“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Every little kid hears this question from adults, adults that are asking in earnest, curious to not only know a child’s interests but also wanting relive the idea of naive dreams that have no limits.
My answer was “a math teacher.” It always threw people off. But I could see no greater profession than teaching. Yes, math was fun, but I didn’t want to be a mathematician, I wanted to teach it. But why? There are so many reasons that I could list when I was older, but when I was younger it was very simple, even if I didn’t realize it until much, much later.
As I grew up, I wanted to be a mixture of the best traits of the people around me. I heard tales of people working hard to achieve something, and I wanted to be able to do that. My father worked hard to become what he was in his field, his parents had worked hard to put dinner on the table and to educate themselves, my paternal grandmother worked herself up to tell long stories that were of interest to someone, my maternal grandmother worked hard quite often to prepare meals and desserts and treats and otherwise make people happy, and my mother and maternal grandfather worked hard to overlook the negatives and just love fully, no matter what. Sure, each of these people had (and many still have) negative traits, but these are the ones that I wanted to embody: I wanted to love my family unconditionally, I wanted to be the “home” (the person whom they needed me to be and be there for them no matter what), I wanted to be a thinker and a learner, I wanted to work hard to earn my way, and I wanted to teach my children those values.
I went through life loving to learn and loving the process of learning. I also drank in the stories I was told and drove people crazy whenever I pointed out an inconsistency from the last time I’d heard that particular tale. When left free of insecurities and stresses, I always have reveled in absorbing the people I meet, the tales they tell, as well as the places I visit and the tales they told. In college, I minored in nearly everything, and there was a reason for that. I’ve often thought of myself as a vessel to hold these stories and facts and people and places… and maybe, hopefully, write something worthy of a tale I’d been told, or half-overheard…
It frightened me, that period of time in which I became aware of not being able to remember my own story, and that my own memory of people, places, and tales were very visual and had faded in the light of those bright electric sparks. In the past six months, as many of my own lost memories come back, visual-spatial abilities returned, and the stories began to roll back in, I’ve been so very relieved that it was my sight that was temporarily affected by the spark, not the memories themselves that had faded into the gyri-parchment of my mind.
So why did I want to be a teacher when I was little? From early on, it was made clear to me: teachers told the stories that were worth remembering and taught things that were worth knowing, even if they didn’t seem worth it at the time.
I wanted to be someone who knew these important, worthy stories and facts, and passed enough of it along to create a spark in others to either seek out their own knowledge or to keep listening in the hope that perhaps maybe other snippets of what I said might be equally worthy of catching hold.
This was sparked by a recent pair of gatherings in addition to my recent vacation, during each of which I came face-to-face with the realization that I was still very much a collector of peoples and stories and places, and a new series of books by I’ve started reading with Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, a fictional tale that is set at the center of the Renaissance, throughout the American colonies and Europe, starting with people involved in the birth of “natural philosophy” (now known as mathematics and the sciences); it’s absolutely fascinating.