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MELISSA LEIGH GIBSON
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  • The Present Tense Blog
  • Home
  • CV
  • Teaching
  • Writing
  • Presentations
    • SS Curriculum Review
    • Big Questions, Big Issues
    • Getting Proximate
  • The Present Tense Blog

the present tense

​​​Thoughts on politics, education, culture, parenthood, community, identity.
​Part personal essay, part academic paper, part travelogue. ​
​Always a work in progress. 
​
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On Wisconsin

5/15/2014

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Picture
Photo by Ross Freshwater | All rights reserved
You, Wisconsin, with your lime green leaf buds, with your sun heating my hair and your wind chapping my cheeks, with your crowds of Badger red that break up the dull palette of wintery grays, with your lakes that glitter and freeze, with your rains that never stop and snow that always falls and summers that always bake.
You, Wisconsin, with your ice quakes and thunderstorms, with your beer fests and freak fests, with your hippies and hunters and hipsters, with your bipolar politics and bipolar weather, with your locally cured bacon and organically ground bratwurst and sustainably caught bluegill, with your moody North Woods music and marching polka bands and banjos thundering the Capitol, with your blaze and your black and your cardinal.

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Little Ones

5/9/2014

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Picture
Photo by Melissa Gibson | All rights reserved
There is that moment when you realize they are no longer you.
Before, you are entangled as one. Arms and legs and bellies together as one. You, mama, are also the baby. At first, literally, with your baby nestled safely inside of you, and then later, when you are the baby’s entire world. You and your baby, attached—at the hip or the arm or the shoulder, in a snuggle or a carrier or a nap. You know each cry, and you know all the ways in which you are the answers to those cries: Milk. Snuggles. Sleep. Silly faces. Mama voices. Together. Exhausting and exhilarating, this oneness. But you take it for granted, this weaving of two people into a unit.
Until one day, you catch her playing, really playing, with a friend, and you realize you have no idea what they are talking about. Until one day, he cries so loudly and for so long, and you are not the answer. Until one day, you hear them together, laughing and “reading” books and talking and happy by themselves, not looking for you or crying for you or climbing on you. They have inner lives that are entirely their own–and you realize then, they are no longer you, and you are no longer one.
These babies, they grow into people. So fast.

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    About 

    While living in Mexico, I joked that speaking Spanish forced me to be far more Zen about life: Since I could only speak in the present tense, I was forced to just live in that present tense.

    This blog began as regular travel emails when I was a naive undergrad exploring the globe, my meditations on wherever I was on that school break (or break from school). It has since grown into something more, a record of parenting, teaching, politicking, community-building, struggling, healing, exploring, growing, and laughing -- a record of my present tense.

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    Like what you see? That's mostly Ross Freshwater. Check out my talented partner-in-life's photo gallery.

CONTACT

melissa.gibson [at] marquette.edu
office | 414.288.1421

Marquette University College of Education
Department of Educational Policy & Leadership
561 N 15th St | 113H Schroeder Complex

​Milwaukee, WI 53233
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Photos used under Creative Commons from tedeytan, Stig Nygaard, Matt From London, shixart1985, Ted Rabbitts