That’s What She Sed Ministrare

Image from Wellesley.edu

Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I am kind of obsessed with Class Notes, the brief life updates submitted by alums from each class that can be found in the back of the Wellesley Magazine. I’ve been receiving the Wellesley Magazine for six years and, in that time, I’ve read each issue cover to cover, saving the best and most delightful part for last. I often tweet my favorite quotes from the Class Notes section, so much so that folks have assumed that I am Class Secretary (I’m not and I don’t work for the Magazine, I’m just a fan). 

My interest in the Class Notes section is not purely for entertainment purposes; it’s due to an almost spiritual curiosity I have about the lives of women with whom I share nothing else in common but an alma mater. I am your average self-interested young professional millennial, which means I have carefully constructed a world around me that validates my own experiences and offers me and people like me a place of belonging. While this world of young, highly educated professionals that I have created provides an important support system that makes it easier to navigate through complex and sometimes toxic environments, I recognize that the wisdom I can gain from people who are a lot like me is limited. Enter Class Notes.

The Class Notes are a recurring informal survey of the experiences of women all over the world between the ages of 21 and 101. These little updates provide me with a valuable window into the lives of women from different backgrounds, who have had different careers, who value different things, who have come of age during the Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of the internet, Wars on Terrorism. The vulnerability, honesty, and humor that many of the older alums pour into their updates make my heart swell. The meditations on outliving all of your loved ones and the physical and emotional challenges of aging often bring me to tears.

When a member of the class of 1938 writes “If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself!” it not only compels me to finally make that dentist appointment that I’ve been avoiding, but to also reflect on how my own assumptions about my life expectancy influence the choices I make.

A member of the class of 1947 writes “My own life, despite having given up driving, continues to be rich and satisfying. In my senior residence I edit our community magazine, sing in the chorus, enjoy writers’ and poets’ workshops and all kinds of other activities, and love being near my daughter (Wellesley ‘77) and my huge extended East Coast family. Only fly in the ointment is that my grandchildren live in California– but they are all frequent flyers!”

Updates like these really feel like someone is reaching out to say hello from the other side of educational attainment, a completed career, and parenthood and grand-parenthood. It puts me at ease to know that there can be so much life to live even after we reach every traditional milestone of adulthood and success. These updates also bring into focus the elders in my life that I’ve stopped checking in on; they provide a chance for elderly women to proclaim “I’m still here!” in a world that has done its best to make them invisible. The older Class Notes also contain many obituaries and memories of classmates who have recently passed which means Wellesley continues to enable women to use their voices and be visible even in the afterlife. Women Who Will… not be forgotten. These Class Notes exist almost as if to say “you came, you saw, you conquered, and we noticed.”

Of course, the Class Notes give me a window into the lives of women of all ages, not just our elders. I like to think that they reflect the values and priorities of each generation. Alums from the 1930s-1950s discuss retirement, aging, new discoveries (like the alum a few years ago who walked us all through how to sign up for Netflix), hobbies and travel, and the accomplishments of their grandchildren and great grandchildren. Alums from the 1960s-1980s tend to focus heavily on career advancement and fancy promotions, community and civic engagement, and their children. Alums between the 1990s and 2010s focus almost entirely on post-graduate degrees, marriages, and new jobs.

I will say that the younger alums tend to be much more guarded about their personal lives, only offering up tidbits that could also easily be found on Facebook or LinkedIn. These Class Notes appear to be self-reinforcing in that the younger alums seem to look at examples of stories that are noteworthy, and then only submit different variations on those same themes. Perhaps this is a good thing and means that our social lives are still so crowded and bustling that we have many opportunities to display vulnerability and reflect on our lives, and we do not see the Wellesley Magazine as the appropriate place for that type of discourse. Or perhaps it is a bad thing, underscoring the dangerous idea that there are only a few ways to be a successful Wellesley Woman, which sends those of us not succeeding by the standards we see reflected in the Class Notes further into the shadows.

Either way, I implore all of you young alums to consider submitting reflections about your whole lives to your class secretaries so that your stories can be included in the Class Notes. One of the many dream projects I have imagined for myself is to conduct a comprehensive analysis on women’s lives based solely on Class Notes. It would be a true shame if the only Notes submitted on behalf of those of us who graduated in a recession, who fight racism and sexism and Islamophobia daily, who have cared for aging parents, who have moved to new cities and are having trouble establishing a sense of community, who have jobs that are unfulfilling but are good enough to pay the bills… well it would just be a shame if the only Class Notes I had to analyze in my imaginary experiment only included the number of marriages we’ve entered and graduate degrees we’ve attained.

It’s pretty amazing that we all came from so many different places and went on to do so many different things and yet, for a brief moment in time, we each walked across the same paths, sled down the same hills, and claimed the same space as our own. Some of us loved Wellesley, others of us couldn’t wait to leave. Some of us were straight A students, while others of us were put on academic probation. But regardless of who you were then and who you are now, your memories of that place and insight into that culture makes you, all of you, an important part of the Wellesley community and makes the lives you have lived indeed noteworthy. 

I was 22 years old, with $35 dollars in my pocket and one business card. Let me tell you, those first few months were both exhilarating and TERRIFYING. Everything was big, bright, and breathlessly fast. And I was such a Country Mouse.

But Audre’s poetry spoke to me. I had tasted From a Land Where Other People Live and New York Head Shop and Museum and I was intrigued. Without question, I was lured to New York by her poetry, the possibility of a job and a city brimming with women who loved women!  

It was Audre who helped me get an interview with Florence Howe, the founder of the Feminist Press.

It was Audre who turned to me and said, “It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?” as I walked into my first Salsa Soul Sisters meeting. That became my first New York family.

I was so lucky. One friend led to another and another and soon enough I found myself part of this community of lesbians of color that could only have existed in New York City.

And while there were many lesbians of color who were committed to using our gifts to advance social justice, there was no one more gifted, or more committed, than Audre.

For that alone, I would be grateful to Audre. But her influence on my development as a writer, as an activist, and as a HUMAN BEING runs deep. She was as bold in life as she was on the page. And that is pretty damn bold.

For a time, my email signature was the line “Your silence will not protect you,” taken from a speech Audre delivered in 1977, the same year I moved to the city.