Waking Up

I just spent the weekend at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival for a marathon of stories and I couldn’t be more tired and content! I heard everything from personal stories, tall tales, Edgar Allen Poe, folktales, ballads, African-American poetry, folk music both old and new and on and on. I have laughed, I have cried… I have felt my heart and soul expand. One teller, Angela Lloyd, sang an old ballad about Sleeping Beauty while adding her own comments in between the verses. She talked about how dusty Sleeping Beauty was and how she had morning breath. It got me thinking… No one ever thinks about how hard it must have been to wake up after a hundred years. We just get the kiss and then move right to the “happily ever after.” Don’t you think her head would have been spinning from all the changes (not to mention marrying a complete stranger one hundred years her junior!) She might have been shocked at the new fashions that (gasp!) exposed the limbs, or her country might have been conquered by another and now everyone speaks a different language. Think of all the ways the world would have left her behind. It would definitely have been a fish-out-of-water experience.

This resonated with me because I feel as if I am in the process of waking up. For twenty-three years I have been a mother. I have been primarily involved in the development of others. I’m not complaining. It has been, and still is, my most incredible journey. It has made me who I am and has shaped my character. No matter what I accomplish in my life, it will never compare with the accomplishment of succeeding in and surviving motherhood.

But there are parts of me that have been asleep. Hopes and dreams… and whole sections of my brain! Going back to college in my forties is definitely a fish-out-of-water experience. I spend most of my days hanging around with people the age of my children – it makes for an interesting social landscape. I live in this surreal world where, because of my age, my professors treat me as if I have experience and knowledge and yet every day there are moments when I am learning huge new things that are just so basic – things a simple idiot could have figured out intuitively. I want to cry, “Wait, while I wipe the sleep from my eyes.”

The process of waking up is awkward and humbling, but it’s also exquisite. The act of peeling away my outer, crusty layers of old thoughts and immobility to expose the new, raw, pink me can be almost unbearably sweet and painful. It’s not just learning how to act or write a play, it’s expanding my mind to new thoughts; it’s opening my soul to new ways of looking at the world. It’s the process of becoming an artist - a skill that is not nurtured by my society.

So, world, please excuse me when I’m groggy. Please be tolerant of my bumbling attempts. I cannot turn back, for no matter how painfully awkward the way, I feel driven by the power of story… I feel driven by the promise of learning… I feel driven to wake up.