From bagels to panels to eclipse portals
What's stirring and sticking from our conference journey
Dear Enchantable readers,
We return home tomorrow.
After returning home to the mountains (chapter 1).
After legacy work (chapter 2).
After synchronistic eclipse magic (portal).
After many family visits.
After teaching creative writing for dissertations.
After panel presentations and moderations.
After Magic Kingdom.
After Daphne-Papa bonding time.
After re-imagining education with kindred spirits.
There have been so many journeys within this trip, which has felt full yet spacious, abundant and busy yet not overly so. Nourishing and a lot of input and output. Visiting and meals and presenting and connecting, old friends and new.
We’re leaving with more than we came with.
We left Costa Rica two and a half weeks ago, and it feels far longer than that. The purpose of the trip was attending two conferences. Each chapter of this voyage has felt distinct and multilayered. Today I want to tell you about a few layers.
One layer is academic conference mom life.
The elevator door was closing, but the people inside held the door for me. It was two conference participants, the keynote speaker from the previous night and his wife.
“Taking breakfast in bed to my five-year old,” I told them, nodding to the bagel on a plate I was carrying. They laughed.
I was already dressed for the day, wearing my new red dress and rose scarf. The woman kindly complimented me on how I looked, for which I was grateful as I was trying my best to look nice for being in front of the whole audience today. I wanted to tell them how much his speech the night before had moved me, how inspired I felt to hear a university present talk like he did, with the vision he has, but all I could think about was getting the bagel to the room. I was in mom mode, focused on trying to get us both ready so I could get out the door and not miss the shuttle, which would depart for the conference soon.
Later, after I moderated the plenary panel before lunch, I ran into them again, and they told me what a lovely job I had done moderating, for which I was grateful. It meant a lot.
“From bagels to panels!” I said, and we laughed.
Later on the shuttle, I mentioned to someone that I had my five-year old with me. She had just gotten married, and was contemplating professional life with kids. She and I had been on a panel together the day before. “How do you do it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, and I meant it. Every time I do it- and we do it a lot, and we did it twice on this trip- I never know how it’s going to go or if it’s going to work. But we try. This time I did it because my dad was able to join us, and was staying in the hotel with her while I was presenting and moderating and attending sessions (thanks, dad :).
Sometimes I feel guilty for leaving her to go present, when she’s crying as I leave, which happens. Not guilty in the sense that I feel bad about myself, or feel like a bad mom (I don’t), or that I would make a different choice (I don’t- I choose this again and again). Just guilty as in bad, as in I wish we could both get our needs met at the same time. I wish that me going to do my thing didn’t result in someone else crying.
But my need is to go do my thing, and her need is to be with me, and those needs don’t always mix.
You see, I think it’s really important for me to do my thing. Not just because I think it’s important (which I do- I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise), or because I love it (which I do- it lights me up more than I can say). But because I actually think one of the most important things I can do besides loving her and being there for her and spending time with her, is being myself and doing things that I love and showing that moms can be moms and have their own lives and passions and dreams, too.
This is hard. It is very hard. I feel like I fail a lot. But I am also committed to this path, of letting myself have a full vocational life, that I can be a full person and a mom, too.
Part of that fullness means she doesn’t get all of me, all the time. She gets a lot of me, a lot of the time.
During my presentation with the peace fellows at AATH, the whole family wanted to come (happily), and it started out well with her playing in the corner. But halfway through the session, she started whining that she was hungry (I had brought all the activities, but hadn’t brought snacks. Fail. Worth noting this was directly after lunch, but I should know she is always hungry). The whine turned into a full-blown cry. When I found a moment I could slip away, I took her into the hall to see if I could find any food at the registration desk (where people literally gave her food out of their bags. She was offered donuts and bacon leftovers from breakfast from the organization’s past president, which she happily accepted). Luckily Uncle Wee saw what was going on and came out into the hall, and hung out with her while I finished the session.
At the Earth Charter conference in Florida, the hotel and conference site are separate, and she and my dad have hung out and had special Daphne-Papa bonding time while I have been attending sessions. They’ve gone to the park and the movies and had special meals out. They’ve gotten to spend time together that is special and precious, and I have gotten to present and moderate and participate and enjoy being around folks who care deeply about the same things I do, which is really, really nourishing.
So maybe we all win. Maybe it’s not that no one is getting their needs met, or that they conflict. Maybe we all are, eventually. The occasional tears and the running a marathon to get her ready before I start the day is just part of it. Because right now, at the end of it all, it feels like we’re all winning, like this was all a huge success, and I hope we’ll all be able to look back and feel like we all got so much from this trip, from the experiences, from each other.
Did I mention we took her to Disney? :)
Another layer of our journey was the total solar eclipse, which was wild, synchronistic, and magical. I have to tell you our eclipse story because we weren’t supposed to be there, but conditions aligned so that we were.
On the day of the eclipse, we were traveling from the Denver chapter of our trip to Florida, connecting through Dallas. My dad booked the tickets, and when he did, I did not realize that it was the day of the eclipse, or that we were connecting through the zone of totality. Our flight was to leave in the afternoon, so we would miss the eclipse, but it was still interesting that we were traveling through in its wake.
The day of travel, en route to the airport, we got a notification that our flight was ten minutes delayed. This only gave us 30 minutes of connecting time in Dallas, not sufficient in most airports to get from one plane to the next. At check-in, they said they couldn’t change it for us, and we had to do it on the app. We went through security and tried but couldn’t figure it out. There was an earlier flight - we decided to go see if there was space. A long shot, upon arrival, seeing there were eleven people on standby, we didn’t have much hope. The gate agent took pity upon us. My dad has elite mileage status on the airline, and we received extra attention. Perhaps she also took pity on us that we were a group of three, spanning ages 5 to 75.
Initially, she said she couldn’t get us on. “Oh well,” we started walking away, not surprised, off to spend some time in the airport.
She came running after us down the corridor.
“The connection is too tight. I found a way to get you on.” She said.
We couldn’t believe it.
Minutes later, we were boarding the plane, which had us landing in Dallas five minutes before totality. As we were descending, we weren’t sure if totality had passed yet. The sun was still full in the sky. I received a notification from the CHANI app that the moment of totality was now. Descending, as we got closer to land, you could see the highways lined with cars pulled over to the side, waiting and watching.
We waited.
We landed, and light started to shift. As we sat on the tarmac, the afternoon light went to dusk. We began to taxi in the darkness.
Daphne was seated next to the window. “I see it!” she exclaimed.
We didn’t have eclipse glasses, not having expected to be in the eclipse, so I discouraged her from staring, although the plane window panes did seem to help. Above us, the sun blackened out by the moon. Around us, midday darkness.
A handful of minutes of pure magic that we got to experience by sheer luck, the grace and generosity of a gate agent, and good timing. We couldn’t have planned this so well even if we tried. As we stepped off the plane, the light having returned, it felt like we had stepped through a portal. We had. The portal of a powerful collective experience of beauty, wonder, and awe.
I was living in North Carolina during the 2017 solar eclipse, and a friend and I drove down to the center of totality in South Carolina to catch the experience. The eclipse was in August, and about a month later I would learn I was pregnant with Daphne.
The next solar eclipse visible in the US will be in 2044. Daphne will be an adult then, which is a wild thought. Where will we be in 2044? Where will the world be?
Hopefully watching the next eclipse together. Hopefully, the world will be in a better place.
It is hard to imagine this now, as I write this while wars are escalating. We have spent the past three days re-imagining together, envisioning worlds that are thriving and flourishing for all, meanwhile, more bombs fall.
Then there are the layers from the conference itself. One of the themes that is still stirring and sticking with me from the re-imagining education conference is that of leadership. We heard from a few university presidents, including the host campus Rollins College (from which Fred Rogers is the most famous alum), and I was surprised by how inspired I was hearing them. To hear men (yes, they were all men) in power use language that we would use in a peace education class was heartening, who took the time to get to know their students, to think about them, and care about them. I really believe in bottom-up change, however, having supportive conditions from the top is extremely helpful. Having leaders with vision and care makes a difference. More is possible when there is institutional support for it, both in terms of leadership and culture (and leadership has a huge influence on culture).
We need better leaders. Peace leaders. Not just in education, but everywhere.
Other worlds are possible. Other ways of leading are possible. Leaders like Mr. Rogers.
Another thing I am thinking about, having just been at two very different conferences, and attending lots of conferences over the years, is how to find the balance of taking in time and processing and connecting time. In YES! Jam spaces, these are called in-breath and out-breath. At conferences, we take in so much information (in-breaths), and there is not a balance of time to breathe out, to dialogue, to connect - ideas and with each other. At the Earth Charter conference, there were very intentional mini-connection and processing times sprinkled throughout the day, which was beautiful to experience, and ample break time built into the schedule which also still seemed to go too fast - I am still craving more, feeling saturated, needing the exhale. There were so many amazing attendees and everyone had so much to say, and part of the tension is figuring out how to maximize the time and space for all of this knowledge and wisdom to be shared.
So I am wondering about how to navigate the tension of needing to make the most of the short time you can bring people together, while also allowing for space to connect, dialogue, process. For example, could you have people watch video lectures at home on their own time, then come together and spend more time dreaming and imagining together? Even with this idea, while logistically possible, there is power to listening to a talk in real-time together, a freshness to the ideas that need to be present to connect around. Anyways, I don’t have answers. It is just what I am thinking about.
I am taking an out-breath here with you, dear Enchantable reader. Thank you :)
I breathe out, and I prepare to return home.
I return home with the energy to continue dreaming of a forest learning community, an unschool in the forest.
I return home tired and full.
I return home affirmed by what I have just heard, feeling like I am on my path, fortified to keep going.
I return home, emboldened.
It’s not time to return just yet, though, more layers to come. Today is the final day of the conference, the final day of our trip in the US, our last planned visit for the foreseeable future. I have agreed for Daphne to attend sessions with me today because she wants to come, which means I will probably not attend much, but that is OK, too. I have received enough. People will enjoy seeing her there, and she will be a reminder of the future generations we are reimagining education for. We will both get our needs met, me doing my thing and her being with me. We’ll make it a good day.
With love and care,
Stephanie
P.S. I always welcome you to share what is stirring and sticking for you!
You are the best kind of warrior… a working mom. The grace and passion you bring to each role is beautiful. AND yes! A self-paced video lecture followed by an in-person group can be greatly successful. Makes me think of James Hillman “A Blue Fire” and “The Alchemy of Psychology” (book followed by conference).