my demon--a passionate idealism coupled with seemingly boundless energy.

1992--I stumble into a classroom and fall in love, with a profession--teaching.

2005--I stumble and fall (back) in love with my best friend, marrying him two years later. I become Mrs. Hope Love. Yes, Mrs. Hope Love.

2010--I give birth to my first child at age 40.

And all along the way, my gift and my demon has been a subject of prediction for others:

You'll settle down when you finally get laid (yes, an actual quote from a boy in my senior year)

You can't stay this passionate about teaching or you'll burn out (yes, an actual quote from a colleague);

Does your husband know what he's getting in to? (yes, an actual quote from a dear friend and mentor)

Just wait--motherhood will SLOW YOU DOWN. (yes, an actual quote from EVERY MOTHER IN MY CIRCLE from the moment I got pregnant).

And in choosing a title for this blog, I realized, not for the first time in the last six months, a great deal of my life has been a series of disproving other peoples' predictions, easily, almost unconsciously. And getting a real kick out of it: "I've got my hope, I've got my energy, I'm still not doing things half-assed just to get by, I still love my job, I'm still my own person even though I've got a wedding band and I haven't forgotten to make time for my art--nanny-nanny boo boo all you naysayers." And somewhere along the line, that series of successes calcified into vanity. Oh, yes, pride does come before the fall...

Because then I became a Mom. And while I retain the ability to live by my joys and not my fears and most people I work with would still like to see me prescribed a good dose of Ritalin, I'm starting to ponder what new identity, what new gifts and demons, will rise out of this new role. How do I retain the qualities that have always defined me and refine the traits I'd like to pass on to my son. More importantly, will I be able to jetison the vanities I have embraced which no longer serve me? Will my pride hold me back from the joys of motherhood and sap the energy I will need to raise a child who will enter high school the same year I am eligible to retire?

So here I begin my blog, as my son reaches his six month of life and my marriage begins its fourth year and my teaching career moves into sixteenth year and I turn forty-one, still twelve pounds heavier than feels comfortable after anything more than fifteen minutes of exercise.

Just using a new technology to an ancient end---scribe your thoughts so you can review them at a later date or share your ideas with others.

Pausing briefly,

Hope.