Just thurbing around

I found myself today in James Thurber's closet, but they wouldn't let me stay.

I'm not sure why I've never before toured the Thurber House Museum, the restored house where the humorist lived with his family while attending The Ohio State University, the house that plays a central role in the stories collected in My Life and Hard Times. I know I've visited before but the museum is open only for a few hours Saturday and Sunday afternoons, so until today I'd never set foot inside.

But this was my lucky day. My daughter arrived to keep my son company in the hospital so I felt comfortable taking a few hours off to commune with Thurber's spirit. 

Now I know I've mentioned before that the first book I ever bought with my own money was The Thurber Carnival, which I found on the Clearance table at the Little Professor Bookshop on Park Avenue in Winter Park, Florida. I paid all of four dollars--for a hardback! 

I must have been about 13, because that was the year I began earning my own money with my first job. Three days a week I would ride my bike a couple of miles to a house just off of Park Avenue to take an elderly woman for a two-hour walk around the neighborhood so that her less elderly daughter could get some time to herself. I thought the daughter was the most elegant woman I had ever met, but the mother was a piece of work: tiny and fragile-looking but tough as nails. Thanks to dementia, she had the mind of a toddler and the stubbornness to match. One time she tried to manually drag me into a church hall, insisting that they were saving a pie for her. And once the old lady soiled herself and I had to clean her up--by myself--at 13 years old.

The elegant daughter paid me five dollars every time I took the mom for a walk, and I earned every penny of it. Sometimes I would reward myself on my way home with a visit to the Little Professor, and on one of those days I splurged on Thurber.

I'd already read my school library's copy of The Thurber Carnival on a friend's recommendation, and I'd insisted on reading "The Owl in the Attic" out loud to all my buddies, some of whom found it funny. I have read pretty much everything Thurber ever wrote multiple times and I've taught "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" to students who couldn't find the comedy, but even though Thurber died the year I was born, he's never lost the ability to make me laugh.

Today I looked at the typewriter he may have used to write stories for the Columbus Dispatch; I admired signed original cartoons and hand-written letters, and I restrained myself from filching a James Thurber bobblehead. I bought a T-shirt featuring a Thurber dog reading a book, an image reproduced in statuary in the garden. And across the street I saw a unicorn in the garden, eating a rose. 

But the most surprising thing I saw was a drawing inside the closet in James Thurber's bedroom. Many visiting authors and artists have signed the walls inside the closet, including my favorite New Yorker cartoonist, Roz Chast, who drew what could be my next profile picture: a woman at the end of her rope who carries on despite everything. It was a shock to find myself falling to pieces in James Thurber's closet, but given the circumstances, it seemed appropriate.

A little time away from the hospital made me feel good; being surrounded by James Thurber's wit made me feel even better. But nothing made me happier than finding myself in his closet, surrounded by reminders that sometimes laughter truly is the best medicine.

A typewriter heavy enough to serve as a murder weapon, if necessary.

Would Roz Chast mind if I used this drawing as my profile picture?

A Thurber dog, reading.

The unicorn in the garden. (If you know, you know.)

 

Friday poetry challenge: Cancer-crostic

Evidence that I'm feeling more at home in my temporary digs: yesterday I drove from the hospital to our rental unit without turning on my GPS app, and then I cooked a real supper--pork tenderloin roasted with potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and herbs. A week ago I was having trouble ordering fast food at the drive-through, but yesterday I acted almost like a person with a full complement of functioning brain cells.

Evidence that I'm still a bit of a basket case: I lost my car in the parking garage. I loathe parking garages as a rule because those low ceilings feel claustrophobic and the long lines of cars weaving this way and that make me nervous--and also because I've never forgotten the trauma of slamming my car into a column in a parking garage decades ago--but I thought I'd pretty much mastered this garage. Every morning I make a mental note of where I've parked, and most afternoons I walk straight to my car. 

But not yesterday. 

I stood facing an empty spot on Level 5 and wondered why my car wasn't there, and the thought of walking all the way back to the pedestrian bridge to search for my license plate at the "Find My Car" kiosk filled me with gloom. I stood and thought and thought some more and then, on a hunch, I went one floor down and found my car at that identical spot on Level 4.

Well, at least I found it. Cherish small victories.

In trying times it's helpful to focus on little things that make me feel normal, ish. Folding laundry and putting it away in drawers instead of living out of a suitcase--normal. Cooking a simple supper instead of grabbing a can of soup or a bag of fast food--normal. Driving from Point A to Point B without requiring a robot voice to tell me where to turn--normal. Greeting the neighbor and her three-year-old daughter by name--normal.

But at the same time too many parts of these days feel hopelessly abnormal. It's not right for my son's body to be treated like a pincushion, for instance. They still haven't figured out where to put a new central line so he has IV needles installed in both arms for various purposes, and the nurses keep coming in to suck out whole tubes of blood for testing. It's not right that my big strong young man sometimes lacks the strength to hold up his head, thanks to all the poison they're pumping through those IV's to shrink the tumor. He ought to be working instead of wrestling with insurance companies and filling out short-term disability forms. Everything about this situation is wrong wrong wrong. 

But it's also temporary, an unexpected aberration from the usual course of things. I look on my own experience with cancer 17 years ago and from this distance it seems like a mere blip. I told my son that once the chemo made me so sleepy that I fell asleep sitting up while holding a whole mug of tea, with disastrous consequences for the tea, and I remind him (and myself) that this too shall pass. We'll deal with whatever comes after, but for now, we're spending some down-time in this liminal realm while holding tightly to every little scrap of normality that comes our way.

When life gets tough, the alphabet never disappoints, so let's try an acrostic poem today:

N is for normal(ish), nothing quite new; 
O's an ongoing oncology zoo.
R sends reminders of roadways and routes; 
M makes a mess of my mind, and it moots 
All we aspired to accomplish apace.  
L is lymphoma in liminal space.

Nothing's quite normal, but it could be worse:
The human condition. And thus ends my verse.

Now it's your turn: wave the alphabet like a wand to create abracadabra acrostics.

Looking up, down, and sideways

These days I seem to have a one-track mind--I think about my son's health, his treatment, his prospects, while everything else fades into the background, so that when I actually need to think about something else, it takes a minute to summon the necessary brain cells. 

I'm teaching, of course. On Monday I took my laptop to a little nook in the hospital Visitors' Lounge and taught my class in semi-privacy, which went well enough until the lights went out. I was too far away from the motion-detecting switch to make the light come on again, so for a few minutes I used my phone's flashlight to illuminate my text so I could read the juicy bits aloud to my students. Then a staff person came in to empty the trash, which restored light to the room but created a different kind of problem. 

But now we're in a rental unit with excellent wi-fi, so I'll teach my class from home (home?) this morning and go back to the hospital afterward. My husband is here for a few days so he'll be at the hospital this morning. It's possible that the next round of chemotherapy will begin today, a powerful drug with potentially dangerous side effects, so we don't want our son to be alone. Well I mean of course he's surrounded by highly competent and helpful medical people all the time, but sometimes you want to be near family.

The good news is that the treatment is working. The latest scan shows that the tumor in his chest is shrinking, taking some pressure off his heart and airways. One of these days he may be allowed to sleep lying down! But cancer treatment is not a straight, smooth path; potholes and obstacles pop up out of nowhere, like the blood clot that suddenly appeared in his leg. But we carry on, doing what we can, which often feels pretty inconsequential.

Yesterday, for instance, I changed my son's socks, the most intimate act I've performed for him in years. He's not much of a hugger but we've ramped up our hugging game considerably. On Saturday his sister came for a visit and helped him wash his hair, which wasn't easy because of the need to avoid getting the central line wet. Then yesterday the central line (in his leg because the mass in his chest squishes some blood vessels) spawned a blood clot so it was removed. Today's goal: new central line in the arm, following by infusion of a really nasty drug.

But first, says the little nagging voice at the back of my head, I have to teach my class. Flannery O'Connor, "Good Country People." Why is it sometimes difficult to distinguish between good and evil? What does it even mean to be good? Discuss.

Yesterday we found a way to quiet the buzz in my head or at least mute it for a bit. We sat in comfy chairs in the big airy hospital lobby and listened to a piano player accompany an excellent violinist in lovely soothing music, including a rendition of "Ave Maria" that brought me to tears. We could look up and see the columns stretching toward the roof, hear the gentle buzz of people passing by, and lose ourselves in the music for a moment. Things are looking up, I keep telling myself, but there's still a long road ahead and we have no idea when we'll crash into the next massive pothole. 

In the lobby, looking up

Exploring the angles

This time of year I would normally go tromping in the woods to take photos of pawpaw blossoms, buckeye buds, and spring ephemerals, but instead I'm spending too much time indoors and noticing intersections of interesting shapes. One of these days I'll see trilliums again, but for now it's all about the angles.

From my son's window, I see the OSU library where I did research 30 years ago

Reflections and distortions

Columbus sunrise

Going places

Friday poetry challenge: mysteries of the human heart

When we looked into our son's heart, we couldn't agree on what it resembled. My husband said squirrel on an exercise wheel but I though jellyfish. Either way, it looked like a miracle.

They performed the echocardiogram right in his room, with the blinds pulled down and the lights dimmed to keep glare off the screen. The room was hushed as a chapel, the only sound from beeping machinery and the tap-tap of the sonographer's fingers on the keyboard. Pulsing blobs appeared on the screen, some as graceful as floating balloons while others performed a frantic tarantella. I wondered how anyone could possibly see sense in those vague shapes.

Fortunately, the cardiologist saw something more rational than squirrels or jellyfish. He saw fluid surrounding our son's heart and he immediately ordered a pericardiocentesis, a procedure to drain the fluid, to allow the heart to beat more freely before my son starts chemotherapy.

Many of the new words we're learning sound lovely as long as we don't think about what they mean. Pericardiocentesis. Sonographer. Lymphoblastic lymphoma. Sounds like poetry, but I'm not ready to write any right now. 

Okay, maybe just a haiku:

Dancing balloon or

jellyfish, squirrel on a wheel:

mystery and marvel. 

That's the best I can do right now. Anyone else want to give it a try? Describe one of life's great mysteries in seventeen(ish) syllables.

Bullet-brain; Or, my list-making mania

I keep asking my son if there's anything I can do for him, and this morning I told him it's perfectly fine if the answer is Go away and leave me alone. Sometimes the sick guy needs company and sometimes he doesn't. But I'm here for the duration with little ability to make him better, so instead I'm making lists.

What I need from campus:

• permission to teach my class online for, possibly, the rest of the semester
• a webcam
• my Norton Anthology of American Lit, which has been slowly disintegrating since last year but I didn't buy a new copy since this is the last time I'm teaching the class
• the exams my students will take in my absence on Friday (so I can grade them)

What I need from home:

• more clothes because I packed stupidly and I'm already running out of clean underwear
• the book that should have arrived in the mail yesterday
• the mail, because how will I pay the bills if I don't see them?
• assurance that the house is surviving without us and that any dead mice have been properly disposed of

What I need in Columbus:

• a place to stay for, maybe, a month
• a visit with my former student who's letting me do laundry at her house
• an excursion up Pierogi Mountain
• better weather so I can go outside and touch grass once in a while

What this ordeal has already revealed to me:

• I have the best colleagues on the planet
• my night vision, barely passable at home where I know the roads, is worthless on unfamiliar city streets, especially when wet roads reflect all the lights
• it really is worth paying a little extra to stay in a hotel that doesn't trigger my gag reflex

Things that have made me feel like crying:

• a visit from my son's pastor, who knows the right words 
• smiles from my English Department colleagues who crashed my class this morning so they could wave at the camera and wish me luck (Best. Colleagues. Ever.)
• a text from a relative offering my son financial support when we don't even know what the bills are going to look like after the insurance company does its part
• a few quiet moments in the chapel holding my husband's hand

Things I need to stop doing if I'm going to stay sane:

• seeking info about T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma from Dr. Google, who doesn't have my best interests at heart
• recalling all the horrors of chemotherapy treatment and side effects
• compulsively making lists as if they're going to accomplish anything to help

I guess I'd better go ahead and check that one off my list.

  

Weather and elevators and worst-case scenarios

Yesterday at The James--and everyone calls it The James because the full name is a bit unwieldy--The Arthur G. James Cancer Center. Who wants to say cancer all day long, and who is this James dude anyway? I looked him up: Arthur G. James spent 35 years raising money to fund a cancer hospital at The Ohio State University and was surprised when his name was plastered all over the front of the building. He was a small-town Ohio kid who eventually served as president of the American Cancer Society and, in 1987, was inducted into Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. Local boy makes good, and it's a good thing he did because now his hospital is in charge of my son's health.

So anyway: yesterday we were sitting in the Terrace Cafe on the second flood and watching through the windows as workers in parkas stacked up chairs and tables to take them to safety in advance of an impending winter storm, and I was suddenly thankful for people who see a storm coming and know how to prepare for the worst.

Today's weather is not the worst I've experienced but it was strange to see snow blowing on magnolia blossoms and painful to feel the bitterly cold wind whistling through the parking garage. The view from my son's 18th-story room has veered sharply all day between sunshine and snow, sometimes both at the same time.

And speaking of worst-case scenarios, you know you've entered an alternate reality when the doctors tell you lymphoma is the best-case scenario. We're still awaiting results of tests, but everyone is thrilled to be leaning toward lymphoma because it can be treated, and while the treatment isn't fun, it can be quick and effective.

Nobody's naming the worst-case scenario, and who can blame them?

Tests continue at their own peculiar pace, hours of blank nothingness and then suddenly the room is full of people who need something right now. Lots of waiting and boredom tinged with terror. No one is sleeping well. 

I've been distracting myself with a book, Still Life by Sarah Winman, which is simultaneously a paean to impermanence and a celebration of the joys of human connection. But now the book is done and I need another, or maybe a magazine full of frivolous and unmemorable articles, because otherwise I will be forced to read the academic journal article I so foolishly agreed to review last week when the topic seemed fascinating.

I had to leave the nothing-happening room on the 18th floor and take a walk for a while, ostensibly to scope out a good quiet location where I can teach my class via Zoom tomorrow morning. Helpful colleagues covered my class yesterday, but my students have an exam on Friday so I'd like to make sure they're ready to roll. Besides, this is my final opportunity to teach Faulkner's "Barn Burning" and I wouldn't miss it for the world. 

The sky was clear and blue when I left the 18th floor but by the time I got down to 2 the entire outdoors had disappeared within a solid block of gray and snow was blowing in every direction. The elevator took the scenic route, stopping at least half a dozen times on the way down, which sparked a few light comments from passengers. Mostly people don't look too closely at each other in the elevators for fear of bumping up against a raw nerve. The elevator descends with a muted whoosh that whispers cancer cancer cancer cancer.

On the second floor I walked around a bit and grinned again on seeing the Chlapaty Terrace, which transported me back to my campus office just upstairs from the Chlapaty Cafe. The dude gets around, or I guess his money does.

Everywhere at The James I see scarlet and gray colors and buckeye motifs representing The Ohio State University, and it's possible to sit down and take a selfie alongside a statue of Brutus the Buckeye. Eventually I may give it a try.  

Today, though, I sat near a window where a sudden ray of sun warmed my legs. Blue sky again, and a pair of Canada geese flying low just above the level of the traffic lights outside, looking out of place in the city. Of course the Olentangy River is just a few blocks away so the presence of waterfowl shouldn't be surprising, but for a moment I hope I'll flying through this city just as quickly as those geese.

But soon I have to go back up to 18 to see what's happening, or not happening, as the case may be. I'll look out the window and marvel at the blowing snow, thankful for the people ready to cope with every possibly scenario. I'm hoping for the best-case scenario but if the weather shifts, I trust that Arthur's people will know what to do.

Stuck in a time tunnel

Yesterday when I went through security at the James Cancer Center, the scanner detected the shape of a weapon in my purse. Today I left the "weapon" behind. Who knew a glasses case could be so dangerous?

The friendly person at the desk had to issue my official visitor badge, which required taking a photo at a time of day when my face wasn't quite ready for prime time. I wasn't sufficiently caffeinated and I haven't slept much since Saturday, which was how many days ago? Hospital time is fluid; sometimes it passes very quickly and sometimes it seems to stop.

They moved my son to a different room at 3 a.m., which explains why he hasn't slept much lately either. The biopsy either will or won't take place today and we either will or won't learn what's what with the tumor in his chest. Meanwhile, life goes on--slowly, and then quickly. Who knows which way the clock will turn next? All we can do is wait and see.

Danger, danger!

Yeah boy I'm happy to be here.

Trusting the Team to fix a massive mess

My eyes lit up when the nurse said helicopter--a horribly inappropriate response, I realize. This was serious business! My son was sick! We'd been in the emergency room for hours awaiting word on the next step! Some toxic combination of boredom, stress, nervousness, and fear had turned my brain to mush, so when the nurse came in and said they'd be transporting my son to Columbus by helicopter, my first response was: neat!

My son says the helicopter ride was interesting but uncomfortable, and the discomfort has not decreased. He's a big guy, just a bit too tall for the gurney in the helicopter and the bed in the ICU. He hasn't eaten for close to 24 hours just in case they get a chance to do a biopsy today. And he's not allowed to lie flat because the gigantic tumor in his chest presses against his heart and restricts his airways, a situation that could turn deadly very quickly.

And in fact it's a wonder that it hasn't already. The mass in his chest was initially discovered last November, but the biopsy has been delayed by an insurance company that kept rejecting the need for a PET scan. He'd had some shortness of breath and pain while skiing in Banff last week and more after he got home. Yesterday it got to be too much so he went to the emergency room, where they found that the mass has nearly doubled in size (!) and needs to be biopsied and treated, like, yesterday.

For years he's been a healthy guy whose medical needs were easily met by the local Quick-Care, but now that he's a patient at a world-class cancer hospital, he has a Team, and right now the Team is talking about how they're going to do a biopsy on the tumor in his chest if he can't safely lie flat. They're a smart Team--they'll figure it out. 

I drove up early this morning after not much sleep and now, in between visits by various members of the Team, I'm trying to make myself useful. I'm texting with colleagues to figure out how to cover my class--can't afford to fall behind with an exam coming up Friday. I'm chasing down tissues and a phone charger for my son. I'm offering helpful tidbits from my time in cancer treatment--just now, for instance, I told him that patients leave behind dignity at the hospital door, and if he doesn't believe it, he can just look at the sunny yellow non-slip socks that aren't quite big enoug hfor those size-15 feet. 

Such a big strong guy looks weak and wrong in a hospital gown, but he's in the right place to get the help he needs. If he hadn't gone to the ER yesterday, this could have turned tragic very quickly. Now we sit and wait and listen to the Team and at some point we'll have a diagnosis and a treatment plan and a path toward a future that may or may not include helicopters. My main job right now is to remain calm. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

Of scandals and anvils

I couldn't come up with a coherent response this morning when the dentist asked me, "What's up with [name redacted]? Are they just wacky or what?"

My mouth was benumbed by Novocaine and crowded with cotton so forming words in response was out of the question, which is fortunate because it's probably best not to gossip about campus scandals while surrounded by patients in a crowded dental office. Their mouths may be full of cotton but their ears aren't.

And I use the plural scandals advisedly. In the past, scandal has arrived singly like an anvil falling from a great height, but right now it seems to be raining anvils. I'm not going to say a single word about the [position redacted] who departed suddenly last month after [irresponsible action redacted], but one day the whole story will hit the local media and then there will be blood.

Right now, though, an even bigger scandal has finally hit the local press and everyone is talking about it, even my dentist, who wonders who in the current scenario might be described as wacky. (I'm not going to post the link, but open your ears at the dentist's office and you're bound to hear all about it.) 

This is not the first outbreak of scandal during my tenure here nor is it the most salacious--not by a long shot. My first semester here was marred by a sudden outbreak of crime-scene tape and FBI agents after the then-head of IT was found to have been operating a secret server distributing child pornography online, a scandal that resulted in a 100-year prison sentence cut short when the miscreant was murdered. I was so new that I'd never even met the guy, but every single time this scandal reared its ugly head in the news, the criminal's name was accompanied by the phrase Marietta College professor, which felt like a slap in the face to law-abiding professors who do not make a habit of distributing child pornography.

We're a pretty mild-mannered bunch on the whole, so other scandals have flown below the radar. (Now I have to wonder: Does radar detect falling anvils? If so, someone over in the business office ought to check the Acme catalog.) 

There was the faculty member suddenly forced to separate from the College after it was discovered that [pronoun redacted] had been holding full-time face-to-face teaching jobs at two separate institutions simultaneously, a faux pas that probably wouldn't even be detected today because of the prevalence of online teaching. There was the professor who celebrated his positive tenure decision a little too early, a celebration that allegedly took place on the futon in his office in the company of a student. There was the [position redacted] accused of smuggling vodka into commencement in a water bottle, which would have earned nothing more than a slap on the wrist if his criminal career had not also included domestic violence and arson threats. And can it possibly be true, as I've been told, that a previous [position redacted] found privacy for a tryst with a subordinate while driving through a car wash?

Such minor scandals are the stuff of legend, but as long as they stay out of the news, they don't have much impact on the rest of us. That's somebody else's anvil. A career may be flattened, but the shadow doesn't fall on me.

Now, though, we've got a sky full of anvils and nowhere to hide. I'm not implicated in any way and I'll probably be retired before the situation reaches resolution, whatever that might look like, but I really don't want my final months at the College to be tainted by constant questions about a scandal so wacky it gets the dentists chattering. I can't dodge falling anvils while I'm immobilized in a dental chair, so how about turning up the music and leaving the wacky questions for another day?

California dreaming, 15 years later

Spring break 2011: A colleague and I take my California Literature class on a journey that ranges from Muir Woods to Monterey, from Big Sur to Jack London's ranch, from the bookstore that Lawrence Ferlinghetti built to the stone tower that Robinson Jeffers erected and beyond, a field trip that ranks pretty high on my list of most rewarding teaching experiences ever. 

A few times since then I've managed to take classes on shorter, less ambitious field trips, but never a multi-night trip involving airfare and car rentals and youth hostels and many meals. Such a trip would be nigh on impossible today, for reasons too depressing to enumerate: no administrative assistants to help with logistics, little access to discretionary funds or grants, an impossible labyrinth of campus purchasing procedures, very few English majors, the gradual and then sudden decline of my creaky joints.

One day in San Francisco we walked something like eight miles, largely led by students' interests. In the end one of the students commended me for my ability to keep up, but today they'd have to carry me after the first block--if I could even find students interested in making such a trip. Who's willing to pay an extra course fee and take a risk on a class that might not "count" toward degree requirements for students eager to complete their education in a mere three years? The course would be canceled due to lack of enrollment.

Now I sound like a cranky old curmudgeon longing for the Good Old Days, but I love looking back on that trip and relishing the learning that happened. This year my spring break is more constrained--spending a few days with grandkids and birds, then getting back home in time for a root canal and essential meetings. I won't be sharing photos of most of that, though you never know. Maybe readers are just begging for close-ups of my dental work? Until then, maybe we'll have to settle for California dreamin'.

Don't sob for SOBJA

I've been tempted to stay home for the rest of the semester so I can focus on recovering from SOBJA Syndrome, but it turns out that our short-term disability insurance doesn't apply to employees who are simply Sick of Being Jerked Around. There's no cure, either, and no known effective treatment except stepping back and taking a little perspective, but it's hard to see over the rim of the tub when one is immersed in SOBJA. (There's a little allusion to an Edgar Lee Masters poem, a reward for the attentive.)

So let's take the long view and seek reassurance that what I'm doing here matters. Just in the past week, for instance, I've had delightful and encouraging encounters with three of my former students, English majors who have gone on to do good work in the world. 

Last Wednesday an alum visited my American Lit Survey class and brought along thirteen students from his high school AP Literature class. Last summer this alum had emailed to ask whether I'd mind if he dropped in the next time I found myself teaching "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," because he'd enjoyed discussing the poem in my class five or six years ago but he wanted a refresher course. I said sure, and one thing led to another and soon enough we ended up with a full classroom, something I haven't seen in a while--his AP Lit students outnumbered my American Lit students significantly. 

And they were great! Only a few of the AP students contributed to the discussion, but they all paid close attention to the text and stayed off their phones, and a few of them came up to ask questions at the end. I had a great chat with my former student but what I enjoyed most of all was seeing him interact with his students and inspire them to read and think and learn. Good has been done here!

And then the next day I observed a class taught by another former student of mine who graduated 22 years ago and now teaches in my department. Another full classroom! What a treat to see my former student empowering her own students to engage with edgy texts and lead discussion of difficult topics. It's always rewarding to see a student step into her calling and become a peer.

And then on Saturday, between dropping my son at the Columbus airport and visiting the orchid show, I had breakfast with a former student who graduated in 2008 but stayed in our area for some years afterward. She was a nontraditional student when I taught her and we bonded over shared experiences, and now we are close friends despite seeing each other only a few times a year. She's putting her writing skills to good use and inspiring others to do the same.

It feels self-serving to say so, but when I see my former students working so hard to rock their world, I want to put my hand up and say I did that--or at least I played a small part in making it happen. It takes a village and so on, but if I made any small impact on enabling a student to make a meaningful impact on the wider world, I want to give myself and my colleagues a little pat on the back.

And I would do so if that darned SOBJA Syndrome weren't making my joints so stiff. 

 

Turn my back for five minutes and everything falls to pieces

I step away from news coverage for a few hours and suddenly we're at war again? Can't I take a little media break without missiles being launched?

I shouldn't have taken a break at all, thanks to a crazy crowded week that ended with a sudden change in the deadline for my massive editing project, which was supposed to be due by March 12 but is instead due on Monday. That would be the day after tomorrow. Ten days earlier than expected. And while I had been on track to deliver the goods by next Friday, March 6, I'm not at all ready to deliver on March 2, especially since the deadline change was announced late on Friday afternoon, February 27, after I'd already gone home. Yes: someone informed me late on FRIDAY that the massive editing project I'd been planning to deliver NEXT FRIDAY is instead due THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. There aren't enough exclamation marks on the planet to express how I feel about this surprising development.

So yes, I should have dropped all my plans for the weekend and spent the whole day editing institutional prose produced by a writers with various levels of skill, some of whom write quite clearly while others may (may!) have used AI to produce sentences that juggle academic jargon in various combinations without saying much of anything. First thing this morning I ought to have glued my eyeballs to the monitor and my fingers to the keyboard until the work was done, but I didn't.

Instead I got up at 4 a.m. so I could be showered, dressed, and ready to leave by 5, skimping on the morning caffeine quota so I wouldn't have to take a million rest-room breaks during the two-hour trip to Columbus, with my son driving my car because I can't see in the dark so I just sat there trying and failing to get a photograph of the orange moon. 

Dropped him at the airport at 7 a.m. so he can fly to Banff for a ski trip, which makes me happy both because I love to say Banff--Banff Banff Banff--and because my son is getting a chance to have an amazing adventure before he has to face some serious medical tests that could reveal all kinds of scary things that I'm not yet authorized to write about and in fact shouldn't have said anything about even now, so ignore that. A brief hiatus before things get serious--that's something to celebrate (but I've already used up all the exclamation points on the planet, so I'll celebrate more subtly).

Also worth celebration is the fact that yesterday I scheduled the final payment on our mortgage, exactly 22 years after we signed the loan papers. By the end of next week, my house will be paid off. I can't hold a mortgage-burning party because there are no actual papers to burn, but I've been doing a little internal tap-dance ever since I hit "send" on the online payment program.

And I took that tap-dance with me this morning on my excursion to Columbus, because if I'm going to get up at the crack of dawn to take my son to the airport, then by golly I'm going to get some fun out of the deal: first a chatty breakfast with an old friend, and then an hour or so at the orchid show at Franklin Park Conservatory. I kept seeing what I thought was the most gorgeous orchid ever, but then I would turn a corner and see another even more gorgeous. So much more uplifting than institutional prose, and easier on the eyes too.

I used my phone to take photos but kept away from news media all morning, and I didn't even turn on the radio while driving home because the silence felt soothing, so imagine my surprise when I arrived home and discovered that the world has gone to pieces while I wasn't looking--again--but I can't even think about it because all that institutional prose failed to edit itself in my absence so I've got to hunker down and get it done.

Tomorrow's going to be rough: after our (very early) church service I'll go to campus so I can use the big monitor that doesn't fatigue my eyeballs quite so quickly, and I'll just sit there and edit edit edit until there's nothing left to edit. Could take hours, could take the whole day, could leave me a gibbering idiot by the time I'm done, but you know what? It will get done. Because that's how I roll. No matter how annoyed I am at the unexpectedly mobile deadline, and no matter how much the whole rest of the world may try to distract me, I will fulfill my duty to the letter and send the edited files off even if the effort wears out my fingers and reduces my vision to a vague blur. IT WILL GET DONE. Tomorrow. Or else.

Meanwhile, let's look at orchids:

It's been a Monday

Monday! More snow and gray skies and cold cold cold, plus a commuter student who couldn't get to campus and wants to make up the reading quiz when there are no makeups, ever, for any reason, except I will offer extra credit opportunities later in the semester, but the students who were present to take the quiz all aced it with the exception of one who admitted struggling with the reading, and why is it so difficult to read Eugene O'Neill? My final time teaching Long Day's Journey into Night and once again I wonder why no theme park has yet opted to open the Tyrone Family Thrill Ride. (The rest is silence.)

The brain feels frazzled after responding to emails and editing accreditation documents and writing a letter of recommendation and prepping for meetings later in the week, and why do meetings tend to come in clusters? Every project I'm working on has a major deadline in the next two weeks, which makes some sense since everyone wants to get things done before Spring Break, but my eyes hurt and I can't think straight so I seem to have copied a bit of text into the wrong document. Accreditation and recommendation: the words aren't at all the same but they sit in similar spots in my work queue right now and they seem to be invading my dreams.

And meanwhile all the things I can't write about are disturbing my sleep. The other morning at 3 a.m. I awoke in a panic to puzzle over a number I'd heard in an all-campus meeting, and a week later I still can't make sense of it, or of the number of people who are publicly blaming the College for the resignation of yet another coach (not our fault but if I tell you why I'd have to kill you), or of why I'm obsessing over an inconsequential number that ought to appear in next year's contract but probably won't.

So it's been a Monday. When I get home and my hubby asks how my day has been, I'll be hard pressed to come up with a coherent response, but then anyone who expects coherence at the end of a February Monday when the world seems to be going to pieces is probably delusional. 

 

Friday poetry challenge: The Spring Can't Come Too Soon Blues

One day this week I watched coal barges crashing through river ice and saw a great blue heron contemplating a meager spot of open water in an otherwise frozen wetland, and the next day I went to work without a coat on and felt the approach of something fresh--Spring! 

I may have had a spring in my step after I sat down and posted all the College's home baseball games on my calendar, each little electronic appointment glowing like a promise of sunshine and happiness, even though I know some of those dates will include wind or cold or sunburn or misery. Baseball is coming--can spring be far behind?

But Spring Break is also coming, when I hope to spend some time with the grandkids and look at birds and maybe visit an orchid show--and oh yes, get a root canal--but this week three different administrators have tried to colonize my Spring Break calendar with various types of meetings and responsibilities. Which of these tasks would be least onerous during Spring Break: root canal, group document-editing session, all-morning training meeting, or interviews with prospective job candidates? I choose root canal.

So on a very gray, damp, but not at all cold day, I'm singing the Spring Can't Come Too Soon Blues: 

Well you can freeze me in December and throw blizzards at my January days
Yes you can freeze me in December and throw blizzards at my January days
But when I hear those baseballs coming
You'd better get those snowdrifts cleared away.

Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow and we're all prepared for six more wintry weeks
I say Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow so we'll wear our coats and scarves for six more weeks
But when spring training's on the radio
Mr. Groundhog's not the weatherman I seek.

Now Spring Break is in the offing and my calendar stands clean and clear and free
Yes Spring Break is in the offing and my calendar should still stand clear and free
But if you stomp all over my free dates
I swear you're gonna see the back of me.

 

Now your turn--loosen up your rhythm and put your blues into rhyme. 

My fifteen minutes of fame

I had less than an hour yesterday to prepare to be interviewed for a local television news report about Toni Morrison, who is the subject of a year-long celebration throughout Ohio. I wasn't exactly dressed for the camera, but at least they didn't pan down to show my wacky socks. I'm pretty sure I said a whole lot of brilliant things about Toni Morrison's impact as a writer and editor, how she created psychologically rich characters and explored themes that resonate with readers, including issues of race and gender and identity formation and friendship and the way the past can haunt us, but in the news report they used what was probably the least important thing I said, about how Morrison's books often reflect her Ohio origins. That's it. I'm not going to comment on the news reader's delivery or the content of the report (which you can view here), but I will note that my very favorite thing about this brief video clip is that you can clearly see Twinkie the Kid smiling over my right shoulder. 

For anyone who wonders why Twinkie the Kid sits in such a prominent place in my office--well, of course there's more to the story. For today, though, I'm delighted that I didn't make a total fool of myself on the local news, even if my voice sounds like it belongs to someone who's spent a life smoking three packs a day. (It's just sinus congestion. Lifetime non-smoker here.)

Anyway, my fifteen minutes of fame are over and now I need to get back to work, with the assistance of Twinkie the Kid.

Minor obstacles in a major project

Show of hands, please: who wants to spend a morning fuming over inconsistencies in file-naming conventions?

I remember a time years ago when I had to insist that students follow a strict pattern for naming files submitted for grading so I wouldn't end up with an online folder full of Word documents all named something like Essay 1. These days a student submits the document through Canvas so it stays firmly attached to the student's name and the actual file name doesn't much matter. I no longer have to give instructions about file names or even warn students not to insert rude or obscene suggestions within the file name. (Apparently some of my students share the juvenile sense of humor demonstrated by the prior owner of my first campus computer, who applied a very special name to each drive in the directory: testicle, scrotum, penis....)

But today's file-naming mess has nothing to do with student work. My current administrative role requires me to read, edit, and bring into one consistent voice a bunch of Very Important Documents, and I say "a bunch" because so far I can't figure out exactly how many there are. It ought to be easy to locate the drafts amongst the shared folders devoted to the project, but because of inconsistency in naming files, I have to hunt amongst hundreds of documents to locate one that might be called 3A Draft or Draft 3A or Final Draft 3A or Final 3A Draft or any of an infinite number of possible permutations, each located in a different spot in the alphabetical flood of files. And then I see two files right next to each other, one named 2B draft final  and the next named 2B final draft. Which is the real final draft? I don't want to read and edit the wrong one!

The deadline for this project is tight and inviolable, but so far I've spent most of my time simply trying to locate the proper documents without any confidence that I've found them all or found the right version of each one, a situation that makes my brain hurt. Trust me--you really don't want me editing Very Important Documents when my brain hurts. Which is as good a reason as any to stare out the window until I can see straight again.     

Jammin'

My husband got home around dusk yesterday and said You've got to see this so I went out and had a look. It was definitely worth seeing: thick fog hanging above a creek so choked with ice that it bulged on the upstream side of our neighbor's low bridge,. The icejam caused ice chunks to pile up more than a quarter mile upstream past our bridge and sent water over the banks into the low parts of our meadow. The creek looked solid, but if you tried to walk on the jammed-in ice chunks you'd soon fall victim to gaps and instabilities. The ice chunks looked spooky in the fog but far scarier was the prospect of further flooding. If the ice and water can't move past the jam, there's nowhere for it to go except where it can do the most damage.

There's a metaphor in there somewhere but it's too hot to touch right now--or too cold to handle. 

 

 

Digressions toward upliftitudination

I'm standing at the gas station fueling up my salt-encrusted car, relieved that a sudden outbreak of warmth is melting the ice that keeps covering every stinking surface in the county, even the river, which was absolutely gorgeous this morning with that silvery sheen of icemelt shimmering over the frozen expanse--now where was I going with this?

Oh yes: pumping gas, grabbing a paper towel to wipe off the rear backing-up camera that keeps getting so thoroughly coated with layers of road salt and, now that the ice is melting off my driveway, mud, so filthy that when I back up the camera shows me only vague blotches where the road ought to be, when suddenly I see a big green truck. Meaning I see the truck in the gas station parking lot, not in my mud-covered driveway, which it (the truck) could never reach because even if a semi loaded with soda could cross my bridge without causing a collapse it would probably jackknife on the sharp turn just past the bridge and never make it up the mud-covered hill, which is a good thing because there's no room up there for a semi to turn around so it would be stuck there forever, in my driveway, a big green semi advertising 7UP--and again, I've lost my train of thought.  

I blame the weather, which started the week in single digits, made a brief visit into the low 60s, and now hovers in the 30s, leading to a freeze-melt-refreeze cycle that's driving us all just a little bit crazy, not to mention that the weather inside my building is so miserable that on Monday I had to sit in my office with my coat on even while wearing long-johns and two layers of sweaters.

But I digress. (So does the weather. Repeatedly.) I'm pumping gas when I see this truck, this huge green semi sporting a massive ad for 7UP, a beverage I literally never drink unless I'm at a baby shower or some such celebration where someone makes that super-sweet punch involving 7UP poured over sherbet, and I'm not sure why else 7UP exists except to make that punch, when suddenly (back at the gas station, pumping gas) I notice the words on the side of the big green truck: Be UPtimistic.

And this makes me smile.

Yes: despite the weather, despite the ice that keeps trying to kill me and the mud that makes my car slide all over the driveway, despite all the ways my department and my discipline and, yes, even my entire career are being marginalized and misunderstood and muddled, despite the lack of answers about health problems plaguing my loved ones and lack of certainty about funding for just about everything and the difficulty of getting that one annoying student to understand that the stairwell works both ways and therefore walking straight up the middle disrupts the flow--I mean, despite abundant reasons to be grumpy on a cold wet miserable morning, those two words on the side of a truck make me smile.

Later I look up UPtimistic and discover than in addition to being associated with a Danish electronic band called Laid Back (which ought to be the name of the garage band I'll start in my retirement if I ever get around to learning to play an instrument), the Be UPtimistic ad campaign dates back to 2024, which lets you know just how out of touch I am re: carbonated beverage advertising, and when I look at the rationale for the ad campaign I see that I've missed many opportunities to experience what some no doubt highly paid advertising copywriter chose to call "UPliftment." 

I confess that I felt uplifted when I saw the ad on the side of that big green truck this morning, which accords with 7UP's stated mission to "offer light relief from the mundanities of daily life by bringing moments of UPliftment, positivity and surprise." A little tautological there with the reference to the dailiness of daily life or the mundanities of the mundane, but what do you expect from a company that asserts that this ad campaign "signifies a refreshed strategic and creative north star for the brand that will inform all international programs moving forward"? Frankly, I was not aware that the north star needed refreshing or that it was capable of informing programs, forward-moving or otherwise, but then I'm not raking in the big bucks writing ad copy so what right have I to be critical?

No, today I'm choosing to put my critical tendencies aside and focus on abundant reasons to be UPtimistic, even if I don't drink 7UP and don't intend to start and even if the ice keeps making life treacherous and the mud makes me slide and the atmosphere in academe is as murky as it's ever been. Tomorrow we'll celebrate the College's birthday but today I'll warm up by celebrating a great class discussion in American Lit Survey this morning, a pair of colleagues wearing cheery pink outfits, a couple of writing buddies keeping my fingers on the keyboard, a semi-disastrous attempt to make a pumpkin dump cake that nevertheless resulted in deliciousness (not deliciousment), a warm coat, a good night's sleep, and the opportunity to do it all again tomorrow, only with cupcakes.

So life is rough but I'm UPtimistic. (But I draw the line at UPliftment.) 

Dusting off fusty old Modernism

Here I am taking my final lap around the American Lit Survey syllabus before I head off to Emeritusville, which means it's my last chance to make something stick in students' brains. If I get it wrong this time, I won't get another chance. 

Which is why I'm a little nervous about introducing my students to modernism. 

When I ask my survey students what they think modernism might mean, they guess it refers to stuff that's, like, really modern, fresh and new and up-to-date. How disappointing, then, to discover that we'll have to start out by stretching our minds back more than 100 years to touch base with Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson, two midwestern men who believed they were forging a brand-new path for American literature.

Today that path looks worn and ragged, hardly suggesting modernity. Years ago I sometimes had students familiar with Masters because in high school they'd read or even acted in a version of Spoon River Anthology, but I can't remember the last time a student expressed any familiarity with either author, even though Anderson, like most of my students, was an Ohio guy. The litany of modernist authors sounds like it belongs in a graveyard: Eliot, Sandburg, cummings, Frost. Williams, Stevens, Hurston, Hughes. Hemingway, Faulkner, Glaspell, O'Neill. They all thought they were doing something really new and different and earth-shaking, and they were! But this is my last chance to make students believe that modernism mattered--and still matters.

On Wednesday I'll get all excited and scribble a bunch of vocab up on the whiteboard--Alienation! Fragmentation! Experimentation! Grotesques!--which my students probably won't dutifully write down, despite my urging. Maybe they'll come up after class and take a picture of the whiteboard mess to file away with all the other pictures of words that belong to a past so distant it seems to be speaking a different language. 

When we tackle Wallace Stevens I'll ask them why we need thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, why we can't look just once and get the whole picture, why a poem wants us to engage in looking instead of memorizing, but I'll be lucky if one student scribbles something about the poem as the act of the mind finding what will suffice. The poem as the act! Of the mind! Finding! 

Last chance to make it matter! 

As I look down the months before I get put on the shelf, I'm taking refuge in William Carlos Williams's poem "A Sort of a Song":

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
--through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks. 

Let my teaching lodge the poems in students' minds like the snake waiting under his weed; let me plant a seed that sends roots deep into their rocky minds. Let the snake wait, the seed grow, the words finally strike with a bite that feels like rock splitting. Then they'll know why modernism matters. Then my job here will be done.

Friday poetry challenge: Scarfing up the rhymes

I walked out the door this morning to find my face being pelted by invisible precipitation, sharp little pellets that looked like nothing and sounded like dry rice being poured into a saucepan. What do you call this stuff? Not quite sleet, not quite snow, not quite freezing rain, just one more manifestation of this never-ending winter. When I was halfway to campus it turned to snow, and by the time I'd parked the campus sidewalks, which had only recently been cleared of ice and snow, were once again covered in white.

At least it's not windy, I told myself. At least the temperature is in double digits for a change. At least I'm well bundled up. But now, thanks to the New York Times, I have to think about yet another winter-weather hazard: looking old. Yes: a prominent headline asks "Does Your Winter Scarf Make You Look Old?" Apparently people with way too much time on their hands are out there in the blizzard obsessing over what sorts of scarves people wear and how those scarves are tied. One fashion expert avers that scarves that look "buttoned-up" make people look old while those tied more casually make wearers appear youthful; further, the Scarf Mafia asserts that "it's impossible to make an infinity scarf look relaxed and chill."

Do you know what what else does not look "relaxed and chill"? A person who has slipped on a pile of snow and landed SPLAT on the sidewalk. It happened this morning--not to me, for a change--and the victim, though well buttoned-up, looked neither youthful nor decrepit but simply embarrassed. Good thing the Scarf Mafia wasn't here to offer helpful suggestions: "Here, let me fix your scarf so you'll look more youthful while lying on the ground--or better yet, take advantage of this little hiatus to knit yourself a triangular scarf. So much less stodgy!"

I love my current winter scarf, a soft red wool with white and gold accents, but I wear it not to appear chill but to stay warm, or at least warmer than I would be without it. I have colleagues who strap spikes onto their shoes to walk to campus and others so bundled up that they I can't tell who they are when they greet me, but I'm not making any judgments about their winter-weather attire. I'm just hoping they remain upright in the middle of whatever you want to call this slippery mess. 

We've had snow and sleet and freezing rain,
and then we've had them all again,
along with wind and winter chill
and ice and slush. It's quite a thrill
to drive or walk to get to class
in this persistent Arctic blast.
But I can't ponder, in this cold,
whether my scarf makes me look old.
As long as I stay on my feet,
who cares if scarves don't look so neat
the way I tie them. I confess:
my winter garb appears a mess;
I may look old and tired too-- 
at least my lips aren't turning blue.
But if my scarf offends, I'll turn
the other cheek. (It's got windburn.)

 

Now your turn: let the weather do its worse--and put your efforts into verse. 

 

My cozy red scarf

 

But why can't you smile more?

I'd just finished doing a joint presentation with a wonderful colleague when another colleague offered praise: "It was good to see the two of you looking happy." Well, we looked happy because we were happy. We were presenting interesting information about terrific authors to illustrate fascinating ideas about the way history and literature illuminate each other, a topic on which we are both very passionate, so of course we were happy.

But I heard the unspoken part of my colleague's praise: "It was good to see the two of you looking happy for a change." Ouch. Maybe if we had a chance to celebrate our research and share ideas amongst interested listeners every day, we would constantly parade all over campus in great big clown smiles, but there's a lot more to campus life than a once-in-a-career presentation.

The problem is that the two of us have been around higher education for a long time. We've both served as Faculty Chair during particularly trying times, and we've chaired departments and committees and worked on projects that exposed us to the most irritating aspects of campus culture. We've been through the wars and we try to carry our scars with dignity, but sometimes we get weighed down by past struggles, current challenges, and the stark forecast for the future of academe.

So we have been known to complain about injustices on campus, but what of it? If tenured senior professors don't use their voices to address problems, who will? 

And of course our experience reflects the ongoing epidemic of men telling women to smile more, as if the only value we bring into a situation is aesthetic. We're happy to smile when smiling is appropriate, but if the situation requires a stern mien, a pointed critique, or even a raised voice, we'll step up.

So I'll accept my colleague's praise: we did good work, and we were very happy while doing it. But don't expect us to smile through every situation, especially when the context requires critique.