A good day to learn how to swim
photo of unrelated cuteness
I’m dying to process my interview experience, but was required to sign a confidentiality agreement about the questions therein, so instead, I will sift through the memorable bits that surrounded my interview experience.
I woke up at 5:30 AM, in part because it’s comforting, now, to wake up early, and in part because I wanted to get to my destination early without stressing over parking or directions. Kevin was also away, so my mom came over to stay with the kids. On the highway, rehearsing for the millionth time “why I want to be a midwife,” I was suddenly overcome with emotion. Yes, I was verklempt. All I kept thinking and saying, from the moment I woke up, was: Wow, this is really happening. I can’t believe I’ve come this far! It felt surreal to be driving to an interview in another city, in hopes of starting a midwifery degree. And I realized how many years I’ve been weighing the possibility, how long I’ve been trying to imagine myself into this possibility, which is, let’s be honest, so very different from the educational and career path I originally chose. So, I got that out of my system. I did not want to burst into tears if asked the question: “Why do you want to be a midwife?”
Then, again, who knows, bursting into tears isn’t the worst thing to happen to a person.
I was so early. I was so in need of a good hard run (hadn’t figured that into my schedule.)
The building seemed like a labyrinth. The only other person waiting at the location was a young man. He’d been sent ahead by a friend to find the location, and was not, more’s the pity, a prospective male midwife (why not have male midwives, I say!). When all of the morning’s candidates were gathered together, we were indeed all women, and I was glad to see I wasn’t the only older prospective student. Nerves were tight. It terrified me slightly to learn that at least four or five of the women were coming back for the second time — they’d applied last year, had interviewed, had not gotten in, and were applying again. (Which is what I imagine I would do, too.) Someone blithely commented, “Oh, that will make it easier for you this time around!” to which one of the women replied, jaws somewhat clenched, “There’s nothing easy about this.”
She was right.
I won’t give you details, but I can assure you that coming two years in a row would offer you very little in the way of advantage. The pace is gruelling. The questions are surprising. It’s like speed-dating, with assessors. There’s hardly time to ask oneself, What the hell was I going on about in there and did it sound as inane as I suspect it may have? Was I actively babbling? So that’s nice. No time to worry, really, just on to the next little room.
My energies flagged about five rooms in, but recovered for the last three or so. There was a palpable sense of relief and celebration as we finished our circuit, and dispersed, walking past the next group of candidates, who were beginning to gather, looking as nervous as we had just a few hours before.
Afterward, feeling drained of all personality, I had coffee with a fellow candidate, who is my age, also a mother of four, and who was a medical doctor in Mexico. I’d give her a spot. Who knows, maybe we’ll meet up again in the fall. And it really does feel like “who knows?” I wish I could say I came out of the process feeling confident that I would gain admission … but in truth, I came out of the process feeling completely unable to assess my own performance. It’s a blur. I did my best, I do know that. I felt, a bit, like a fish out of water, like a novice, I guess. It’s like learning to swim all over again. I’ll admit it was a hard process to go through — trusting myself, and yet recognizing my own limitations. Like the woman said, It doesn’t get easier. Starting something new, being the opposite of expert — well, there’s nothing easy about it, is there? There’s no template you can follow to make the hard things life feel easy.
But it’s like learning how to swim. You have to get wet. You probably flail a bit. You get instruction. You practice and practice and practice. And that’s the only way that someday, you’ll get to the place you imagined you might.
Why I want to be a midwife
This morning, at the very moment this blog publishes (9:30 AM), I will be in Hamilton, Ontario at McMaster University starting an interview process known as MMI (multiple-mini-interview) in the hopes of earning a place in their midwifery program this fall. (Unless my carshare car has broken down by the side of the road en route, or I’ve developed a violent stomach flu, or any number of other worst-case scenarios occur that have been plaguing my dreams all week.)
The MMI is an interviewing process that involves, as I understand it, the applicant visiting ten different rooms in rapid succession, and being asked in each room to respond to a new question or scenario. Each room has a different assessor present, and the conversation/scenario ends after ten minutes. And then it’s on to the next room. I wonder whether I’ll agree with this statement afterward, but I’m actually looking forward to the process — to getting in there, digging in, presenting myself, being myself, experiencing something new and different.
I’ve done some groundwork, as best I can. I’ve grilled my friend who graduated from the program two years ago. I’ve read a book of essays on midwifery in Ontario that she recommended. And I’ve written down my thoughts and wandered around the house answering imaginary questions in long rambling mutters.
So here’s what I’m planning to say if asked: “Why do you want to be a midwife?” Which seems like a question I ought to expect and know the answer to.
I want to be a midwife because I want to do work that is practical, hands-on, and meaningful.
I want to work with women, and their families, during moments of profound transition and change, and assist in the process. I want to learn and practice new skills. I want to empower women to make choices about their bodies that bring them health, confidence, and strength.
I would be privileged to become a midwife. I think birth is a life-altering physical experience that has the power to be spiritually meaningful, too.
I have been drawn to midwifery since witnessing (and helping, a bit!) my mother labour and give birth, at home, to my sister, with amazing midwives in attendance. I was twelve-and-a-half and have been fascinated by birth and midwifery ever since. In my early teens I pored over Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin. Two of my favourite subjects in high school were biology and chemistry. At nineteen, while a university arts major, I picked up a flier for the then-brand-new midwifery education program in Ontario, but didn’t work up the courage to apply (wisely, I think, as it wouldn’t have been the right moment in my life). I chose midwifery care for my own pregnancies, and was fortunate to give birth at home three out of four times (the hospital birth being due to complications). In the past four years, I’ve been invited to support friends and family through labour and birth, both at home and in hospital.
[Note: my daughter advises me to edit the above paragraph heavily, and not mention why I didn’t become a midwife before — “You’re never going to fit all of this into ten minutes, Mom! And you just have to tell them why you want to be a midwife now.” Excellent point. Glad I rehearsed it with her.]
I want to be a midwife because I believe it combines physical and spiritual work. I want to work directly with people in a way that seems to me quite unique: midwifery care, as I’ve experienced it, is intimate, personal, compassionate, supportive, celebratory, active, at times requiring intense involvement and attention, and at other times requiring deep listening and attention. I see it as a job that is in service to the health and well-being of others. In that way, it’s very much like my writing work, but with an outward pull rather than an inward pull. I see the two being quite connected. Both work requires intuition grounded in knowledge, trust, and a good ear.
I also want to be a midwife because it is my goal, eventually, when my children are grown, to volunteer and serve in areas of the world, or here in Canada, where health care is less accessible, and there is a need for perinatal care.
Why midwifery rather than another health care profession? It could be due to my formative and positive experiences with midwives. It could be because midwifery’s long history and tradition is of women helping women, and I would love to join that tradition. It could be because I’ve got a bit of the counter-cultural in me, as well as an interest in being a medical professional. A midwife, to me, is someone who believes in the fundamental power of a woman’s body, and that ties in to my interest in overall health, fitness, and strength.
I would bring to my practice a belief that we can all live inside our bodies with respect and care. I would also bring the understanding that not everything can be planned. I would bring the ability to be flexible, to be open to what may be rapidly-changing situations, and to be responsive to shifting choices and needs. I know myself to be calm, focused, and decisive when that is called for, but I also have a light touch in weighty matters. I try to read the situation and respond as needed.
Am I totally off-topic? What was the question? [Insert anxiety dream scenario here …]
Please … wish me luck!
Ice storm, aka “the day they should have cancelled school”
So, this has not been a productive couple of days. That photo, above, was taken this morning around 11am. It is dark, it is raining, the rain has frozen on all the branches, the sidewalks are treacherous, and, oh! School’s on! Except not for AppleApple (power outage), or CJ (power outage). Albus and Fooey were feeling very cheesed indeed when I dropped them at their very-much-open school.
We woke to no power and a rapidly cooling house. The kitchen was dark. AppleApple lit candles. I lit the gas stove (thank goodness for gas stoves!). But we couldn’t make coffee because we grind the beans every morning in an electric grinder. Hey, remember those old-fashioned coffee grinders with the handle and the little wooden drawer? We needed one of those.
I also may need to trade in my large non-portable computer for a laptop, I realize, on a day such as this. My programs and files are all locked up in iMac silence. But you know, all I can think about is the interview tomorrow, so my brain is basically distracted and inaccessible anyway. I am typing this at Kevin’s office, on a borrowed computer, with AppleApple by my side. There is power and heat here. AppleApple is whispering the many many many stanzas of Poe’s The Raven, which she’s decided to memorize for poetry month. As far as I can gather, this is only loosely a school assignment, and she could have chosen to memorize, say, a sonnet, but, no, she’s gone for an 18-stanza marathon. She has til the end of the month. She’s on stanza 11. The raven has made several appearances, and, she reports, has already spoken his famous line several times. “Nevermore.”
All I can hear is the whispering. I can’t concentrate. I’ve got nothing more, just now.
“Snow” day in April
Was relieved to get up early for yoga this morning, if only to escape the circular anxiety dreams.
But I was tired in yoga class. As I lay, half-awake, in the final shavasana, I thought to myself, nothing had better get in the way of my morning nap, or I’m not going to make it through today.
Huh.
Must have been a premonition. I drove home through the rain, thinking, the kids aren’t going to enjoy their walk to school today. And I opened my email to discover: SCHOOL CANCELLED! Apparently a massive ice storm was in the offing, though I can’t say it’s materialized as promised (which is not a bad thing, I realize). Frankly, all I was thinking was: with school cancelled, how am I going to get my nap???
I was desperate. I told the kids they could play electronics while I went back to bed. Worked like a charm, although those dreams were even more bizarre. I was on a train in Syria doing an aerobics class led by a Serbian instructor whose moves were comically complex. I couldn’t follow. I sobbed into my seat cushion (being on a train, remember), a feeling of fear and despair permeating the dream, which I understood was a dream, and I worried in the dream about having a dream that would make me sob.
And then I woke up, and cleaned the house. Electronics time over.
I stopped cleaning at lunchtime, in a really grumpy mood. I made a delicious homemade chicken noodle soup. I went outside and grabbed some ice photos. The photos aren’t terribly impressive, there not being much ice. As far as I can see, the cars keep whipping along our street without any trouble at all. But not to worry, the kids are safe, playing soccer in the living room and creating a Lego bomb in the upstairs hallway. It is now around the time I’d expect them home from school. I’ve hooked them back up to their electronics again, which gives me the luxury of writing this post. I’ll admit no feelings of guilt.
I’m still kind of grumpy, though. Can you tell? I’m not hiding it very well.
Yeah, well. We’re all a little grumpy. We’re all accustomed to activity and go, go, go, and even if it’s not a really bad storm, the weather is still yucky and cold and wet and not conducive to outdoor play, and everything’s closed, and we haven’t gotten up to anything more exciting than electronics and housecleaning.
::
Total side note before I sign off and unhook the children: Have you seen The Mindy Project yet? It’s a sitcom, so if you hate sitcoms, don’t bother, but we find it hysterically funny at our house. We’ve been letting the older kids stay up to watch (be warned, there is some adult content). I found myself fighting not to giggle out loud while lying on my yoga mat this morning, waiting for class to begin, because I was remembering scenes from the episode we watched last night.
On becoming a writer of historical fiction
getting ready for school
Awaking out of my comforting morning nap, a number of blog post subjects floated to the surface along with me, and then apparently floated away on a light breeze because I can recall none of them.
Oh, yes, I remember one thought. Back in undergrad, I had a fascination with a 16th-century poet who published a handful of poems in the popular press, and who identified herself as a woman: the first known to do so, though of course, the popular press meant these weren’t poems printed in a bound book, but poems printed in short runs on a few sheets of paper, rather like an advertising flier — “popular” as in cheap and meant to be easily available, light entertainment, easily consumed — so there may have been other women poets before her, lost to the recycling bins of time, or others who published but did not identify themselves as women (as is apparently the case TODAY for many female bloggers who write on “male” topics like science and technology). Anyway. As I’m writing this out, I’m realizing how much more research I would need to do into the physical details to really get this right, but the point being, I had a fascination with a female poet who published in the second half of the sixteenth-century (that’s Elizabeth I’s era) in London, England, and because almost nothing is known about her life, I imagined a life around her, and she’s remained a character of interest to me, in an era of interest to me.
About a century later, the first handbook on midwifery that was written by a female midwife was published. (Male midwives had published other handbooks before her; and yes, there were male midwives in 17th-century England.) I read that handbook for a research paper a few years ago, and was horrified and fascinated by the techniques and remedies recommended therein. I’ll spare you the details, or perhaps save them for a book. Let’s just say, midwifery through the ages was not for the faint of heart. And that was the thought that bubbled to the surface this morning: somehow linking these two women and writing about them. Do they belong in the same book, separated by nearly a century? Could I take liberties with time? I’m a fiction writer! Of course I could!
The key will be discovering the plot that might emerge around two such characters. Or perhaps she is only one character. I won’t do all my thinking out loud, here, promise. But my mind is drawn to starting up a new, big project, and having just completed a manuscript of what I’d have to call historical fiction, I’m thinking, hey, I liked that a lot. I could write more of that. Plus, I’d get to start with one of my favourite past-times: research! Maybe I could even hang out in a rare book archive, like the one I used to frequent as a grad student in Toronto.
Writing in the present is trickier. Habits and moral codes change, trends and brands and music and tastes in colour and fashion and food all change at a rapid pace, important details the inclusion of which may stale-date an offering before it comes close to publication. I’ve never been cool anyway. I don’t have my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. I’m not going to write today’s version of “Generation-X,” like Douglas Coupland. (Although, as an aside, I do enjoy tapping away and adding to and subtracting from a never-finished manuscript set in the present, which I find endlessly amusing, but regrettably plotless; it reads rather like a series of sit-com scenes.)
This is no way to conclude a blog post, and yet, I shall.