Meg Griswold

Almost Alumnae Speech

Today was the “Almost Alumnae Luncheon” at my school. Graduating seniors and mothers/special friends are invited to a lunch each year. There’s a student speaker, a faculty speaker, and a mother/alumna speaker. I was asked to be the faculty speaker. It was such an honor, and I want to share the text of my speech below.

(A quick note before my speech. Amy Grant is an alum of Harpeth Hall and she graciously performed three songs and played her acoustic guitar after the speeches. It was a moving performance that filled my soul in a way I didn’t realize I needed. When she came up to sing and started strumming and setting her capo, she said, “Meg, I wish I’d had you as a teacher.” I died. I am dead. Amy. Grant. You can write that on my tombstone. “Here lies Meg, Amy Grant gave her a shout out.”)

Here is the text of my speech:

Good afternoon. I am so honored to have been asked to speak to you today. In my high school, senior speeches happened at the end of the year, at a time much like this when regular class content was finished, and graduation was still a week or two away. Seniors met in a large room, and we took turns going up and giving a speech to our class. It was a chance to process, to remember and to say goodbye. Teachers were also allowed to give speeches, and I’ve been waiting, hoping that someday I might get a turn to speak as my teachers did. And how fitting that I too am in something of a senior year at Harpeth Hall. I’m in a similar position to you, preparing to leave the home I’ve known for seven years. I am poised on the lip of a new adventure, about to speak myself into the world, to utter a new existence for myself, just as you are.

Perhaps you are feeling a lot of pressure for the next four years. Someone might have told you that college was the best 4 years of their life. With no disrespect to the lovely memories of those folks, I’ve always been bothered by that. My best years will be behind me at 22?

I’m not here to say that college is not wonderful, magical, special. It can be. Certainly, it’s the first time you will take off into the world alone. But it is not the only time this will ever happen, it is just the first time. It is the beginning of beginnings, one of many fresh starts that you will be granted during your tenure on this earth. My adventure teaching in Brazil next year should serve as a tangible reminder of that. And as a person lucky enough to have had more than one new beginning, I have a few words of advice to share–as much a reminder to myself as lessons for you.

First, embrace impatience. Anyone can tell you to be patient, serene and calm. But I want you to be impatient. Chill is overrated. You’re excited for this new chapter to start. You want the rest of your life to start now!

Good, I say. Be hungry. Want it. Then, use that impatience as fuel to learn, to grow, to move somewhere new.

In 2011, I’d been living in New York City for 6 years going to grad school and then teaching. But I was impatient to leave. A teaching job in the upper school at Harpeth Hall popped up in the listings. I was hungry for a new beginning.

After embracing impatience, my second piece of advice is to be foolhardy. Not foolish, mind you, but foolhardy. To be foolhardy is to be bold, and recklessly so. Chase those goals with confidence. Sit at the table, even when you don’t know anyone; knock on the big door; raise your hand in a crowded room; bite off more than you can chew.

Who was I to apply to Harpeth Hall? I didn’t know anyone, I lived in another state, I was only in my 4th year of teaching. I had a million reasons not to apply. But I wanted to teach at a place like this. So I was impatient and dashed in with a foolhardy confidence.

Then, I showed up. Show up–that’s my next piece of advice. Showing up is more than going to class. Showing up in your own life can be incredibly hard. It feels easier to run, to hide. To cancel or to sit out. It’s easier to come up with an excuse, to find a distraction. Showing up for yourself is harder than it seems.

We spend too much time waiting for perfect conditions. I’ll write that book when I have the time or the perfect idea. I’ll apply for that job when my resume has exactly the right things on it. When I have the courage to move to another country, I’ll do it.

My secret is that I’m not brave, or honestly even ready. But, being impatient and bold and showing up is what brought me here. After a phone interview with Ms. Powers for the upper school English job, they flew me to Nashville to interview and teach a lesson. I still thought my chances were slim. Who was I? Some public school teacher from New York with a theater degree. But I showed up. And I poured all of me into it.

After 2 agonizing weeks of waiting, the call came in that I got the job.

So, you’re going to let yourself be impatient and foolhardy, you’ll show up even when you aren’t ready, even if you’re scared. Then I want you to listen. Pay attention. So, cliche, right? A teacher telling you to pay attention! Let me tell you something about adults. The path to getting where we are now may seem so inevitable when you see us up here. But in the beginning and the middle of the story that leads to this moment, the ending was anything but certain. The path doesn’t go in a straight line. You’ve got to pay attention to the signs along the way.

Some of you may know this about me, but I was a STEM kid. In addition to theater and the humanities, I took advanced math, and I even doubled up in higher level chem and bio in senior year. And in high school I needed an answer when people asked what I wanted to be. I was good at bio and chem and I didn’t really love physics, I liked working with kids, so… pediatrician. I mean, that’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re good at STEM and like working with people, right?

So, I went to college hungry and impatient. In freshman year, I showed up and volunteered at the children’s hospital, and worked in a research lab. I took all the math and science classes, and I got straight A’s.

Then, near the end of freshman year, I was sitting in my chemistry class, looking to the world like the ideal student. But in my head, I couldn’t make myself care about it anymore. I was miserable. I was so unhappy. I had been steaming forward with such vigor toward med school, doing everything I was supposed to do. And yet, when I paid attention, the signs around me were so clear. I paid attention to the truth, deep down, that this path wasn’t right for me anymore. Just because you’re good at something, doesn’t mean you have to do it.

So, what now? What was my life going to be? I felt a deep sense of despair, something akin to a major break-up. Despite the despair, I dropped my biology major and pre-med focus. Theater was the other thing I loved doing, so I turned my impatient energy toward a career on the stage. I went abroad during my junior year to London, and I studied Shakespeare and classical acting all day. From 9 am to 6 pm, I immersed myself in theater.

And then, second semester…you may have a sense of where this is going…I was miserable. In March, when the cast list was posted for the play, for the first time in my life, I didn’t care what part I got. I’d never felt that way before. But I listened to that feeling.

I came home that summer and regrouped. I got an education internship at the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival. That summer, teaching kids about Shakespeare, I felt a happiness and fulfillment that–finally–lasted.

It may sound totally obvious now, seeing me standing here, that I was destined to be a teacher. But as a 21-year-old, I had no idea. Even though I realized education was a good fit, it would take a year of graduate school for me to realize that teaching English was where I belonged.

So I want you to pay attention. Forgive yourself if the career or field you picked perhaps as far back as elementary school doesn’t end up being the one you land on. It’s not bad to admit you don’t love it like you thought you would. It’s not quitting to follow where you are most happy. And you don’t have to do something just because you are good at it.

My husband, David, likes to quote a math teacher who says, “Find what you love. Do more of that.”

You might find that the thing you love was not the thing you were known for being good at at Harpeth Hall. College is a new beginning so that you can start anew. You are not a fixed person. And you will not always be the person your parents and classmates thought you were while you were here. When I won the English award in high school, my mom said after the assembly, “I thought you weren’t good at English.” Going to college and then into the world let me see myself beyond the lens of my parents and high school peers. It’s good to get out and see yourself more clearly.

So, pay attention. Find what you love. Do more of that. Listen to mentors and professors when they compliment and encourage you. Try to silence the voices that tell you that you aren’t “that” kid. The kid who’s good at [blank]. Trust that you don’t know yet exactly what kind of person you are. Trust that you are still forming. I’m 35 and I have three kids and I still see so much change happening in my life. I’m still forming. I hope it is ever thus.

Be impatient. Be foolhardy. Show up. Pay attention. Find what you love, do more of that.

It’s what brought me to be standing on this stage, after the seven most formative years of my teaching. Like you, Harpeth Hall has been an incredible education for me. I have learned things here that I never imagined. I have accomplished things I couldn’t have done had it not been for this place and the people in it. And now I will take those gifts that this beauty on the hill gave me, and I will, as poet Thomas Lux says:

boil and boil, render
  it down and distill,
  concentrate
  that for which there is no
  other use at all, boil it down, down,
  then stir it with rosewater, that
  which is now one dense, fatty, scented red essence
  which you smear on your lips

And go forth
to plant as many kisses upon the world
as the world can bear!

Thank you.

Travel

Shedding

For our upcoming move to Brazil in July, we are only taking 15 suitcases. No furniture, no shipments. For all five of us, just clothes, books, toys and kitchen items that will fit in suitcases on the plane. Since November, we’ve been selling, donating, and giving our stuff away, preparing to eventually shed 95% of the contents of our house.

As each weekend approaches, I start to peer into cabinets and closets. I find an excuse to go survey the basement crawl space. I’m making mental lists: the mitre saw, the Halloween decorations. The old coolers, the potty training toilet, the roasting pan and the ice cream maker. On Saturday morning, my hands are positively itching, and when the baby goes down for his nap, I throw on sneakers and head down into the crawl space.

Like a classic southern crawl space, it doesn’t literally require me to crawl, but it has unfinished dirt walls, exposed beams and a dirt floor. It has some patches of concrete poured onto the ground, but it’s basically a dirt room under my house. The walls show the red Tennessee clay that holds up our 1935 bungalow. I can see where tree roots were severed to dig the foundation, probably done by hand by someone grateful for job digging foundation holes after the Depression. And like a slowly-decomposing work of art, the dirt walls continuously shed a dermis of dust and dirt onto everything down there. The longer something has been sitting in the crawl space, the thicker the layer of red dust.

The dust is a way to date oblivion.

It’s creepy down there. The stairs are rattly and there are strange cricket-spider creatures. I inevitably track dirty footprints around the house when I emerge. But I also love it. That crawl space is living. It’s walls are slowly crumbling, dust to dust. It is the pull of entropy on my house, a measure of the passage of time. I don’t have the energy or desire to go down there and sweep up the dirt that mounds at the base of the earthen walls, but I could. I could fight the decomposition, or at least tidy it up. It would always win, though. And it’s just a room for storage. No one sees it but us. So we feel free to hide things in it, usually things we want to pretend don’t exist. It’s a room of decisions deferred. There’s the antique wood rocking chair that I rocked my firstborn in. I broke the caning on the back of the chair within the first few months. Perhaps I was rocking too vigorously, jamming my shoulder blades back too hard in my first-time-mom agony and exhaustion. Either way, the back split and so it went into the basement.

There’s the cable box we never connected and the landline phone for the line we canceled. The only people who called it were my dad and telemarketers. My fins and snorkeling mask are down there along with my scuba certification. Two camera tripods, even though I no longer own a camera. There’s a gourd that’s been painted to look like Santa. Baking dishes from dead grandmothers’ kitchens. Empty file folders. Ice skates and roller blades. This whole basement ages me. I don’t roller blade or scuba dive anymore. Honestly, my children might want those items before I ever get a chance to use them again.

It could be called the Kingdom of Might down there. I might need that landline again. I might want to rollerblade again some day. I might find someone who can re-cane that rocking chair.

No. No I won’t. I know that for sure now. It’s amazing to clear away all that might clutter. Now I focus on can. I can finish my next novel. I can move to South America in July. I can go blow bubbles outside with my kids instead of reorganizing all the crap I’m storing in the crawl space. And now that I’ve given away the rollerblades and the mitre saw and the empty folders, I am no longer burdened with the weight of all the things I might be doing, all the things clamoring for my attention.

I know now what deserves my attention. My family. My teaching. Travel. My writing. I don’t need a mitre saw or a snorkel. Those are not the things I wish I was doing. I want to be writing. Or reading a new book, or playing Memory with my kids.

And I can.

Teaching, Travel

In the bowels of bureaucracy

In the past 6 months, we have gotten: new passports, new drivers licenses, TSA precheck, Global Entry, FBI background checks, and Brazilian visas.

Applying for our Brazilian work visas was by far the hardest part. We had to go through a process called apostille, which is basically an internationally recognized certification of documents that is recognized by other countries. You have to get a document notarized by a notary, then certified by the county clerk, then apostilled by the secretary of the state you live in (not the national Secretary of State). That’s three confusing government buildings and their correspondingly obscure parking lots.

But we did it! After we had all of these documents apostilled, we mailed them to Brazil and eventually our visas were approved. Then more paper work (and FBI background checks), and we sent all of that to the Brazilian consulate in Atlanta. It’s a little scary to put your passports and your kids’ birth certificates into a mailbox. But they got there, our visas were affixed, and they got back to us safely.

Everyone loves to have an opinion about bureaucracy, but I have a few thoughts of my own, now that I’ve spent some time navigating multiple levels within two national governments.

The Tennessee county clerk and secretary of state offices were clean, well run and easy to navigate. People were kind and moved with efficiency. I kept asking about where to go for an apostille like I didn’t quite believe it was a real thing (it is) and every time they knew exactly what I needed and how to give it to me. It was also cheap, costing only 80 bucks to get 10 documents done.

The harder thing to apostille was our NYU and Columbia transcripts. We have to submit those for our work visas because we are applying for a work visa as someone “highly qualified.” We aren’t in NY state anymore, so we paid a company $150 (each, for David and me) to go get our transcripts and have them apostilled (notary –> county clerk –> secretary of state) and then mailed to us in Tennessee.

Oh, and once our visas were approved, and we mailed our passports to the Brazilian consulate in Atlanta, we had to include $1,450 in money orders . Yes, $290 each for our visas.

I told a co-worker in a professional development session on mindfulness that we are becoming immigrants to another country. That’s how Brazil sees us, and it’s correct. But it’s a strange thing to think about as someone with an American passport, and may strike some as surprising. She asked me how it felt to be an immigrant to another country. That’s an interesting question.

First, it’s made me feel even more compassion for immigrants to the US. We have a company guiding us through this and doing some of it on our behalf and it is still hard. And I have 2 degrees, a solid income, and a support system. The school in Brazil is reimbursing us for all visa-related expenses. This is so hard in the best of circumstances. And not the kind of thing you enter into lightly.

Second, I feel so lucky that I happened to be born in Ohio and was able to have the opportunities that led another country to consider me “highly qualified.” It was the luck of the draw that I was well educated and was able to get 2 degrees from great universities and 11 years of teaching experience. If I’d been born elsewhere, it’s likely that as a woman I would not have been educated or offered those same opportunities. I’m very, very lucky.

And yet here I am leaving it. That’s not lost on me. I’m a very privileged immigrant with a passport to a country that exists and that I can return to and making a living in. I’m not destitute or desperate. I think about the images of bombed out buildings and people fleeing Syria. They don’t have the luxury of smooth bureaucracy and duplicate copies of all their vital documents.

I feel fortunate to have bureaucracy. Yes, the DMV took an hour and a half, but I got a license. I have ID. I can show someone who I am. How many millions of refugees don’t have any records like that? How many people live without documents? Maybe these documents are lovely and this bureaucracy is a sign of privilege. If so, I’ll take my labyrinthine hallways and always-full parking lots, if I get what I need at the end.

Teaching, Travel

Vamos

The Griswolds have big news! In July 2018, we are making a big international move. Below is something I’ve written and shared with my students and colleagues at my current school. NB: All of the seniors at my school give a speech during their senior year. I’ve been here seven years, so I’ve heard roughly 700 speeches. I decided that as I am moving on to my next chapter, it was fitting to write my own “senior” speech.

This semester I’ve been teaching my students about the Hero’s Journey. Developed by Joseph Campbell, the Hero’s Journey is a way to describe the pattern of stories throughout different cultures and eras. Even across oceans and millennia, there is a pattern to the stories that we humans tell, and Joseph Campbell studied it and described its features.

The first stage is the hero in their normal world. The status quo. But something happens: an inciting incident occurs, and the hero receives the call to adventure. It’s the moment that turns a regular day into an extraordinary one, one that kicks off a journey that takes the hero far from home.

How fitting that just as I’m teaching this story structure, I write to share with you that the Griswolds are heeding the call to adventure. In July we will be moving as a family to São Paulo, Brazil to teach at The Graded School, an American International School.

Many of you know that I grew up overseas with my family. When I was 10 we moved from Cincinnati to Mexico City, and at the end of 6th grade, we moved to Caracas,Venezuela, where I lived until I graduated from high school. I attended an international school in Caracas where 27 languages were spoken. I became fluent in Spanish and conversational in Portuguese. And I always thought that some day my life would lead me back to an international life.

Now that our oldest, Calvin, has started Kindergarten, we started thinking about the educational experience we want for him. We also started to think about the next adventure and challenge for us as educators. Now that our family is complete, the time feels right to set off.

But none of this would be possible if it hadn’t been for Harpeth Hall. When we moved here in 2011 from New York, I thought seriously about leaving the profession. I was coming from 4 challenging years of teaching in New York City public and charter schools. I was approaching burn-out. Borders Bookstore had just declared bankruptcy and I thought, “Well, there went my back up plan!”

I was so lucky to get hired to teach at this amazing institution. Far from burning out, I reached new heights as an educator because of Harpeth Hall. Collaborating and learning with my amazing English department colleagues was a transformative experience. Their experience and expertise, their commitment to the students, their reflection and openness on their own teaching: these things inspired and uplifted me. I became the educator I was always meant to be because of Harpeth Hall. I learned not just from my department, but from all of the faculty and staff. I learned about what a team of people can do when they are all united to work for a common goal. From our administration I learned about grace, about strength, about humanity. And all of these lessons have been formative.

Perhaps most importantly, I learned from teaching amazing students. The students at Harpeth Hall let me be creative, let me challenge myself, let me learn more than I thought possible about teaching and learning. Over my seven years at Harpeth Hall, my students’ dedication, effort, and creativity have made this such an amazing place to work. I will always carry with me the earnest desire to learn and grow that they brought to school each day.

Moving to Brazil and teaching at an international school would not have been possible had we not spent these 7 years at Harpeth Hall. When we were told that we were attractive candidates, I knew that Harpeth Hall was to thank.

So, I feel that I am now writing my own senior speech. I imagine that I am looking out at a theater of my chosen family. I feel gratitude for each and every one of you. For how you’ve pushed me, supported me, questioned me, cheered me on. Our departure, our call to adventure, is not an unhappy ending, but the beginning of an exciting new chapter. It is bittersweet for us, to know that we will be leaving a fantastic place filled with wonderful people. But it also feels right.

We will take each of you with us when we go. Your ears will burn next year with tropical heat because we will be singing your praises and carrying your lessons with us. We hope that we can keep our connection to Harpeth Hall alive, and see this new chapter for us as a new chapter for you as well. A new partnership with the southern hemisphere. Come on, I’m sure Harpeth Hall will spring for plane tickets to Brazil so that you can come check out what we’re doing!!

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

With Love,

Meg Griswold, Class of 2018

Writing

We need Princess Elizabeth’s story

The news over the past few weeks has been startling. Starting on October 5, when the New York Times broke the Harvey Weinstein story, a cascade of women and men have come forward, breaking years or even decades of silence, to speak about harassment and assault by powerful and influential men. Harvey Weinstein was just the beginning.

Then the Roy Moore story broke. I got chills when I read the details. A 14-year-old pursued by a 30-something man. And when the apologizers appeared, those who excused Roy Moore’s behavior, the internet started posting pictures of themselves 14-year-olds.

This story sounds very familiar. It’s the basic plot of my novel, The Princess’s Guide to Staying Alive.

When Elizabeth Tudor (the future Virgin Queen) was 13, Henry VIII died and she went to live with her last stepmother, Katherine Parr. Katherine Parr remarried quickly enough to turn heads. She married her old flame, Thomas Seymour. Seymour was the uncle to the king and an ambitious social climber. His motives may not be possible to nail down exactly, but he began making predatory sexual advances on his step-daughter Elizabeth. Katherine was having a difficult pregnancy and her marriage was fraying. Elizabeth was the sister of the king, but the bastard daughter of a beheaded queen. She was a young woman in a vulnerable position, and she became Seymour’s target.

In the summer of 1548, Elizabeth was sent away from her stepmother’s home to live with a family friend. Katherine Parr had finally realized the extent of Seymour’s actions. After being sent away, Elizabeth would never see her stepmother again. Katherine Parr died in childbirth in late summer 1548. In early 1549, Thomas Seymour was arrested and charged with treason. Thrown into his long list of charges was conspiring to marry Elizabeth after Katherine Parr died. That charge was treason for Elizabeth–royal women weren’t allowed to negotiate their own marriages. That was the sole purview of King and his council.

The rumors of Thomas’s behavior with Elizabeth were all over court by this point. There were certain factions who thought that if they could get Elizabeth to confess, she would be charged with treason and perhaps beheaded, thereby eliminating another heir to the throne. Sir Robert Tyrwhit, a local knight, was sent to Elizabeth’s house to interrogate her. It’s clear from his letters to the Lord Protector that he thought that Elizabeth would buckle and confess. After all, she was just a 15-year-old, orphaned bastard.

But here is what this story is really about. It’s about strength and survival. It’s about how a girl with an education defeats a grown man. Because that’s what she did. Robert Tyrwhit lived in her house, had her ladies spy on her, and used every tactic he could think of to get Elizabeth to slip up and implicate herself in treason. He belittled her. He berated her. He pretended to befriend her.

And Elizabeth outsmarted him. She only told him things he already knew, she played weak, she played sad. She was patient. She didn’t lose her cool. Her extensive education and training in oration and argumentation kept her always stay one step ahead of his tactics. She wore him down. She outlasted him.

What I want everyone to know is that Elizabeth’s story is one of triumph and survival. You need to look at those portraits, the Rainbow and the Pelican, and you need to know that you are looking at a woman who survived. She survived and she reigned. And for some, they might read her story and feel less alone.

I’m sort of biased because I wrote it, but I think that my book is important. It’s timely. And I hope that it makes it out into the world.

Writing

SCWBI Conference for the win!

My hope was that the SCBWI Midsouth conference would bust my funk…and it did!

There’s so much to say, but I have to begin by sharing that I feel very lucky to live in this region. Ruta Sepetys won the Crystal Kite award and her speech was awesome. She spoke at the school where I teach a few years back when we read Between Shades of Gray for the all school read. She’s a great public speaker, despite saying that she prefers not to leave her house. She said that she was standing there because she’s a “supported failure.” I absolutely love that concept and can’t wait to talk about it with my students.

Laurent Linn gave the key note and it was everything I needed to hear. He was inspiring. He was humble and warm. Hearing about his journey as an artist and story-teller was really powerful, and a great start to the conference.

I went to so many amazing sessions. I learned a lot and my head was buzzing with ideas. I love the feeling of having ideas! I felt like manuscripts that were languishing in my stack suddenly got a second chance at life! Ninja Queen lives! (I really should make shirts that say that.)

Katie Carella gave a great presentation on the 4-year-old Branches line of early readers at Scholastic. I absolutely loved that session. I learned a lot and I loved her keynote with Jessica Young. My son loves the Haggis and Tank books, so it was great to see how those books came into the world. (I’m going to submit Ninja Queen to her. Ninja Queen lives! Gotta get some T-shirts!)

Linda Camacho did a great session on YA lit that fed my academic soul as well as my writer’s soul. She talked about the origin of YA lit and what the trends have been like for each decade since then. I appreciated her thoughtful and balanced outlook.

I had a great face-to-face critique that confirmed that the edits and revisions I’ve put into PRINCESS’S GUIDE over the last month were the right direction. That’s a great feeling. I can see how much I’ve learned about writing over the past 6 years.

I connected with old friends and made some new ones. We’re already adding to our critique group and planning our next meeting.

My amazing husband and co-parent flew solo with the rest of our clan, and I was relieved that the weekend went smoothly in my absence. This is the last conference where I’ll have to pump in the car in between sessions–yay. I’m so happy that I was able to do this conference and that I am also a supported failure.

Based on my critique, I’ve put in a few more revisions on my YA novel, and I’m working on polishing my submission for Katie Carella at Branches. I feel energized as I move into NaNoWriMo with my new middle grade project. I signed up on the NaNoWriMo website and finally settled on a working title: Normal Girl (Reluctantly) Saves the Day.

Okay. My batteries are fully charged and I’m ready to set off!

Teaching, Writing

On being in a funk

Yesterday I described my current mood to a student and she said, “You’re in a funk, Mrs. Griswold.”

She’s right, and she named it well. I’m in a funk. It may the broken nights of sleep due to the 9 month old and his cold. It might be the new class I’m teaching. But it’s really about rejection. This week brought two rejections from full requests. I call them “je ne sais quoi” rejections. “I just didn’t click with this” or “I just didn’t connect.” This came on the heels of me abandoning a best seller, a book I fully expected to love. And I didn’t. I couldn’t connect, so I set itdown.

I hate it and I get it.

I think about my students who probably get back at least 2 pieces of critiqued work a day, maybe more. And they don’t get to wallow, they have to keep moving forward onto the next unit or assignment. So it’s a good reminder that I’m in a place of adult privilege. I get to choose when I reach out for feedback and when I don’t. Boohoo, Mrs. Griswold.

I printed a piece from The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates called “A Quick Note on Getting Better at Difficult Things.” It was a 6 paragraph balm. A boon. He talked about learning French. The capital S Struggle. He quoted Carolyn Forche who said, “I’m going to have it.” (I don’t have any tattoos, but if I did, I think it would be that sentence.)

The students loved Coates’s piece. They liked the line, “But I also feel like I am getting better at stumbling.”

Reading that with them lifted me out of my funk, somewhat. My gloom stems from my fear that the manuscript done for, that the error is fatal. The worst feeling is not knowing what to fix or work on or learn. I need to feel like I have a path out.

Maybe I just can’t have any of those answers. I just have to wait and deal with what comes.

And begin again. Again again. I’ve got my next idea in the hopper. (Is that the right metaphor? Like a train hopper car? Is there a grain hopper somewhere in my mind as well?) I’m going to write something new during NaNoWriMo.

I told a student today that I feel best when I’m creating. Because you can’t judge and create simultaneously. Or at least, I can’t. When I am making something, I have a beautiful feeling of flow. I like producing. It staves off the despair.

I’ve got my SCBWI conference this weekend. I know that will fill my heart. Maybe I’ll see the path out then. Maybe there will be good news when I get through the weeds and the vines.

Also a nap. I hope there’s a nap soon.

Teaching

My letter of introduction, 2017

Each year I write my students a letter of introduction that I read to them on the first day. Their first homework is to write me a letter back. This is my 11th letter, and one I’m proud of. Enjoy.

August 23, 2017

Dear Students,

I’m getting comfortable with failure. Failure is the wrong word, though. Failure is so final, it denotes an ending with nothing beyond it. Struggle is the word I prefer. Struggle isn’t over; struggle can continue; struggle keeps trying. So, I will say that I’m getting comfortable with struggle. Except comfortable is also the wrong word. Struggle is never comfortable or easy. But I’m getting better at struggle, at not letting struggle equal failure.

I’m getting better at struggle by being a writer. I’ve written two novels (which add up to 130,000 words, not counting all the words I cut or rewrote) and 5, 6, or 7 picture books—fewer words, but more agony over each one. And I’ve submitted my writing to strangers 400 times. I copy the email address and I click send, hoping I didn’t miss a typo, didn’t misspell the recipient’s name or (gag!) my own.

The letter a writer sends out with her sample pages is called a query. Query, which shares a root with inquire and question. I am asking a question: do you like this? Do you want to help me make this into paper and ink that will be dog-eared and underlined, carried in backpacks, passed from hand to hand?

What I’m really asking is, “Is this any good?”

But I write cool, collected query letters.

“I think you might like this…”

“I’ve attached the first ten pages…”

“I’d be happy to send the full manuscript…”

I try not to let my longing show through in these emails, like love letters stripped of their love. I don’t tell them that I’ve sent them a piece of my soul, hours and hours and hours spent clicking away at my desk in a closet, during babies’ naps or after bedtime kisses.

I sign my letters “Sincerely,” but “Lovingly” is a better fit. I’m sending the child of my brain in 0s and 1s across the air, flashes of light in fiber optic cables; sending a signal that I hope will materialize in the mind of the reader, and tell a story they didn’t know they wanted to hear.

I told a friend about waiting months for a response to arrive. She said, “It’s teaching you to hold things lightly.” Perhaps that’s it. In front of the blank page I don’t hold back, I jump Geronimo off of outline bridges into streams of Times New Roman. But then I release my words into the world accepting that maybe no one will read them, or the ones that do won’t like them.

But I keep thinking of that lottery slogan, “You can’t win if you don’t play,” and playing in this case means making something out of nothing and then accepting that that something might truly be nothing, nothing I can control, so something only for me. Maybe?

I wonder if you, dear students, add up all the quizzes and the tests and the papers, the rewrites and the early help sessions, the red pen slashes, the “come see me’s” and the “this needs more work.” Have you reached 400? Double that? We ask you each day to put some part of you on the page or the board and we tell you what didn’t work and maybe what did. So who am I to be sad or discouraged? Perhaps I’ve just gotten too far away from being a student, I’ve forgotten how to struggle and continue, as you do each day.

Because there’s no way from here to there without going through this. No shortcuts. You have to cut through the red pen and the paper with the machete of your mind. Hack a path, all on your own.

But you, you’ve got me. I’m just ahead of you, I’ve made it through this particular jungle and I’ve sketched a map that will help me to help you. Sometimes maybe you can see me and sometimes you can’t, and you’ll wonder what I know anyway. Maybe you’d be better just to set down and quit struggling. You’ve had to double back, you’ve hit dead-ends, maybe none of this is worth it.

But, I know. I know that you will make it. I know this even when you doubt. I believe when you won’t. If you will just keep swinging the blade, inquiring of the universe, asking the question again and again.

What I want is for you to be willing to struggle. Don’t ask me to lie to you and just tell you that you’ve arrived, that you don’t need to go any further. Don’t ask me to tell you that the struggle is over. Maybe you hope you’re different, that you got lucky and landed right near the end and soon you’ll get to rest.

“Oh baby,” (I croon in the voice of Billie Holiday) “there is no rest.” But you’re moving forward, I promise. Sometimes it’s slow, and sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes you’re even backtracking. But sometimes you gotta go back to move forward and I won’t quit you if you don’t quit yourself.

Who am I anyway? I’m Mrs. Griswold. I’ll be your struggle guru teacher this year and this is my lucky 7^th year at Harpeth Hall—that must be good omen. I have three kids whose pictures dot my bulletin board. I have an old dog who’s afraid of thunder, 6 chickens, and I keep bees in my backyard. I’m a slow runner, but I like to do it. I’m a theater major who now performs for audiences of 16 and gets to analyze plays every year.

Before I lived in Nashville, I lived in New York City. Before that, London and Cleveland. Back even further I lived in Caracas, Venezuela from 7^th grade to 12^th, and Mexico City for 5^th and 6^th grade. I speak Spanish fluently and enough Portuguese to have conversations in the present tense. Until age 10 I lived in Cincinnati. So where am I from? The answer is complicated but I’m happy to call Nashville home now.

Before we begin, would you write me a letter? Tell me about who you are. What are you struggling with? How does struggle feel to you? Where are you going? How can I help you? What do you love?

Sincerely (Lovingly),

Meg Griswold

Teaching, Writing

Lab Girl Review

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I remember really well when I first heard about Lab Girl by Hope Jahren. I was driving across town between teaching classes, trying to make it to a PreK tour on time. I was listening to On Point on NPR and I heard an interview wherein Jahren read an excerpt of Lab Girl. I had been swearing at the traffic that was making me late, but listening to Jahren read aloud from her book, I burst into tears. She has a line that just cut me right to the quick. It’s from a passage that is a few pages long where every paragaph begins “My lab is…” Here’s the quote I remember bringing me to tears:

There is no phone and so it doesn’t hurt when someone doesn’t call me. the door is locked and I know everyone who has a key. Because the outside world cannot come into the lab, thelab has become the place where I can be the real me. (19)

I had to jog across the street to the school from my parked car, wiping my eyes and sniffing. I made it to my tour just a few minutes late, and I knew I needed to read that book.

I had a baby in December of last year and I finally got my chance to read it this summer when I used my Christmas gift card to Parnassus from my in-laws. It did not disappoint!

(Sometimes I find it extra hard to write about a book I really loved. It’s almost too hard to articulate what my heart is saying, so bear with me.)

Lab Girl is the memoir of a Paleobotanist. She studies ancient plant fossils, and sometimes living fossils. She does some geology, too, but plants are her passion. Her book begins with her as a child in her father’s lab, but it quickly zooms forward and follows her in college, grad school and then working as a researcher and professor at a bunch of universities.

I love the structure of Lab Girl. The chapters alternate between botany and memoir. So, the odd numbers would be chapters about how plants grow, how roots work, how plants communicate. Some of it was basic science, but usually she jumped off of the well-explained basics to talk about cutting edge plant science. But these chapters weren’t like a text book, they were like poetic love letters to trees and plants. I loved reading them.

I also enjoyed the memoir sections. The big themes were never having enough money, being lonely, impostor syndrome, staking your claim as a woman at the table. So, you know, the same issues most professional women I know deal with. That was what was so great and relatable. She was really honest and open to her readers. She talked about her struggles with mental health as well. Those topics didn’t dominate the book, and there were times when she was holding back a bit, but I think she balanced the elements well. The variety made this book a very enjoyable read.

I’m going to use a few excerpts from this with my AP Language students next year. AP Language and Composition focuses on argument, rhetorical devices and language. This book is chock full of lyrical, narrative nonfiction that uses language in powerful ways. I’m actually going to pair a chapter she has on trees to a chapter of Sandra Cisneros semi-autobiographical novel The House on Mango Street, “Four Skinny Trees.”

What I really love about this book is that she is a very poetic, creative scientist. At schools, the disciplines tend to get so segregated and I think that sometimes students feel like you can’t be a creative writer if you are good at math and science, and all poets must hate numbers. Not true! I don’t bring it up often, but I was a very strong math and science student both in high school and college. I got A’s in Chemistry and Calculus in college and loved those classes.

Jahren has a strong sense of character as well. Bill is a huge part of the story and I enjoyed getting to know him. The chain smoking lab tech of her college days was also really vivid and alive on the page.

I also love a book that uses swearing well. This definitely falls into that category. I found myself repeating some lines of dialogue or narration out loud, either because they moved me or made me laugh.

Lab Girl is an excellent read and I highly recommend it, whether or not you’ve ever enjoyed science. In fact, Jahren begins the book by telling you to think of a tree you know or look out your window at a tree. Observe it. Tada! You’re a scientist. Her book was welcoming and warm and I loved it from start to finish.

Uncategorized

When primary sources make you cry

I’ve spent the last year getting to know Elizabeth Tudor. I have many posts coming about what I read and learned. But, I feel as though I’ve come to know her.

In particular, I’ve focused on Elizabeth from age 13-15, from Henry VIII’s death to the year after Katherine Parr’s death in childbirth. I teach English to girls of exactly that age, and after 10 years of teaching, I think I’ve learned a lot about the developing minds of teenage girls. I adore teaching in an all-girls school, and I really love watching my student make discoveries and find their voices. They are so smart, so funny, so hard working. If you need a little hope for humanity, come to my classroom and see the women of the future leading a discussion around my big oval table.

So, my lens when I’m researching and writing about Elizabeth Tudor is to imagine her as one of my students. Let me lay out what a whopper of a life this particular teenager would bring to my classroom:

Mother dead, beheaded for adultery and treason.
Beheading was ordered by father.
Father just died.
Blended family: total of 3 kids, all with different moms, all those moms are dead.
Little brother just became king and is now totally distant and inaccessible.
Older sister is 17 years older and there’s some personal and religious tension.

Over the course of those years, 1546-1549, Elizabeth would move in with her stepmother who would then die in childbirth. Her governess, Kat Ashley, who’d been with her since she was 3, would be thrown in the Tower, and Elizabeth herself would get accused of treason. Starting in January 1549, Elizabeth was interrogated daily by a grown man living in her house for 2 months. Friends, she was only 15 at this point. Can you imagine a student in your classroom with that kind of home life?

In the course of my research, I read transcripts of two letters Elizabeth wrote while being interrogated under suspicion of treason–and remember she was without a parent or even a governess for support. One letter in particular was written on the 7th of March, 1549 and was written to the Lord Protector. Elizabeth’s brother was king, but he was still very young, so a Protector was appointed to rule while he came of age. The purpose of her letter is to argue for the release of her governess, Kat, from the Tower. Kat Ashley was like a mother to Elizabeth, not a perfect one, but the only constant she’d had in her tumultuous childhood. There had been no evidence to formally charge Elizabeth with treason (not that Sir Robert Tyrwhit didn’t try to wring some out during her daily interrogations) and yet still her governess was locked in the Tower. The same Tower where her mother had awaited execution 13 years earlier.

Can you imagine the agony of waiting and wondering what would come of Kat, the agony of a 15-year-old girl uncertain of the way forward, whose reputation had just been publicly dragged through the mud?

All I could find of this letter was typed transcripts. I’m not joking when I say I found the edge of the Internet. I found it. There was not a digital image of that original manuscript anywhere on the Internet. So, I went to that good ole citation in the back of the books I had been reading. The manuscript was at the British Library. Not all of their collection is digitized, so I had to make a special request to have the letter photographed and sent to me. It took a little longer because they had to assess the state of the manuscript to make sure it was safe to handle without damage. I’m guessing that had to be handled in one of those special temperature and humidity controlled rooms (I assume) and I am sure the person touching it used gloves and a gentle touch. O that it had been me! (Someday, friends, someday.)

A few weeks ago, I opened my email and saw the attachments–my images had arrived! I opened them hungrily and started reading. To see Elizabeth’s handwriting, the evidence of her frantic thoughts, to hear the scratch of the quill in my mind, trying to keep a cool head so that she could effectively write and persuade the most powerful man in the kingdom to listen to her. And a life was riding on it. Add to that the fact that Kat would not have ended up in the Tower if not for Elizabeth, and the guilt and fear must have been paralyzing.

Except Elizabeth wasn’t paralyzed or helpless. That’s what’s so remarkable. She didn’t quit. She didn’t lay down and cry into the rug.

But, dear reader, I cried. I cried at my laptop looking at the images. My heart broke for that girl who could have been just another redheaded girl sitting around the table in my classroom.

Here is what it boils down to: I don’t think Elizabeth would have been the queen she was had it not been for this formative experience in her early teenage years. These letters are the evidence.

If you’re wondering if you can see these letters, the answer is yes! I am working with a history colleague on a digital humanities project with a website platform. I’m going to teach a unit called “The Power of Persuasion” next year in my AP Language and Composition class that uses Elizabeth’s letters and speeches, in addition to the letters and speeches of a modern woman in politics. Students will analyze the rhetorical devices and arguments presented by both Elizabeth I and the modern woman of their choosing. I can’t wait to share these manuscripts with students next year.

And I will share those manuscripts with you as well. I’m working on permission and rights currently. I want to make sure I’m going by the book. Stay tuned.