An Identity in the Seams
By Kayleigh Rohr '20
LAS-110: Intersections
I submit this paper because of the exceptional creative writing. The author’s use of the symbol is creative and she incorporates narrative well into her piece. Overall, I feel that both the content and writing are very strong.
-Linda Laine
On a hot August day in 2014, I found myself in a bleak gray shirt, embellished with a green caterpillar decal, standing in front of a local daycare center. My hands were clammy and my body was tense as I hesitantly punched in the door code to Hastings Child Development Center. I stumbled into the office of my new boss, and she directed me to one of the three preschool rooms at the end of the noisy hall. When I stepped into the pale blue, peculiar smelling preschool room with twenty four-year-old children sitting criss-cross-applesauce on a colorful rug spelling out the ABCs, I could not have imagined the roller coaster ride I was in for. My job as a preschool teacher’s aide has tremendously shaped my life. Although I have gained an abundant amount of knowledge about removing stains, identifying unusual smells, and sanitizing absolutely everything, my personal identity has also evolved greatly. To this day, I still have that same bleak gray shirt, but now it has stains, small holes, and thousands of life lessons woven into the seams. To anyone else, it would just be an old t-shirt, but to me, the t-shirt holds a plethora of memories and life lessons in between the stitches. Just like the shirt, I may seem more tattered and worn compared to when I started, but the knowledge and skills I have gained are incredible.
I vividly remember after my second day at the daycare center, I went home and cried to my mother. The first two days were incredibly stressful; trying to adapt to the cleaning schedule, internalizing the pure chaos, and keeping up with the kids’ needs—or tattletaleing—seemed to be nearly impossible. I had even spilled a gallon jar of sticky applesauce all over my shirt and shoes, causing a huge mess in the kitchen. My shirt appeared to be ruined. I tried to scrub out the bits of applesauce, but instead the mess grew and the shirt still smelled like the sickly sweet puree of sugar and apples. I did not have another shirt with me, and I still had about three hours left of my shift. I felt hopeless, just as my shirt looked to be.
Leah Schouten, silver, copper
I desperately wanted to go into my boss’s office the next morning and tell her that I could not work in the center anymore. However, I knew I could not give up that easily. The night after the applesauce incident, I tossed my t-shirt in the washing machine, and I decided to stay at the center for at least another three months before I made a decision. Today, I am incredibly thankful that I waited to make my choice because of how my time in the center shaped me. However, the next two years would prove to be difficult. I spent countless hours sitting in a bathroom, encouraging three-year-olds to use the potty. I scrubbed cots until my fingers felt raw, and I reeked of bleach solutions. I nursed bloody noses until my knees hurt from kneeling. I accumulated stains on my shirt almost daily, but I knew that when I went home, a quick toss in the washing machine would make it look almost brand new. Not all stains were easily removable, though. Sometimes it took stain-lifting spray and extra scrubbing to remove the stains that had seeped into the fabric a little deeper. Many of the daily occurrences of the center have escaped my memory, much like most stains were quickly erased. It was to be expected since I tended to work long hours in the summer, or I worked after I had been at school all day. However, there are also memories that I cling to and will cherish for years to come, similar to those stains that cannot be removed. For example, I will never forget the first time I cleaned up a ghastly bloody nose, but I do not remember every bloody nose incident I dealt with. They have been embedded into my memory due to their ability to form my thoughts and judgements. Through these experiences, I gained the identity of perseverance as well as a love for children.
Unlike stains, holes and tears are not easily removed with a little bit of laundry detergent and hot water. They can be restitched, but they will never look quite the same. One day, I was pushing a four-year-old girl on a bright yellow swing, and the bottom of my shirt was caught in one of the chains. When she swung forward, the chain tore a small hole the size of a thumbtack at the hem of my shirt. It was hardly obvious, but many of the children still noticed. They constantly questioned me about what had happened, and eventually I became impatient with their unceasing interrogations. However, their attention to detail amazed me, and one day, their ability to notice and comprehend their surroundings greatly impacted me.
In June of 2015, one of my closest childhood friends lost her dad to type 1 diabetes. I received the news during a quick fifteen-minute break, which did not allow time for me to process the information and prepare to return to twenty screaming children. I headed back to the pale blue room with red, puffy eyes and tearstained cheeks, hoping that the kids would not notice. I underestimated their attention to detail enormously. The first child to approach me was a little boy named Lane. Lane was one of the tallest boys in the class, but his sweet lisp and little baby face with big blue eyes contrasted his height. I was sitting at a table cutting small squares of brown construction paper for the next craft, and he sat in the teensy red chair right next to me. He laid his head on my arm and innocently asked me why I looked so sad. Not knowing how to respond to question without losing composure, I told him that something bad happened to a close friend’s family. He did not say anything at first, but rather he sat on my lap and watched me work on the crafts. After a while, he told me that his parents always told him that no matter what happens, everything will always be okay in the end. Lane had taken the time to see the small spots on my shirt from the tears I had shed, and this attention to detail allowed him to provide the simple words of encouragement that I so desperately needed to hear. He taught me the importance of noticing the small details, which is something I strive to include in my identity.
Most students will encounter a difficult time in their education; it is inevitable. There will be nights spent working on homework until ungodly hours of the morning. There will be mornings when getting out of bed seems nearly impossible. There will be weeks that appear simply unbearable. There will be homesickness. There will be loneliness. There will be loss. However, if students come together and pay attention to their classmates, there will be triumph. If we notice the small details and changes in others, we can comfort and encourage them. Then we can allow for our friends and classmates to bear through their low points and climb to their successes, creating a more positive environment.
Highs and lows occur in daycare centers just like they do in our day-to-day lives. Widespread sickness is easily the low point of the winter season in daycare centers. Sicknesses spread quickly from room to room because the center is such a large daycare. One of the worst culprits was strep throat. Oftentimes, children would contract strep throat but show very few symptoms, so their parents would still bring them to daycare. After being at the center for a few hours, the symptoms would become drastically more noticeable and the poor children would become miserable. One day specifically, I sat in the office with a four-year-old girl named Carly for over thirty minutes. Her parents worked outside of our hometown, and their commuting time was rather lengthy. Carly had an incredibly high fever, and the staff was desperate to keep it down as much as possible. While my coworkers were urgently looking for icepacks to place on her neck and armpits in order to control her fever, Carly sat on my lap with steady streams of tears and snot rolling down her cheeks. By the time her mother had arrived at the center to whisk her away to the clinic, the stain of tears and boogers consumed my sleeve. At first, I was slightly disgusted; after all, she was obviously quite sick. But the more I thought about it, the more I understood how important the stain was to her. Carly needed someone to comfort her and make her feel safe, and I had the privilege to be that person to her. Every tear that has seeped through the seams reminds me of the times that I have sat with a crying child to comfort them and the importance of empathy in my life and identity.
The day after preschool graduation, I was sitting at a table with two sisters, Kira and Ruby, who were coloring flowers with a thick, bolded outline. Ruby, being the younger of the two, scribbled away with her bubblegum pink crayon, paying little attention to the outlines of the flowers. Kira, who was a recent preschool graduate, carefully shaded the stem with a deep green crayon. When Kira saw Ruby’s disregard for the dark outline of the flower, she was appalled. She told Ruby that she must color in the lines for it be pretty. Ruby quickly looked up at Kira and declared with all the feistiness that a two-year-old can conjure, “Mama thinks it is pretty because I colored it!” Kira, with wide eyes, turned and asked me to tell her she was wrong. However, when I looked down at the t-shirt I was wearing and saw the whitish stain from the bleach solutions I used to clean the bathroom and the spot where the caterpillar logo was peeling, I realized that beauty is a subjective standard developed from our differences and shaped by our experiences. To anyone else, my t-shirt looked like it belonged in the trash. Beauty is not perfection; instead, beauty is what makes us different. To me the t-shirt symbolizes experiences that have changed my outlook on the world and who I am today. I now know that I may not be considered beautiful by societal norms, but beauty comes from within, causing me to be far more accepting than I once was. My identity changed with me. A realization like this seems to be a normal pathway for many other college students. At some point over the course of an education, our beliefs about what is true and accepted are challenged. Many students come from small towns that have a population that is very likeminded, and other students come from large, diverse cities. Students come from different types of households, cultures, and religions. We encounter people from different backgrounds that impact how we reason and how we act. We are encouraged to think deeper and contemplate perspectives that we may not have considered before. College encourages us to become more accepting of people by forcing students to look past the surface of a particular subject and reconsider our initial judgements, changing the identities of students everywhere. We learn to love others for their differences instead of their similarities.
So much of who I am today was challenged and reshaped by the experiences I had in the center. I initially accepted the job expecting that I would be teaching the children, but rather I was their student. Their pure and innocent view of the world caused me to rethink my values. I have learned to be much more self-disciplined, empathetic, and optimistic, and I am far less self-centered than I was when I started. Most importantly, I have discovered a passion for working with children, which has greatly influenced who I want to be in the future. Compassion Child Sponsorship (2013), an organization dedicated to assisting children who live in poverty, quotes Angela Schwindt stating, “While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” By the time I put in my leave of absence for school, the job was no longer about making money; instead, it was about nurturing and loving the kids. My last day at the center before I left for Central College was incredibly difficult; saying goodbye to all of my kids was much harder than I had anticipated. Now, my t-shirt sits in my dresser at my house. When I return home, the partially peeled decal letters that scrawl STAFF across my back will still be there, the permanent stains will not have magically disappeared, and the green caterpillar on the breast pocket will still have the cliché smile spanning its face. Much like the elements of the shirt will still be there upon my return home, everything I have experienced and all of the lessons I have learned will stay with me for years to come.
Works Cited
Compassion International (2015). Sponsoring a child is just part of Compassion’s ministry to children in need. Retrieved from http://www.compassion.com