I tell my students that I'm from "the olden days, and I am! I know about rotary phones, life before Google, and remember having to teach people about the value of email! In this case, however, I'm talking about being from a time where your parents decided what you would be when you grew up. All four of us Huntleys knew a few things for absolute certain: we would turn 18, leave home, go to college, get degrees and support ourselves. We would have careers, marry and have children, and all in that order. None of this was ever in question. Our parents would not (and could not) help us. We'd pay our own way through.
I don't know what my siblings were told about their futures but mine was a bit ambiguous. All my life, I'd wanted to be a mother, a teacher and a helper of children. I had no other ambition. (I had a "calling" -- with an uppercase /c/ -- but that's a story for another time.) When we played with the neighbor kids, I was the teacher, running the school.
However, my dad forbade it. "It was no career for a Huntley. I was too smart, it doesn't pay well enough it, there is no future in it." When I was a kid, if your dad said you couldn't do something, you didn't do it. So I set my sights on becoming a dietician, but my heart wasn't isn't it. All my friends at school knew what I was really doing there . . . I was working toward my Mrs. degree. I got it in my first year and the Mr. got me to Texas, land of my dreams.
On our trip down, we stopped to see my Uncle Myke who helped me with my vocational planning. He is the one who first called me a Spotted Pony. He said I'm like the Appaloosa*, rare, courageous and fierce but good at lots of different things and that I should NOT listen to my Dad and follow my heart and have my future wherever I wanted it. I was only 19 at the time, though, and not brave enough yet to go my own way.
I spent several years in work far from teaching. Administrative assistant, full-charge bookkeeping, office management, that kind of thing. I loved those roles, actually. I'm really good at seeing what someone needs and quickly filling that void. One of my bosses called me "Radar," - we just had that synchronicity you sometimes have with some people.
Yet eventually, I couldn't avoid my calling. Unce Mykes words stayed with me. I worked "around" teaching: Children's Minister, Life Coach, Mentor, Homeschool Mom and then the spotted pony finally shone through. I came to teaching at the perfect time in my life, when I had the patience to finally take on a job that takes YEARS to learn. Who knew? I'll tell you now, I couldn't have stuck it out in my 20s. Maybe it takes a spotted pony to be a teacher. Maybe it's easier if you get caught in some fences and brambles along the way first, so you know you can get out and be okay.
Whatever,the reason, I know I'm home. I have plenty of room and sunshine here. Happy New Year.
*The Apaloosa are a breed once found only on the Palouse, just miles from where I grew up, so very familiar to our area
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