This thing called a dissertation

The activity quilt made by mom for the little one.


So, I wanted to thank ya'll (that's for my Southern kin) for the rest of you, (you all), for sending me pushes to write. I haven't written all that much all week but I did write a lot today and I am still writing today (simply taking a mini break to put this down).

I wanted to first say, no one needs to truly edit my drafts.... that was just a turn of phrase....I really need motivation and encouragement more than editing at this point. I'm not quite there yet. And secondly, that this is only the first of 3 stages of the dissertation, it's a long process, so don't expect finished pages by April, simply step 1 of 3 will be finished. But, like pregnancy, one step at a time!

But lastly, I thought, that I would share, along with pictures of my fabulous baby shower given to me by Kathy and Mom, the beginning of my crazy dissertation idea...it actually started almost 2 years ago, but this was my first draft, a long, long time ago.

And this is also my way of saying how wonderful it was to see all of you and receive your love and gifts for Daniel and our little one. We truly appreciated it and seeing you, even for the short time that it was.
Some of the neighbors!
A wonderful group of gals from Transy days!
Some ole friends!
Some of the fabulous onesies made by everyone!!! There are a lot more pics on the Picasa site, just click over the pictures on the left and you can find the shower album.


......(written Fall 08)... I recently attended a baby shower for one of my college friends. Due to circumstances of time and space this shower was one of the first times that I had seen her since graduating. Yet, when the invite came I made the trip without hesitation. Most of our other friends attended as well and they also had not seen each other very often during in these quickly passing years of the twenties where love and career seem to take precedence above all else. So what was it then, about a baby shower, which if you have never been, is not really an amazing amount of fun, that made us all stop our lives and take time to visit and renew our friendships with one another? Of course, during the shower, while eating too sweet cake and sipping on strange non-alcoholic versions of cocktails, and nodding to great-aunts who seemed confused at the number of guests and young women in the room, we all lamented that we all only saw each other when a child was born and of course, as things would have it, we still only see each other when a child is born.

While eating that too sweet cake and watching my friend try and smile as she opened one present after another, I had the thought that there was something magical about an expectant mother that we cannot ignore as women. And this is why even as a modern feminist I feel that baby shower and a wedding shower should be for women by women. But then I recognized that there may be something also about the expectant mother that we cannot ignore as a society.

There is a story about the child that we tell ourselves and it begins here, where we sit around and expect, where we focus on an expanding women, where we turn her body into that which something attends. There is hope there and there is also fear but mainly there is expectation and the knowledge that surprise surrounds the women’s body.

But what happens to this story? This expectant beginning? What happens when all the presents have been put away, the visitors have returned to their states, and the mother has given birth?

The child has been born, the surprise has occurred and surprise turns to growth.

Figuring out the child, this thing that comes from surprise is important to figuring out the person but not psychologically, not because we look at childhood to uncover our past, but because we look at the child in order to figure out what it means to be human. We must look at childhood because otherwise we neglect what it means to be a human that grows and changes and is the one thing that cannot be encapsulated in this strange world......

So this is where my dissertation began and now I'm the pregnant expanding woman thankful to all the women who surrounded me with love and hope just a few weeks ago. And I'm the pregnant woman trying to write something real in the next two months.



Thank you again for all the inspiration and love,

Stephanie