Disconnect

(n.b. this is not my personal literary narrative)

So, my mom is a nurse. She doesn’t have a bachelor’s. She’s a good mom to me—way better than her mom was to her. She’s super supportive and she puts on her listener hat when I need her to listen, but at the end of the day, she’s all about practicality: Mom the Practical.

Mostly thanks to Mom the Practical, I am a BYU student. I’m almost done with my enlightening bachelor’s in English, and I love my Spanish minor. I’m also an editing minor, but I did that mostly to appease Mom the Practical, and I have no intention of ending up with a practical editing job. This semester, I chose to study The Literature of Awe.

The other day I was on the phone with Mom the Practical, trying to describe to her some conflicts I was having with The Literature of Awe. “What about the prosaic?” I mused. “What about connections to life and getting up in the morning? How audacious is this course? How can I raise any of this without offending people in the room who will make all of this impracticality their career? Why am I a humanities major?” Etc.

“Honey,” Mom said, “don’t bring any of that up. Just write what they want to hear. Do what you need to do for the class and move on. They don’t want to hear about that.” (But isn’t they actually we, or me?)

Obviously, I’m not taking Mom the Practical’s advice on this one. Cite current blog post.

But let’s talk about healthcare. When I’m not studying The Literature of Awe, I’m an intern for a research firm that specializes in healthcare IT. I do it partly because they pay their interns well and partly because I might choose a master’s in healthcare administration after this English-major life dies.

No, let’s talk about Wordsworth. Let’s talk about Puritan rebel figures. Let’s talk about how to teach a Rec Management student how to create a well-formed thesis statement. Let’s talk about the literary works that bring me awe.  

But wait, let’s talk about changing my niece’s dirty diaper and being on time to meetings. Let’s talk about scraping your windshield in the morning and getting up in the morning and going to work. Let’s talk about paying rent.

Worse (or better?) yet, let’s talk about my converts in the Philippines—the ones who live in poverty so real and so putrid that maybe they’ll never know awe. Let’s talk about microfinance and baptism as solutions. Let’s talk about Africa.

Or we can talk about The Literature of Awe. But when we do, must it exclude Mom the Practical? Must it exclude any future career that doesn’t land me in the JFSB? Must it exclude sticky-fingered toddlers and punctuality and the prosaic? Must it exclude the underprivileged? I’m only coming up with disconnect.