With Child
a book of poetry by Cathie Desjardins
In its previous incarnation as the Mass Field Center for Teaching and Learning, CUSP sponsored an annual Writers' Retreat. Over several days in early December, educators would gather to write and reflect on anything that was in their line of vision in any form they chose. Like many other teachers, I was an instant convert the first time I attended, won over by the collegiality of educators sharing their stories, helping each other focus the lens through which they saw the world.
It took a lot to keep me away after that, but in 1995 "a lot" happened when my son Dylan was born in early December. A year later, I was back at the Retreat, leaving my son for the first time. My husband reassured me all was well during my many anxious phone calls. Only when I came home did he tell me that the first morning I was gone, when he brought the baby into bed and gave him a bottle, Dylan lobbed it across the room, climbed down from the bed, crawled into a corner and cried. My husband doesn't remember any of this now but I will probably never forget it.
Bumpy as that separation was, that Retreat gave me the opportunity to think and write about what it meant to be a mother: I had two older children but in the wind-tunnel of working and raising them, I'd never found the time to jot much down. I resolved to record what I could about my late-in-life third child. Long story short: twelve years later I am finally publishing the little book of poems that began with those early jottings.
What I love most about writing is that you never know what may become of it, or whom it might reach or touch. We experienced many such resonances at the Retreats, given the extraordinary opportunity to reflect and express ourselves. And now as I launch this book, my little paper boat, I want to give thanks to the Field Center and to CUSP that, once a year for many years, I had the chance to come together with other teachers to see what we had to say.
Cathie Desjardins
Last Updated On: 5/6/08
