Basking in the moment before getting back to the trenches

I'll admit it: I enjoyed the standing ovation. It doesn't happen often in the life of an academic, and the huge respect I bear for the people out there doing the applauding made it even more special. But it was just one high point in a day full of joyful moments.

Like when my department chair said such nice things about me during his introduction that he nearly made me cry, which was a problem because for a half hour before my talk I'd been up in my office practicing the last section over and over again, trying to find a way to get through some lines from Li-Young Lee's "Persimmons" without crying. If I'd dissolved into a sloppy puddle of tears from the very start, I would never have made it to the end.  

Or when I asked the audience questions about the opening paragraph from Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," which I'd projected on the screen, and they played along, coming up with charming and intelligent responses even though most of them had never read the story.  

Or afterward, when a former student told me I think of you literally every time I teach--and meant it.

Or when some dude who graduated 45 years ago came up after my talk and told me You've got it, and I knew what it meant.

Or much later, after I arrived home exhausted and started rooting through gift bags and discovered two of Percival Everett's books signed by the author. Yes: a wonderful colleague had taken a bunch of our students to Ohio University last week to hear a talk by Percival Everett--a talk I couldn't attend because I was recovering from surgery--and had made sure to get the author to sign two books for me. By that point I didn't bother trying not to cry. It was inevitable.

Or much much later, when a colleague from upstairs sent me a sketch he'd made of me speaking with the words from a Robinson Jeffers poem in the background: Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained hearts found / The honey of peace in old poems. No livestream, no video, no official photos, but I welcome my colleague's sketch, especially since I'd been talking about our shared passion for leaving a mark on the world.

I think I did. If the crowd that showed up to hear my Best Lecture yesterday can be believed, I may have spent the past 26 years doing something worth celebrating. And now I'm getting ready to do something completely different--but first I have to get through the rest of the semester, powered by that round of applause.

Afternoons with Chester and Beverlry

Meet Chester. 

Chester is a chest. Kind of puny and unisex and hollow as a chocolate bunny.

Chester's primary quality is the ability to take all kinds of manhandling without squirming. He's not ticklish, and if you happen to sneeze straight into the void where his face ought to be, he doesn't flinch. 

This makes him a great test subject for people learning how to replace the dressing on a central line. If, for instance, you were planning to serve as the primary caregiver for a flesh-and-blood human being with no functioning immune system, you would want to practice your dressing-changing skills on someone impervious to damage. Like Chester!

Now that my husband and I both know how to change the dressing on a central line, our next lesson will be learning to flush the line daily, all in preparation for the next stage of craziness we will encounter when he finally gets released from the hospital. Our son, that is--not Chester. Chester seems perfectly happy where he is.

Also in Columbus today a receipt at a fast-food joint provided a novel spelling for my name: Beverlry. Sounds like a portmanteau of Beverly's Revelry.

We'll enjoy some Beverlry when I present Bev's Best Lecture at my retirement event tomorrow afternoon. It's Homecoming weekend so who knows who might show up? I've been waking up at 3 a.m. running through lines from my talk, which has not increased my confidence level one bit. Will I get nervous? Maybe so, but I now have a sure-fire solution: I'll just picture an audience full of Chesters. Chester can't applaud, but neither can he complain. If the Best Lecture bombs, Chester will silently sit on his hands. Except he hasn't got any hands. 

Maybe I need to forget about Chester and get some sleep, including, ideally, sleeping right through that highly active 3 a.m. hour. Pretty soon tomorrow will be here and then--let the Beverlry begin!

A lag in the system? What system?

We seem to have a lag in the system, said the librarian, and I said Me too. 

We'd been standing by the copier talking about my difficulty completing a print job. I'd sent about 30 pages to the printer earlier but only the first page printed; I sent it again, scanned in my ID, and watched the printer spit out two pages and then quit. So I complained to the nearest reference librarian, who probably didn't earn a Masters in Library Science just so he could wrangle recalcitrant printers, but his desk is right there and who else was going to help me? He launched into a long explanation of recent problems with the printers and while he was talking the printer spat out three more pages of my print job, paused, printed two more pages, paused, and went on that way until the entire job was done.

And this pretty much describes how I've been living my life lately: a bit of activity, a little rest; a little more activity, another rest. My usual frantic multitasking is impossible, so I'm focusing on putting one foot in front of another and sometimes simply standing still until I feel like moving again.

Lag in the system indeed. What system? Whoever is responsible for fair distribution of pain and suffering seems to have spilled a decade's worth on my family's heads in the past few months, so even when I'm physically present on campus, I'm mentally in Columbus with my son, who's struggling through the aftereffects of the bone marrow transplant. I ought to be spending my final semester teaching things I love and raking in the congratulations before retirement, but instead I'm struggling to pack up books in a moldy office and wondering if I'll have the strength to stand up long enough to give a talk to alumni and friends this Friday.

On the one hand, having specific goals helps keep me going, so I relish the chance to focus on introducing my students to James Baldwin or Annie Dillard. On the other hand, my brain's not functioning well enough to come up with the rest of the sentence. 

Step. Pause. Step again. Pause again. 

Step. Pause. Step.

Pause.  

Please join me in a weak and wimpy hurrah

Monday again, one week after surgery, and I'm back to the real world: get up at a civilized hour, eat breakfast, shower, wrestle into that horrible post-surgical bra that makes professional teaching clothes bunch up awkwardly, drive to town, prep, teach, grade, prep, teach, force myself to walk over to the library even though I'm so exhausted I'd really like to lie down and sleep on the cold hard floor, post grades, post attendance, send three print jobs downstairs, walk to the printer to discover one print job done and the other two missing, send them again, cross one item after another off my to-do list when I would really really really like to lie down on that comfy sofa and not get up again for a week, but then suddenly in the middle of all that effort to pretend that everything is normal and I feel fine and there's absolutely nothing wrong I get a text that tells me the pathology report has been posted to my online chart, so of course I go to my chart right away and open the report and even though I'm not a doctor and can't decode all the medical terminology I note the word negative in all the right places--no cancer in the margins of the tumor, no cancer in the lymph nodes--and I don't have the energy to jump up and down for joy but maybe I can write a single sentence, just one, and then drive home and celebrate with a nice cozy nap, if only I can stay awake long enough to drive myself home. 

Friday poetry challenge: Counting on you

In the early-morning quiet of the sleeping household, my grandson sat on the sofa working on a Sudoku puzzle while I granted myself a silent round of applause. I may be incapable of accomplishing much in my current weakened state, but by golly I can teach a ten-year-old to solve Sudoku.

They arrived yesterday, my son-in-law and the two youngest grandkids, to pay a visit and work on some projects, and they jumped right in to help make the house habitable. My son-in-law hit the ground vacuuming and then addressed a plumbing problem, and later today he'll assist with a little wiring project. The kids helped Grampa gather eggs from the hens, set the table, and chop okra for Limping Susan. Most of all, they provided a needed break in a mostly blah week. 

I feel okay, but little tasks wear me out--taking a shower this morning felt like a major endeavor. Yesterday I took my car to the dealership for scheduled maintenance just to get out of the house, assuming that loafing in the waiting room would require no more effort than loafing at home, but a television blaring Weather Panic interspersed with Screaming Political Rhetoric felt like a ball-peen hammer pounding against my head. All right, I get it, there's a storm coming, but can we all take a chill pill?

My son got through the bone marrow transplant without any immediate side effects other than drowsiness, which didn't deter him from watching the Cleveland Guardians win last night's Division Series game and force a fifth game tomorrow. Our Guardians seem to be pulling together all their strength just when it's most needed.

Which is exactly what I need to do. On Monday I'll be heading back to campus to teach and lead meetings and move toward my big retirement event next Friday, so it's time to pull up my socks and get serious about class preps, agendas, and PowerPoint slides. First, though, I've got grandkids in the house. Time to pull out the crayons and do some therapeutic coloring. 

A Sudoku-inspired poem:

To tell you why I'm feeling fine,
I'll write the reasons one to nine:
One, fresh pawpaw ice cream--sweet!
Two, my grandkids like to eat
fresh pawpaws and fresh okra too.
Three days until I'm finally through
recuperating. Four small hands

to gather eggs and help the Grands.

Five hours til my pain pills are gone. 

Six days until I see my son.

Seven crayons, colors bright.

Final exams in eight weeks--right!

Nine's the limit we can use

to fill the grid with numbers. Choose

the digits well and win the prize:

a chance to solve another. (Sigh!)

Anyone want to throw some numbers back at me? Put them in the comments.

Grampa's little helpers

Who knew I needed a mantis model?

Tucked away within the bounty of the giant gift basket my colleagues gave me last week was a kit for constructing a praying mantis, which I put together yesterday morning just to amuse myself. My fat fingers struggled to fit together the tiny wooden bits, and the instructions didn't help much. The print was so tiny that I had to take a pic with my phone and blow them up, and then they said things like "please avoid sharp, do not eat" and "fireproof, waterproof, moisture-proof, sunscreen."

But the result is an adorable little praying mantis, more fragile and less fierce than the mantis I admired not long ago in this post. Back in August I set myself up as the protector of the praying mantis, but now I'm relying on this mantis model to protect me from boredom and cheer me on in my recovery. Maybe I ought to give her a name. Suggestions?

Am I blue?

Psychologically speaking, the answer is yes, sometimes I get a little blue, and why shouldn't I? I'm recovering from surgery after a scary diagnosis, and I'm restricted to home during my fall break while the leaves are turning beautiful colors, my adorable grandkids are constantly growing taller and more delightful many miles away, and my son is undergoing unpleasant treatments in Columbus. He won't be entirely alone--my husband will be with him on Thursday for the bone marrow transplant--but I get blue when I think of my helplessness in the face of his huge challenges. But undergoing the stress of travel is inadvisable so soon after my surgery, so I stay home.

And I get blue when I think about my classes. I am completely confident that my wonderful colleagues will do a fantastic job teaching my classes for the rest of the week, but I won't be there to see how my Nature students react to Sylvia, the woodsy girl in Sara Orne Jewett's "The White Heron," and I won't get to observe my African American Lit students struggling to figure out whether they're allowed to laugh at the Battle Royal scene from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. And Gwendolyn Brooks! I know my students will enjoy discussing Gwendolyn Brooks with a bona fide published poet, but I want to hear their responses to "the mother" and "kitchenette building" and, especially, "The Lovers of the Poor":

Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is--something less than derelict or dull.

I love to see the lovely ladies of the Ladies Betterment League leaving the tenement at the end of the long poem, 

Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the leaden air.

Fun fact: when I googled to find this text, the AI preview referred to "The Lovers of the Poor" as free verse. Really? Look again, AI. You can do better. 

But I won't be able to share any fun facts with my students this week, which makes me a little blue. Metaphorically.

But am I also literally blue? Yes I am. I didn't realize how blue I was until I was washing up the other day and noticed that the blue dye that helped the surgeon to locate the lymph nodes for biopsy had not only turned my urine blue but had spread its effects all over my body. Blue arms, blue legs, blue hips and thighs and ankles, blue belly, blue back, blue blue blue. I look like a space alien or mythical monster or a sideshow freak, the Blue Hag of Borneo. I'm not allowed to shower or use deodorant for a few days and I have to wear a post-surgical bra 24 hours a day, which is less sexy than you might imagine. The post-surgery instructions tell me I'm allowed to resume sexual activities as soon as I'm comfortable, but as a scarred stinky blue woman trussed up in a surgical bra, I wonder: Did the Blue Hag of Borneo ever manage to reproduce? And how would anyone know since I just made her up?

So yes, I am a little blue, metaphorically, sometimes, and a little blue, literally, all the time. But this too shall pass. And meanwhile, look at all the free time I have for writing blog posts! That's bound to help with one kind of blues if not the other.