What is it about chasing waterfalls where even with known dangers, there are those who move under such currents?
While rivers and lakes are more peaceful and tranquil, there seems to be endless generations of those pulled toward the energy of waterfalls, perhaps drawn by its power and magnificence.
As in many schools, we celebrate Spirit Week to recognize seasonal leadership.
This last time, one of our school day theme was favorite artist.
In all the years I have taught, it took me some time to get comfortable partaking in the spirit.
When our three oldest attended school, I was on the younger end as a mother before I began to even teach.
Although I had received my teaching degree at the age of twenty-two, I had not activated myself into the actual realm of having my own classroom to teach until over a decade after, once our oldest three were well settled into school.
Staying home allowed me to keep myself away from crowds, only stepping out to meet and greet with other moms when it came to our children’s activities and events.
Otherwise, getting to walk around the mall, hit the gym, or enroll our children in activities were outlets for me outside of the home that had always been more than enough.
Protective and in great preference for the sake of their safety and bonding, I created a home atmosphere where my children could thus play and be entertained amongst themselves and friends rather than going out to major playgrounds.
As I’ve shared before, playing house was something I had always imagined being able to do with great pleasure.
To this day, my children have always been first preference for me- to hear and see them playing and laughing.
There is something in the heart that finds such joyous peace and honor to share the memorable moments with our children that even getting to hit the gym with a really good workout or, I dare say, getting a real good power nap, for me, could neither stand next to to compare.
It is with no doubt, although I had not taken time to reflect on it then, that by the time I decided to activate myself as an official teacher, what my oldest three thought of me and how they felt seeing me in this new role was quietly a concern to my heart, my mind, my body, and my spirit.
I was changing the course of the water.
Other than their friends when around them, my own were the only children who had received my focus and attention.
Although I had started to feel they were each already starting to go through a pulling away stage, and while I felt that it was good as any other time to start myself in this awaiting chapter as a teacher, I still had to remember I had to uphold myself as a respectable mother.
As my children’s mother, given the blessed role, being an example of what I had hoped they should want to be or marry, was my drive.
From what I listened to to how I dressed, when in the role as a mother and teacher, away from my times alone with my husband, my heart, mind, body, and spirit addressed life under the scope of how a child would want to see their mother as their mom and teacher to others.
When you allow yourself to be restrained to other’s thoughts and opinions of you, even and perhaps, especially, if just your own children, there is this feeling that you don’t always get it right.
Before becoming a parent, accepting myself as being pushed to be unique due to financial restraints growing up, this directed me to not ever think to conform to any norm.
Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, I realize now, I owe much of my “doing me” attitude during my teenage years. Because I did not have the means to buy new clothes, my hand-me-downs were my creative make-believe that I was dressing my way, not other people’s way.
For me and perhaps, many, Madonna was the avant-garde of that era, setting the tone to be ahead of what others saw as accepted. Different by chance or circumstance, this gave me the pathway to do the same for myself by mental freedom of choice.
Dressing how I felt, because in truth, I had to skillfully work with what little I had, my way of dressing inadvertently added to me standing out in my adolescent years.
While Madonna signified individuality back then, now, as a teacher, given the chance to look upon the hallways during passing periods daily, sets on different reminders from time to time.
Although I got exposed to several mainstream music artists through my peers, having truly no favorite artist, primarily due to having moved a lot, exposed to many forms and types of music, I could only choose as to the message of a song.
While the world seems to be improving in some parts, no matter the years since first played, due to the cyclical choices people make, there are those songs that seem to speak of times that have yet to change.
Chasing waterfalls, for one.
With my hair tied into two separate hair buns, a fuzzy black sheer jacket, black pants, and shirt, I smiled inside knowing I had somewhat portrayed Left-Eye in the group, TLC, the other two having been T-Boz and Chili.
I wanted to make sure that when my students asked me who I was representing, not only would I be able to quickly identify as Left-Eye, but I could immediately notion toward their song, Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls.
In my life, there seemed to always have been waterfalls people hypothetically spoke of or were chasing.
By the time I reached junior high, taking hand-me-downs apart and resewing them to my liking made me realize how I could push through voices of laughter and hear instead, my own greatest applause within of being different.
There is something about knowing you stand out, even if it were due to uncontrollable circumstances.
To persevere through, you search for those rivers or lakes amidst waterfalls.
By my own middle school, back then, junior high years, I had already known and experienced how it was to be told by others they weren’t allowed to play with me or witnessed people walk away from me and my family, saying presumptions of who they thought we were. Such training affirms my gratitude for staying on steady course to my best effort.
I had learned to dig deep within me to find the real me long before I became a mother and wife, no matter the many circles I felt I had found myself in before stepping out to actually arrive at such realization.
While there were trends constantly coming and going around me, I paced myself under the limitations of what I could control- my inner me.
There were waterfalls I could have become or followed, but with such calamity and instability around me, I instead, yearned to be within the rivers and lakes.
As Mama discovered swimming across rivers in her teens, beneath the rapids of the surface, steady waters could be found.
When you’ve seen and witnessed those who hit bottom to never get back up, or bruised and maimed to never seem the same again, rivers and lakes become not just your desire, but desirable comfort zones.
Even though rivers and lakes were hardly my norm within my own circumstantial upbringing past aged seven, like Moses, I was given sight of a promised land.
Unlike Moses, I was to differ from his fate.
I would not only get to the rivers and lakes, but find myself home within such surroundings.
My rebellious attitude to follow my own path may have suggested I was heading toward waterfalls. However, I put faith in my own current.
I seemingly may have looked like a rebel on the outside, but truly desiring simplicity with absolutely no calamity within.
I didn’t smoke, drink, and definitely, did not think to experiment on any drugs. I was just moving forward and ahead, away from yesterday, one day at a time.
While my surroundings may have tried to encompass me with the speed of a waterfall, within, I found comfort in my rivers and lakes of thought and focus.
Hence, as a young mother, especially as a young mother, I felt I had to quietly focus on my children while others who saw me pushing my children in strollers or at one time, having my oldest face the wall for time out at a mall, caused understandable judgment of who they may have thought I was.
At such a young age, hardly having become an adult, I no doubt looked like one who had already chased some waterfalls.
Just over a hundred pounds at that time, although already a college graduate and certified teacher, it may have not fully dawned to me then that people may have seen me as a teenage mother, another weight for society to carry.
Why should anyone believe that I had already completed my undergraduate studies with a teaching degree, having the fortune to stay home while the father of her, back then, three children, worked as a software engineer outside of their first bought home?
What sign did I carry that spoke of such arrived accomplishments?
I accepted life with such forward-moving faith that in my naïveté, I pictured everyone else to have achieved their own goals, whatever that or those may have been.
And while I had accomplished some already, I myself, had more goals to proactively achieve, always working themselves through my mind first, one thought after another.
Surely, others do the same.
And, then, that growing up thing gets you to arrive at truth and realization- not all have or had goals; not all even have or had a vision. Worse, perseverance do not pursue any attempted actions.
So young, I surely looked to be chasing waterfalls, having reached the age of twenty-five with our first three children.
I, in actual truth, stayed within rivers and lakes to keep me steady, working on my first memoir between hitting the gym, caring for our children, and maintaining our home just as soon as we moved into our first house.
It was my mind set on rivers and lakes that with persistence, landed me into such peace and eventual comfort.
There is not a part of me that would ever dare to challenge oneself to go back to my earlier challenges and struggles.
As I’ve said to my own children and sometimes, a few of my students, real drama does not tell anyone.
There is this inner self that knows this is just a moment to push through, not get comfortable in.
I am thankful to have thought that where I found myself to be each day was just a moment in time. I looked for that river or lake just as soon as I could get out of the fast-moving waters others were seemingly just following without thought or plan.
As Papa once suggested, if you are in a room at 2 o’clock in the morning and something happens to you, it’s your fault.
I understood what he meant and I am glad to have heard him speak those words.
People perceive messages differently. There are parables told for those to understand. Those who won’t, perhaps can’t anyway.
However you speak to a child can be received so differently depending on the child receiving whatever it may be that is being conveyed.
Almost at a golden age, I am grateful to know so much more now that how one views the world, I get, is a matter of perspective, not always guaranteed truth.
One must think where the waters, if to follow, would take them. Some just don’t or take the time to.
The dissatisfaction or comfort of our todays do not foretell who will be chasing waterfalls rather than rivers and lakes.
Some of us, no matter how smooth the waters, will seek for the heavy and unsteady waves. Some of us, having been sickened of such, stay strong in heart, mind, body, and spirit by envisioning the blessings of having no more storms to endure.
There will be some who can patiently wait for the rivers and lakes while some of us, perhaps having survived already several waterfalls, will seek yet another, rewarded in some way of having survived previous falls.
In fairness and to no argument suggested, how can one make another see it their way if neither truly can predict tomorrow?
How to perceive can be taught only to the degree of one’s choice of perception. At the end of every forewarn, one will still see things their way.
There is the one who will see the glass half full. Then, there is the one who will not only see the glass half empty, but not even think on how to refill it if when thirst arrives.
AllI that is in my capacity to do is model what I hope will have planted a seed in the minds of the eyes that watch me.
A non-conformist for as far as I have known myself to be, dressing up for spirit week surely was not in my comfort zone to start, especially under the eyes of my oldest three.
Now, almost a half-century old, with our youngest two, having acquired enough years in life, while still considering myself to be a non-conformist, it is now a joy, intentional in my actions, to join in on the fun, even if I dress up to school portraying the music artist, Left-Eye, perhaps parents dropping off their children looking twice at me, wondering if this math teacher has lost her mind.
For the children. Left-Eye, I am.
Why was she my choice? My students ask.
I quietly exhale for my well-prepared response.
She was part of a group who sung, “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls”.
Whether they will go and seek to listen to the song or not, the title itself inadvertently planted an opportunity for some thinking.
Believe in yourself, the rest is up to me and you…
