New semester

To start the semester listening to professors proclaim their excitement over the courses they're about to begin teaching is awesome. So is getting to read extremely contemporary works by still-living writers; in Women in Literature we'll read ten books, all of them published within the last ten years (a huge and happy relief given my aversion to Jane Austen and her friends). And in Feminism and the Body we'll read, among other things, a book called Cunt (not exactly a relief since I didn't expect anything less audacious from a women's studies class but still a happy fact given my aversion to boredom, of which my Austen aversion is a subset).

This semester should be a fun one, and no doubt it will be stressful as well. Aron and I have to learn how to instantaneously turn from parents into students and then immediately back again.

I have to remember how to be an adult. Even at Target when a cashier asks, "Hi, how are you?" and I answer, "Fine, thanks; how are you?" my own voice shocks me, because I'm not used to how it sounds in the presence of adults who aren't my husband. It's a wonder I don't instead respond to the cashier with, "Great, sweetheart; how are you?" I call Graham sweetheart, honey, beautiful baby boy, little tomato. And unfortunately I do it with that saccharine mom-voice I thought I'd never naturally acquire. But surprisingly and without effort, I talk to my baby like a baby—like he's a baby and like I'm one.

Can I keep Graham out of my head long enough to learn anything? Can I read Cunt objectively and without thinking about the human that came out of my own? I don't know that I can or that I want to. I want Graham to come to class!