Putting feminist pedagogy into practice

Ahem. I am a bad daughter. A bad sister, a bad wife. I am a halfway decent teacher and a good mother and lover. And a total failure at being what one would typically consider "a woman". My mom called last night, after I finally caved once more to I.'s pleas for a blanket-bed on the floor to the right of my bed. She arrived on Sunday and called twice, once from the airport in Charlottesville, once from her home in New Hampshire. I didn't answer, or listen to my voicemail, or call back. She called Monday afternoon and I still didn't respond. Tuesday she sent an urgent email, and as luck would have it, I forgot my phone at home, so I emailed back that I had been busy and that I would call that night. She was at rehearsal until 11 her time, I went out to dinner. I half-listened to and erased all my messages before I got to the restaurant. I came home feeling strange and sad and sort of styrofoamy, if that makes sense, which it probably doesn't. I was feeling outraged by my University's policy on addressing sexual aggression against its female students after a long extemporaneous office hours meeting with a student who has been having trouble but really wanted to talk about personal issues. I was feeling like a bad daughter, sister, student, spouse precisely because I realized that I am willing to take an hour and a half out of my day to "counsel" a student (because I feel it my duty to respond when someone asks for help) and can't seem to find time to send mail to my family or give the attention that they deserve. Ach.

Then the phone call. Then me being too tired to do a video chat. "Did you get the package I sent?" she asks, I try to file through my porous cerebellum (she is always sending something)"No, I think they dropped a slip last week, but I haven't gone to the post office yet." "You really should." "I know, I'll go tomorrow, I just lost the slip."
I race out the door cursing at 8:05 with the munchkin in tow, as she eats a banana for breakfast in the car. I take her in to the play yard, confer briefly with her student teacher, who needs me to resign a human subjects release form, which I happily do, and I peel off to the post office, which, of course, I forget how to get to, and end up an exit past where I need to be. I pick up the package, come home and irony of ironies, it contains the following:

self-addressed stamped envelopes for my parents
pink clothing and princess dresses for my daughter
random mail that I don't want
hot-pink leopard print underwear for me

Here's the worst part. I needed the underwear, having left the house this morning with my favorite black pants and the absence of underclothing. The printer didn't work and I raced sweatily to the Instructional Computing lab (now our department is not supporting the printing of teaching materials because of budget crisis) to act like a total moron because I have never been in one of these labs before, make a mad dash to make copies of the test that I am about to administer, arrive at class only 8 minutes early (which for me is late), dripping, with banana and yogurt in hand (no time for breakfast) bottle of water, reading for other classes and my rank book. They can't possibly know how totally unkempt I actually am, I think, but I am left, as my kid's heads are bent in concentration, to ponder the neatly dressed, beautifully put-together young ladies in my class and my ego deflates in horrific ways as I confront the fact that I will never be that kind of woman. I will never be neat and tidy and shrunk to fit between the lines of matching pink coordinates. And I think about my commitment to certain feminist ideals, and realize the folly of my ways, that is, I can't understand why it causes me pain to not be able to mesh with the ideal of womanhood that I have in my head, even when it really goes against everything I believe in, and yet, it does. All this, and I keep smiling, answering questions, holding the hands that need to be held, encouraging others to take a risk, to get themselves out of bad situations, to strike a balance. I opt to write instead of run, deciding to postpone once more the excercise that my body is craving, because I feel the need to write these things down before I implode, only to have one of my lovely colleagues point out to me that my white t-shirt is on inside out.

Moral: I guess I should just own up to being a scrub because there is no changing me.