One of the personal essays in our ninth grade English textbook is “The Work You Do, the Person You Are” by Toni Morrison. My classes and I talk about the divide between young Morrison and her white, lady-of-the-house boss. A divide so wide the boss is never named, is only She and Her. (Yes, capitalized.) We talk about how and why it can be hard to speak up.
During this lesson I shared an anecdote about my first job as a babysitter. Twelve-year-old me was at a neighborhood pool with friends and a lady walked up to us and asked who babysat. Though I never had, I thought: I do now, and I announced that I did, I would!
I held that job for a very long while, and for the entirety of the time that I watched their two-year-old, put her to bed, and then enjoyed their MTV, a cable luxury we did not have at my house, I was Saydra. I’m sure I mumbled a correction at least once, but week after week the twenty dollar checks for my services were made out to Saydra. The checks cleared, and Saydra I remained. I had the same inexperience of youth as Morrison but none of the racial or socio economic divides between me at that first employer. Even in a lower-stakes environment, speaking up was hard.
Eventually, Morrison was able to tell Her no when She continued to try to pay her in used clothes, but in other areas, Morrison accepted poor treatment while learning to separate her identity from her job.
I simply learned that my name is often misheard. (There was also a birthday cake incident when an “S” was smudged off and an “F” hastily piped on before we carried it away.) To this day, whenever I say my name on the phone or spell it out to anyone, I say, “Faydra with an F as in Florida.”
I had other babysitting jobs. Then came my first “real” job at Mrs. Fields cookies in the Gardens Mall. In college, I mentored a football player (this was an actual, my university-paid-for-it gig), worked the circulation desk at the library for a year, and I got paid to type my notes for my larger classes, so they could be sold. Was that called Class Notes? Anyone at UF in the 1990s remember? None of these jobs gave me an identity. They were another way to fill my time and earn a few more dollars to pay for new clothes or more CDs.
Now I’m a teacher, a writer, a mom, a wife, and a person who often sighs in the middle of the moment and thinks I’d rather be paddle boarding. I’m a person who hopes to get Taylor Swift tickets for her upcoming tour. I love pretty much all big, ridiculous dogs and one little Nugget of a dog. I could eat spicy shrimp tacos every day. Books! I’m a person who buys all the books! And reads a whole bunch of ‘em too.
This newsletter will be about the work I do, and it will be about the person I am:
Faydra with an F. From Florida.
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