Of sledding and sleepwalking

Sleepy Monday, 8 a.m., and what do we have on the syllabus? A discussion of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which seems appropriate: a sleepy poem, a character who struggles to find the strength to wake himself from a life befogged and befuddled by indecision, inaction, and despair. Do I dare to teach Prufrock on a day when all anyone wants to do is take a nap?

I have measured out my life in attempts to explain obscure allusions to students too young or inexperienced to recognize them, but today I'm not sure I dare disturb the universe of those who sleep-walk into class under the influence of mid-semester malaise. Too many projects and deadlines and social activities in their lives and now I want them to attend to a dude who thinks a "love song" begins in hell and ends with drowning? It's a tough sell.

I feel for Prufrock today because I had too much fun and too little sleep this past weekend, when I measured out my life in photos of the grandkids sliding their sleds down a snowy hill. What do children know of existential despair? They slide, they spin, they fall, they laugh, and then they climb up the hill to do it all over again. I suspect that even gloomy Prufrock would have been happier if he'd spent more time in the company of small children. If nothing else, he would have been too busy to fuss about the fog or worry about his bald spot.

I grow old, I grow old, I shall snap a photo of the kid whose sled has rolled....

Some days I feel like Prufrock, like a sleep-walker struggling to feel his way across a foggy room, and some days I feel like a hill that's had too many sleds roll down its slopes and ground it down to a mere nubbin, but at times like that the memory of my grandkids' laughter arrives like a lifeline to rescue me from the descending gloom and draw me back into the world of light and love and laughter.