Voices

Jackie ♦ February 20, 2009 ♦ 1 Comment

I recently decided to start helping out with another afterschool club at my girls’ school– this time, it’s an art club, with a very good friend of mine as one of the co-sponsors. I’m starting to realize that one of my common patterns is to say “yes” to every interesting possiblity that comes along, without stopping to think about what it costs me.

But anyway, what I’m really thinking about this evening is how many voices I speak in during my days. There’s my teacher voice, which I used all afternoon in the club meeting as well as most of the day at school. It’s slightly louder, cheerful to all adults when needed, firm to students when needed, and comes with the teacher eye, which I can direct at any wayward student, who will feel it a mile away. The teacher voice can quiet a classroom of squirmy first-graders, and entrance kids sitting crisscross applesauce on the rug while I read them a wonderful fable. But I always feel funny using it in front of my friends, and I switch out of it as soon as the classroom door is closed.

Then there’s my mother voice– you know the one. It’s also pretty firm, can often be too harsh, has a nasty tendency to turn singsongy with the younger crowd. But sometimes the mother voice is tender, the one that croons while cuddling ,the bedtime story voice, the pet names and endearments voice, the one that says yes to the occasional surprise cupcake or lollipop. The mother voice scares me– I think the words that come out in that voice are some of the most powerful ones I may ever speak, but I don’t know which ones those will be. But it’s also in my mother voice that I work at my girls’ urban public school, and help in their classrooms, and bring in safety scissors and paper towels to their teachers. It’s in my mother voice that I tell my girls just how much I love them.

I don’t get to use my wifely voice nearly enough these days, with my husband in law school, but I cherish those moments, even if we’re talking about porkchops and dirty dishes. Then there’s the daughter, the friend, the sister, all too infrequently used as well.

It still amazes me to hear the teacher voice, the mother voice, come through my throat and from my mouth. It takes so much work and willpower, and yet in those voices, the transformation sounds so effortless.