No turkey? No problem.

On the one hand, we've had no turkey, no stuffing, no cranberry chutney or pumpkin pie, and we spent half of the day traveling by car, plane, bus, subway, and feet, but on the other hand, here we are in Manhattan looking at the city lights and getting ready for a fun and festive weekend with members of my husband's community choir. 

They'll be in rehearsals Friday morning and Saturday afternoon, preparing to join hundreds of other choir members from all over the country singing Handel's Messiah Sunday at Carnegie Hall, and when he's not rehearsing, we'll be seeing a play and doing some sight-seeing. When he is rehearsing, though, I've got plans. I mean, we're just a few blocks from Hudson Yards, Times Square, and the New York Public Library's main branch. I'll bet I can find something to do in my free time.

Who needs turkey when you've got the Big Apple?

 

Ten years later, feeling thankful

Facebook friends keep posting photos from ten years ago to show how the decade has changed them, but I'm resisting the opportunity. I don't want to be reminded of what I looked like ten years ago: bald, weak, droopy, always scanning for the nearest bathroom. Thanksgiving week 2009 was when I endured my final round of chemotherapy, and if I have to think about that time, I'd rather celebrate what came after.

Like, for instance, hair. As much as my hair annoys me at times, I definitely appreciate its presence more than its absence. True, I had the chance to experiment with all kinds of colorful scarves during those months of hairlessness, but frankly, I prefer to wear scarves around my neck and hair on my head.

And strength--it's a beautiful thing to be able to walk up steps without feeling as if I'm going to collapse, to stand in front of a class for a full hour without fearing that my head will droop and my legs give out. Since I don't have to devote brain space to estimating the time to the nearest rest room, I have more space for thinking about the grandkids or playing Words With Friends.

Feelings in my fingertips--got that back, mostly. Gained back some of the weight I lost during chemo and radiation, which is maybe not a great thing in the long term but I feel good now. Taste buds restored to normal--fabulous. I don't miss those times when everything tasted like tin and I wasn't allowed to eat sushi.

I do, however, miss my oncologist, who spent a lot of time watching and waiting and testing to see whether the cancer had left the building or might be planning a return engagement. First every three months and then every six months and then once a year--for five years--I endured blood tests, which were not bad in themselves, but anticipating these tests always made me tense. I would wake up in the middle of the night worrying over how I would adjust my busy life if I had to go through chemo again, and afterward waiting for results made me jittery and distracted. I like my oncologist and I kind of miss seeing him regularly, but on the other hand, I don't miss all that stress.

I remember that Thanksgiving week in 2009: I could barely eat and certainly couldn't cook for anyone, so my daughter and son-in-law came for a visit and cooked up a storm for all of us. It probably tasted wonderful, although I wouldn't know. I was happy to be upright, above ground, surrounded by loved ones, and done with chemotherapy. 

Today I'm celebrating in a different way--by offering homemade cookies to everyone I see. I baked ten dozen cranberry white chocolate drops over the weekend and now I'm going around my building pushing them on everyone, from the cleaning crew to colleagues to students and everyone else who crosses my path. I don't even need to tell them why I brought cookies; I just want to make a small gesture of thanks, to pay forward the love and support I felt while I enduring six months of awfulness.

So if you're in the neighborhood, come by for a cookie and help me celebrate ten years cancer-free.
 

Collective nouns for the end of the semester

a plague of plagiarists
an excrescence of exams (exhausting)
a drift of drafts
a snifter of snafus
an ambuscade of assessment reports


More, anyone?
 
 

Too many things I'm trying not to think about

Woke up at 3:30 a.m. worrying about tables--will the caterers bring a table to set up in the hallway outside my classroom or do I need to provide one? And what about the faculty feedback forms? I need to make some copies! Better make sure my phone is charged so I can time my students' presentations, and where will we find extra chairs if the room fills up?

One thing I did not bother to worry about at 3:30 a.m. was whether the room where my capstone students are doing their public presentations this afternoon would spring a leak. Okay, I can deal with the other petty details, but fixing a leaky roof is outside my bailiwick. Now I get to worry about whether the leak will be repaired in time for my students' presentations, and how am I supposed to keep myself calm in the meantime?

I could try to track down the apple I had in my hand when I left the house this morning, since it's clearly no longer in my possession. How long before I find it rotting under the passenger seat in my car?

I could think about grading some quizzes and papers, if I could get my fingers to stop jittering all over the keyboard long enough to click on a file. 

I could stop trying to think altogether and go out to do some shopping. I need new towels, big fluffy navy blue ones to replace the pathetically thin faded towels I'm currently using, but I can't leave campus without losing my perfect parking spot and then I'll have something new to obsess about. 

One thing I won't do is worry about the actual presentations. I've done all I can to prepare my students; at this point all I can do is sit back and watch the magic happen. 

As soon as I'm done checking on tables and making copies and charging my phone and seeing whether the leaky roof is fixed. Everything is going to be fine, I tell myself, and if I say it often enough, I just might believe it. 

Probably not the way she wanted to be remembered

After I read the latest issue of the college alumni magazine, I had to root through my file drawers to find this distinctive sentence from a student paper:

Images of thin pouty-lipped models are thrown into our faces every few seconds, forcing that piece of equal pie we’ve longed for to be thrown up into that holy grail, deemed the toilet, of problems and insecurities, the toilet called society and the problem labeled bulimia.

Even though it's been 13 years since the student who wrote that sentence graduated, and even though I've had no contact with her and in fact have rarely even thought about her in all those years, I can still remember the day she turned in that draft, and I even remember what she said when I challenged her bizarre and perhaps too vivid use of metaphor: "I wanted it to sound like something out of Cosmo."

And that, sad to say, is my clearest memory of my former student who, according to the alumni magazine, died over the summer. 

She was an English major so I know I had her in several classes, but what I remember most is that she wrote in colorful inks on rainbow paper and that she was never afraid to ask whatever question popped into her mind, no matter how ridiculous. I found this refreshing. So what if she wasn't a particularly deep thinker? She would happily talk about whatever text was in front of her face and if she didn't like it, she would clearly explain why. 

The alumni magazine revealed nothing except the date of her death, and the online obituary revealed very little more: she was 36, had been married at one point, had a son and step-daughter and loved music and animals. None of this is particularly surprising.

What's surprising, of course, is that she's dead. It seems wrong for students to die before their teachers, but if she hadn't died, I probably would have spent the rest of my life continuing to not think about her. Now that I know she's dead, I can't get her out of my head. I think of those colorful pens and curious questions, but most of all I think of that piece of equal pie being thrown up into the toilet called society. So what if it's a ridiculous sentence? It's evidence of a creative mind trying to find its voice. 

And now it's silenced.  
 

Fetch me a pileated wood-stacker!

You may be wondering why I was outside on a sunny fall afternoon having an earnest conversation with my imaginary dog, Ranger, stacking firewood.  (Meaning I was the one stacking firewood, not Ranger. If you think an imaginary dog ought to be able to stack firewood, you need to get your head examined. Then again, you’re not the one talking out loud to an imaginary dog—and why shouldn’t he be named Ranger? He looks like a Ranger.) 

I was talking to my imaginary dog because who else was I supposed to talk to? The resident lumberjack was off in Rio Grande singing like an angel and, despite my best efforts, I still don’t have a non-imaginary dog to talk to, and stacking firewood, as it happens, is a tremendously boring task that no one in his or her right mind would willingly undertake alone without a very good reason, which, at the time, was eluding me.

“Seriously, Ranger,” I said, “I wish you could explain to me why it’s so important to move chunks of firewood from Point A to Point B. I mean, I’m just planning to burn the stuff, right? So why can’t I leave the firewood in the big disorderly pile where the truck dumped it (Point A) instead of carrying each piece about six feet away to stack them in long orderly rows (Point B)?”

Ranger tilted his head as if he wished I’d toss one of those big sticks his way instead of lugging them from Point A to Point B.

“Surely there must be a reason,” I continued. Ranger wagged his tail. “Maybe the wood dries more efficiently when it’s stacked neatly, not that I'm stacking it particularly neatly. Stacking firewood isn't exactly in my wheelhouse or my skillset or whatever you want to call it." Ranger looked like he didn't care what I called it as long as I tossed him a stick. 

"It may look easy," I told him, "but wood-stacking apparently demands more talent than I possess. It's like playing a life-size game of Jenga--pull the wrong log out of the pile and the whole thing will come tumbling down on me."

Ranger looked like he thought that would be a great idea. More sticks to chase!

"And then I can't carry more than two or three pieces at a time because I lack the upper-body strength of the resident lumberjack, who, let's review, had surgery last week and is not permitted to lift anything weighing more than ten pounds until his surgeon gives him the all-clear, so he won't be moving any of this firewood from Point A to Point B any time soon."

Ranger clearly wasn't interested in Point A or Point B so much as Point Me. (Meaning him. Ranger. The imaginary dog. And if you're wondering why I still have a purely imaginary dog instead of a real one, don't get me started.)

"So here I am dutifully stacking firewood, but anyone examining the stack could easily see the line of demarcation between the very neat, tightly fitting firewood previously stacked by the resident lumberjack and the loose, leaning, threatening-to-tumble-at-any-moment stack produced in his absence by me."

Ranger looked up toward a chattering sound. Squirrel? No, pileated woodpecker. Why are there no pileated wood-pilers? I could use one right about now.

"And maybe," I continued, "this whole wood-stacking thing is all about appearances. Imagine the neighbors driving past and tut-tutting over this big messy pile of firewood, feeling sorry for those poor pathetic folks who don't know how to stack wood properly. Maybe that messy wood pile makes us look like the kind of people who store rusted trucks on blocks in the yard and toss old sofas down the hillside."

Ranger's eyes perked up.

"Would you have enjoyed chasing a sofa down the hillside?" I asked. "Even if it's a purely imaginary sofa?"

Ranger looked eager to get the game started.

But after all that wood-stacking, I lacked the strength to roll a single imaginary sofa down the hill. I may, however, have thrown an imaginary stick. It was the least I could do to reward such a brilliant conversationalist.


 

You may feel a little discomfort

In the evening the hospital waiting room is quiet, with just a few tired people scattered in chairs listlessly watching Wheel of Fortune while awaiting news about their loves ones. A wall monitor lists patients' code names alongside little icons indicating the stage of their surgeries: a scalpel when slicing begins, a row of sutures when he's being stitched up, a bandaid showing he's in recovery, or a big T telling us to contact the reception desk. Except there's no one manning the reception desk; the two staffers went around telling us all they were leaving for the evening before stepping through the sliding doors that WHOOSH as if the receptionists were leaving the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. 

I wish I could WHOOSH out with them. My husband's procedure is minor and simple--removal of a large, squishy fluid-filled cyst near his armpit--but we've been at the hospital since 5 p.m. and they didn't get him into surgery until around 7. After a long day at work, the last thing I want to do is spend the evening hanging around a hospital waiting room.

Let's face it: I don't handle hospitals well. My husband's job as a pastor requires him to spend long hours with suffering people in all kinds of unpleasant places--hospitals, prisons, nursing homes--and he always knows how to bring cheer into the room, when to open the hymnal and sing, and when to shut up and pray. I, on the other hand, start to tense up the minute I enter the parking garage, and when I walk through the doors, my jaw clenches up and my wordhoard shuts down. Just to stay sane, I have to retreat to a safe place, like the middle of a book, and when I'm not reading I devote all my energy to getting out of the hospital as quickly as possible.

This is what I tried to do last night after my husband's surgery, but he was in no hurry to leave, even though he was experiencing some discomfort after having his armpit shaved, sliced, and sutured (with glue!), a process alternately painful and ticklish. I tried to hustle him out the door but he kept finding friends to talk to--a former student who's now a nurse and another wearing the uniform of a sheriff's deputy. The deputy had just finished a 12-hour shift guarding a jail inmate while she gave birth. Imagine spending 12 hours waiting for a person not related to you to give birth, keeping watch in case she dashes out the door between contractions dragging her IV pole behind her. All I'll say is: It's a good thing they don't let people like me carry a gun in a hospital waiting room--and yet this deputy was just as friendly and cheerful as if he'd spent the day at Disney World.

I envy this gift my husband has: the ability to be present and encouraging in the midst of the most difficult circumstances. All I had to do was sit in a comfortable chair for a few hours while he got sliced, but by the time we left, I had tensed up into a tiny, dense black hole of stress while he was chatting cheerfully with everyone he passed, without the benefit of mood-altering drugs. If hospitals handed out Valium to everyone in the waiting room, the world would be a mellower place. (But then who would drive the patients home?)

Troubleshooter-in-chief

We're meeting in the library, my first-year writers and I, as they diligently gather sources for their research projects, and suddenly all those research skills we've talked about in theory run up against the real world when a student asks me, "How do I get the shelves to move?"

I distinctly recall showing this class how to make the library shelves move back when we had our library tour, but this time there was some sort of glitch preventing the mechanism from operating. "This is when we notify a library official," I told my student, which we proceeded to do. Soon, the shelves were moving and he'd found his book.

Some students had trouble with search terms that were too broad or too narrow (or too badly spelled) to produce useful results, while others wondered how they could find a source opposing their view--how could anyone possibly disagree? Deadlines are looming and the clock is ticking so we are meeting in the library all week, determined to locate sufficient sources for every topic. 

This part of the semester is when the rubber hits the road, not just for first-year writers but for the rest of my students too. This week in class my capstone students are practicing their presentations in preparation for the big public event next week, so I'm busy providing guidance about all manner of practical matters, from making titles more specific to indicating quotes without resorting to bunny-ears to using a water bottle to create a meaningful pause.

In these classes my role has shifted from instructor to troubleshooter as I help students make their way toward completing big projects. I like this role; it may look sometimes as if I'm not doing much in the classroom, but it takes some effort to clear the path so students can find their own way, and in the end, they'll learn something from the struggle.

I worry about some of them: will they have time to pull it all together before the deadline, or will they fall by the wayside despite my best efforts to keep them focused? I'm taking encouragement from the condition of the damaged dragon tree in my office, which looked hopeless in August but is now sending forth shoots that get stronger by the day. If all my students can end the semester with that kind of fortitude and strength, we'll all be happy.

 

In the bleak pre-winter

We've reached the point in the semester when a lot of things that looked like really good ideas back in August now appear to be utterly foolish. What made me think I'd want to fill these bleak November evenings reading students' annotated bibliographies? Who thought analyzing 9/11 literature would make a rewarding experience when night falls just a little after lunchtime? And teaching at 8 a.m.--what was I thinking?

This morning my car was encased in ice, the valley was socked in with fog, and my head was full of phlegm, still, two weeks after I started feeling rotten. I can go for hours at a time without a cough but once the coughing starts, everything else stops, including sleep. 

But I stopped coughing long enough to make a quick visit to the grandkids, simply because I needed some liveliness and color in my life in the bleak pre-winter. I'm pleased to report that my youngest grandchild has precociously mastered two important words: Why and No! I need to remind myself to use these words more often while I'm planning my syllabi and course schedules, and the primary person to whom I need to address them is myself. Thinking of teaching an 8 a.m. freshman class? No! Why?!! NO NO NO!!  And then I need to hit myself over the head with a baseball bat until the temptation passes.
 

Taking the funhouse tour

If my father's house could comment on its own appearance on the realtor's web site, it might ask, "Does this terazzo make me look fat?"

I don't know if the realtor used a distorting lens or did some creative photoshopping, but the online images reflect a funhouse view of my old Florida home. The text is bad enough, touting a "HUGE two-car garage" that barely had room for Dad's Buick Behemoth and a "pleasant screen enclosed porch" described as "great for entertaining." I do recall a time I entertained four of my closest friends on that porch after my ninth-grade class held a mock presidential debate in 1976. (I played the role of Gerald Ford and my dear friend played Jimmy Carter, who lost the election in our school if not in real life.) For years now, though, that "pleasant screen enclosed porch" has entertained only legions of lizards.

The photos, though! The house looks like it's been stretched, every room appearing about double actual size. Rooms look sparkling clean but lifeless, denuded of warmth and hospitality, partly because all the carpets have been removed to reveal the stark terazzo floors underneath. Nothing scrams of a desperate need for redecorating like terazzo. 

That dark paneling in my brothers' room! Who thought that was a great idea? And then I see those drapes that I sewed for their giant windows, and I'm not sure what amazes me more: the fact that I was able to sew serviceable and attractive drapes for my brothers' room as a 14-year-old kid or the fact that they're still hanging there doing their duty. They don't look bad in the photos but I'll bet they're ready to fall to pieces.

Further, of the more than 20 photos on the realtor's web site, not a single one shows the cracks in several walls caused by the slumping of one corner of the foundation, evidence of the need for the purchaser to invest a pile of money in repairs.

But that's not likely to happen. The best thing about that house has always been its location, in a quiet neighborhood half a block from one of the best high schools in Florida and a mile from great shopping and medical care. All through that neighborhood developers have been buying up old Granny houses, gutting them, and replacing them with McMansions, which will no doubt happen to Dad's house as soon as it sells.

Rumor has it that the host of a reality home-improvement television show is interested in Dad's house, and wouldn't it be great to see total strangers mocking my parents' aesthetic choices on national television? It would almost be worth it to see them take a sledge-hammer to that oven, something I've wanted to do for years. But at this point I can't even see it as my home anymore because everything that made it mine is gone while everything that remains has been squeezed through the realtor's image-making machine to create sparkling photos that feel entirely unfamiliar.

My old house is gone, its shell a collection of funhouse images, its warmth reduced to bare terazzo, but the memories? Still warm, colorful, and alive as long as my brothers and I remain above ground.

 

When a train of thought takes a detour

I drove five miles in the wrong direction this morning before I remembered that my polling place had been moved, and I briefly thought about not voting at all. What's on my ballot anyway? Exactly two contested races--township trustee and school board. My vote is unlikely to make a difference, but nevertheless I turned around and drove to the polling place to cast my vote, which was more difficult than usual because the machines were acting wonky so anyone who had a job to get to was urged to use paper ballots instead. Then of course I was way behind my usual commuting schedule so I drove through two 20-mph school zones and got stuck--twice!--behind school buses loading passengers. But hey--at least I had some extra time to charge up my phone.

Oh, what a fragmented morning! Papers to grade and classes to prep, but my brain is going in a million different directions:

How would you like to be interviewed by a bot? Inside Higher Ed ran a story about companies using Artificial Intelligence to conduct initial interviews with job applicants, which is supposed to counteract bias based on appearance because the AI relies on an algorithm instead of a human being's gut reaction. However, human beings write the algorithms, which remain relatively opaque to the uninitiated, so there's no telling what kinds of preferences may be programmed in to the AI: smiling too much or not enough, gesturing or not gesturing, code words that can either improve or sink a candidate's chances. My feeling is that AI interviews will select for candidates who are good at communicating with AI bots, and if that's the kind of workforce we need, then we're all set.

Every interview is an opportunity to hone and share the story of ourselves, just as every court case requires a transformation of fact into narrative. Before I left the house this morning I was reading a fascinating article in PMLA by Peter Brooks called "The Facts on the Ground," in which he examines the importance of how facts are framed in court cases. "The facts on the ground may not themselves be malleable," he writes, "but once they are narrativized--as they must be if they are to be intelligible--their shape may prove protean." How we tell the story is sometimes a matter of life and death, which is why the human ability to create stories will never go out of style.

And sometimes storytelling can give us a whole new window into history. I'm a little behind on my podcast listening by the other day I heard the Code Switch episode called "A Strange and Bitter Crop," a fabulous feat of storytelling dealing with the lynching of Claude Neal in Marianna, Florida, 85 years ago. Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys, which I'll be teaching next semester, is based on events in a fictionalized Marianna, so the podcast deepened my understanding of the area's troubled history, but it's also sobering to recall that lynching is not ancient history and to consider the different ways Claude Neal's story has been framed in the past 85 years. How we tell the story makes a huge difference, but sometimes so does who gets to tell the story, especially when the facts have been intentionally obscured.

Looking at the past can make me wonder whether we're as advanced as we think we are, while looking at the future makes me wonder what sort of world we're creating for our children. Maybe I'm not the only one driving the wrong way! My unintentional detour this morning may not have given me much of a story to tell, but sitting behind a school bus gave me time to think and muse and simply be, a commodity in dreadfully short supply.

 

Those grading-on-a-gorgeous-day blues (sing it with me!)

I've got those can't-go-outside-until-I-finish-gradin'-papers blues.
Oh I've got those can't-go-outside-until-I-finish-gradin'-papers blues.
But instead of sittin' here cryin'
I'm puttin' on my big-girl shoes.

Oh I've graded annotated bibliographies so it's time to tackle honors exams.
I say I've graded annotated bibliographies so it's time to tackle honors exams,
and then American Lit essays--
my grading inbox is simply gettin' slammed.

Well my eyes are gettin' blurry and my fingers just don't want to hold a pen.
I say my eyes are gettin' blurry and my fingers just don't want to hold a pen.
Oh will someone please remind me
why I put so many assignments on the syllabus way back when.
(And one of these days I'll up and retire
so I'll never grade papers on a weekend again.)