In which the villagers are friendly

All of us Alalas attended graduate school together, Brighid and I having graduated last summer, and Rhea graduating next summer (of course you will, Rhea, hush). Brighid and I met before classes started in 2009, and right away we bonded, being one of the relatively few MFA candidates who were moms. On our first outing, she offered to watch my kids for me. In fact, there were a lot of things about the program that were harder for me because I’m a mom, but that’s to be expected, and I’ll bitch about that in a minute.

But first, I want to mention how great my MFA community was. My partner watched the kids while I went to class, but when he got a job, he had to work one night that I had class. I needed a babysitter, and a cheap one, because we were hurting. I called a new friend, who would like to remain nameless, I’m sure. Even though she was busy as a TA and an all around excellent student, she agreed to watch my kids for 5 hours every Thursday for a whole quarter, for $25 a night. And she wasn’t the only one. Every time I needed a babysitter, nearly always for a school function, one of my MFA people stepped up. One lovely woman I’d only met in passing offered to babysit so I could attend a meeting. Friends took my kids on field trips, and bought them Christmas presents. There was even the wife of another student whose mention that she loved babysitting I took very seriously. And there was the sweet girl who offered me a parking-lot hug when I broke down in tears. And of course Brighid was there for rides and babysitting. She brought me snacks for my kids when we first moved and were really broke and hungry. And then Rhea showed up, and our daughters became fast friends and so did we, even though we’re too busy to see each other most weeks. Every member of Rhea’s family has babysat for me.

I have an amazing partner, too, who without complaint, for two years, in a lot of ways, gave me over to writing, reading, and working. And so when people ask me how I managed to go to grad school while having three young children and working and doing internships, in a new city without a support system, well, I actually had a great little village.
But like I mentioned before, going to grad school was hard. There were a lot more meetings that I had thought there would be. Which meant, once my partner started working, that I had to find a babysitter for every meeting. And an inordinate amount of those meetings took place right at the time my daughter got out of school. Sometimes it involved driving the babysitter, and sometimes the babysitter was late. Sometimes I drove around for 2 ½ hours just to attend a 45 minute meeting. And not only the meetings, but there were a lot of just general events like readings and visiting writers and artsy fartsy stuff, and then even more social invitations to parties and other get-togethers. I was actually astounded when I discovered the amount of partying that the MFA crowd did. I’m not a drinker myself, mostly because I don’t like the taste of almost anything, and I get bad hangovers. But I have to say, pretty much everybody was still pretty damn brilliant, so I guess the drinking didn’t get in their way. It just surprised me, is all. So I attended most of the meetings, a handful of the literary events, and almost none of the parties. I didn’t really miss the parties, and the ones I attended, I had fun at. I even got tipsy a few times. Which means that I drank way more than my usual in grad school, too. Ah ha, and the finger comes back around. Mmm-hmm.

Grad school was tough for a lot of reasons, but it was great fun. I made myself a promise when I got accepted to school. I was going to talk in class and make intelligent comments, no matter how red my face turned or how many times I ended with “..or, you know, whatever.” I was going to make real friends and join organizations. My teachers were going to remember me, and I was going to remember some of the shit I’d studied. So far, so good, y’all. So good.