On Finding Your Voice

I am a Freshman in high school, rushing from the cafeteria to get to my locker, which is three floors above where I am – so I can grab my literature textbook, notebook, and copy of The Odyssey, and then climb one more flight of stairs to get to class. I must do this in five minutes.

 I go to school with two thousand students and right now, they also have the same task. However, very few of them seem to act with the same sense of urgency as me. I am Flash. This is what my friends call me, and it has nothing to do with sports or any heroic superhero characteristics. I am saving no one but myself.

 I am not what anyone would call a good student, but I am on the Drill Team – a competitive dance squad that also performs during football and basketball games and that is to me what sun is to a sunflower, what water is to a dolphin, what coffee is to the morning, what, well, you get the picture.

 I must maintain a solid 2.5 GPA in order to dance each week. You know that scene in the Odyssey where I think it’s Homer ties himself to a boat so he won’t get to the ladies? Keeping a 2.5 – even earning a 2.5 EVERY SINGLE WEEK – is the equivalent to the task Homer is up against. (Seriously, is it Homer?) My getting to class on time is me tying myself to a boat – I’m showing my teachers I mean well.

  I am turning my combination lock to its last number when a man-child slides up next to me.

 “Whatcha doin’?” he asks, his eyes sparkling with flirtation.

Ohhhhh, no sir. I’ve been warned about the upper class boys. I am NOT that kind of girl and also there is no time for this kind of behavior right at this moment I don’t care how messy your hair is and how blue your eyes are.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I say. “I’m opening my locker.” And this is where my lock is supposed to open, I’m supposed to get my books, I’m supposed to slam the locker, and then brush past this dude in a powerful and yet sexy way as I go to class. On time.

  Except my locker won’t open.

 “Wanna know what’s wrong?” Mr. Eyes Like Lake Michigan On A July Afternoon Asks.

 “I know what’s wrong,” I sneer. “My locker won’t open,” I put my hand on my hip for full effect and say, “Duh,” for even fuller effect.

 He takes my hand in his – the one that’s clutching the combination lock – and suddenly Homer who? 2.5 GPA what? GET THESE DAMN ROPES OFFA ME and then leans towards me and says, “This is my locker.”

I am on the wrong floor.

//

 My youngest daughter, Harper, has recently taken up swimming competitively. She swims and conditions for swimming four days a week for about 3 hours. It is exhilarating to watch her swim – I feel like I am seeing this new person emerge as she slices through the water.

 On her first day though, about a half an hour into practice, she called me up crying and asked me to pick her up.

 “I feel like I walked into the wrong classroom,” she said when she got into the car.

 I remembered my beautiful boy locker incident from ’91, and I think what is happening in both instances is a voice – a new aspect of ourselves – is fighting to emerge. It’s uncomfortable, confusing, and awkward but what if we looked at these new environments, these new challenges, as an opportunity to listen? Can the awkward be funny? Can the confusing be beautiful? Can we make a story out of what we don’t understand?

 In her book, We Are The Words, Beth Kephart writes that when we are writing our truest selves, we must, “….admit our own smallness…learn from the lives we have lived….complete the circle on ourselves as we render ourselves. We must write ourselves into all our dimensions.”

 You don’t have to find your voice – you simply must listen to what it is you have to say.