What Else Is She?

"What's your favorite thing about her?"

"Her laugh. It's a good laugh."

"I probably spend the most time with females within my student teaching group. We come from such different backgrounds, ethnicities, and religions, but we can all come together and recognize the power structures that exist within pedagogy and be like, "Okay, as educators, how can we deal with this and change it for the better?" and that's been really wonderful to experience."

“I was adopted and I knew this from a young age, but it was only after I turned 17 that I went to look for my actual birth name in the registry. I found out that my mother was from Ireland. She had traveled to America in order to give me up to a good, loving family, because back in those days, it was a great shame to have a child out of wedlock. If people found out, they either locked you up in a convent, gave the child away, or did both. My birth mother had been working as an upstairs maid in an estate at the time and nobody knew of her pregnancy until she was going into labor. That’s when she told her employer, who took her to the hospital, paid for all the bills, and welcomed her back to her job on the estate. But I think she left anyway, because of the shame associated with the pregnancy. I never contacted her because of that. I searched for years for her in the papers, but when I finally found her and when it came down to it, I decided to never contact her. I wanted to continue protecting her from that shame she had had from the pregnancy. It’s not the same with the younger generation now, but for a person of her age and coming from that time period, the shame still exists. I know she had children after me but I’m not sure she ever told them about me. I highly doubt she did. Nobody knew I was born, except for the employer, and I wanted to continue protecting her in case she had continued to keep the secret of my birth after all these years. People have told me to contact her. They’ve told me I would regret it forever if she passed and I hadn’t done it. She did pass last March, but in my heart, I know that I did the right thing.”

"She's cheerful all the time. Except one time she got grumpy and yelled at a pickle jar."

"We met freshman year at a party. I remember being at the party and thinking, "This is such a weird party," and wanting to go home, but then we found each other and it was like, "Oh my gosh!" From the moment we met, we've been able to bond over the most specific things, like how we're Literature majors, and it's just been that way ever since. I don't even want to think about how it'll be when she graduates this year."

"My sister and I come from different mothers, so we're 14 years apart. We're not very close, but I have a lot of admiration for the way she handles things. She has this remarkable ability to smile in the face of adversity. I couldn't do it the way she does. She lives in a log cabin in the woods that she essentially built herself. She built the log cabin with her own hands. That's the very essence of her. I couldn't do it."

"She's my person. She's the one I go to when I need someone to pick me up and off my feet. And we always have the most fun together. We could be doing nothing at all in her room or sneaking into a party where we're underaged, but something unexpected always happens with her. I believe I will never need someone to complete me, because I myself am complete, but she definitely compliments me."

"We just celebrated our fourth friendaversary four days ago."

"The minute you meet her, you just know she's smarter than you. But she's nice about it."

"I was bullied most of high school and some of middle school. I'm from California, so coming all the way here, immersing myself, meant my inner demons don't haunt me anymore. It meant I was finally ... "

"This is actually our first time meeting in person. I commented on an Instagram picture of her tattoo."