A Friend of My Mind

We are seven weeks into the term and the sheen has worn off of the school year a bit.  For better or for worse students are settling into being who they are (and I sometimes feel like I am back in high-school). A big part of me misses the fun and foolishness of my former students, and I am suffering from Bluest Eye withdrawal.  I am learning what I should have already known -that teaching is hard regardless of where you do it and how much you are getting paid.  

I was feeling worn out and directionless until I received a BEAUTIFUL letter (in the form of a Facebook message) from Aídah, which I have shared in this post.  I met Aídah when I was probably around the age that she is now.  I was working at Prep for Prep and she would blow into the office like a summer storm and park herself in a wooden chair directly across from my desk.  I was immediately impressed by her sense of humor and self-assuredness, and she seemed older and wiser than her 17 years.  Her style was prep-school/vintage chic, and she had a joyfully infectious laugh that she would spread around liberally.  

We talked a lot that year; everything from books and poetry to hair and lipstick.  We compared private school war wounds rolling our eyes and sucking our teeth at people who didn't have the creativity and courage to deal with us on our own terms.  She was a storyteller even then and her favorite subject was her father.  It still is, and I'm waiting to get my hands on her brilliant essays about Sunday brunch!   When she publishes her book, I will be the first in line to buy it!

Shining!

I don't remember what we were doing, but I know that it was funny!

Circa 2003

Reading Aídah's letter has made me realize that the qualities that she admired in me were ones that she already embodied.  If I encouraged her to celebrate her beauty and intelligence it is only because she had those things in excess.  It would have been downright selfish and mean for her not to share her fabulosity with the world!  She inspires me to read and write daily, and to see the humor in even the most painful situations.

There are two things that I was reminded of today: be at your best because you never know who is watching (even if you have to fake it until you make it) and express gratitude and kindness because you never know what is going on in someone else's life.  I hope that everyone who reads this is inspired to reach out to someone and tell them that you appreciate them.

This gave me life!!!!!!!!

I love Candace.

I met her when I was 17 years old and struggling with how to align my political and ethical commitments (by this I mean I was reading a lot of Amira Baraka, Karl Marx, B. F. Skinner, etc) with my New York City private school's rigors, which came to mean for me, staying in school.

I failed LOL.

But in the process she changed EVERYTHING for me and for the better. Candace was well-dressed, brilliant, beautiful, confident and teeming with the kind of radical politics I was struggling to find in the literature that most captivated me, but in an unapologetically refined kind of way. What I mean is that I learned from her that brains and beauty, as manifested in physical appearance, behaviors, speech, etc DO coexist, and for women with brown skin and black politics. I continue to learn this from her even today because she is still beautiful and bright and radical!

Throughout college, though I was not able to remain in touch with her as much as I would have liked, she continued to be an influence. I had many a‪#‎WhatWouldCandaceDo‬ moment at Dartmouth and owe so much of the self-affirming richness of my college experience to her impact. In fact I hardly had any ‪#‎DearWhitePeople‬ moments in college, because I'd already learned from Candace to alternately focus on nurturing myself, my interests and my talents. If anything is testament to this, it's that I wrote a novella as my honors seniors thesis, and I'm the first person in a non-creative major to do so at Dartmouth. I like to think that Candace's influence gave me permission to think this unprecedented project was possible, and the way that so much of our relationship revolved around amazing literature (Toni Morrison!), made it necessary.

And it is an influence that is STILL working and making all kinds of great things happen.

So thank you yesterday, today and always Candace!

#ThinkingOfYouThursdays ‪#‎ThrowbackThursdays‬‪#‎CandaceCardwellFanClub‬