Friday poetry challenge: Driven to excel at tedious tasks

Halfway through our long drive home from Columbus after my son's weekly chemotherapy treatment, the hospital called asking him to come back--not today but tomorrow AND Sunday. Yes: they want him to make the four-hour round trip three days in a row, and since chemo makes him too dopey to drive, I guess I'll be in the driver's seat.   

I had just been boasting that I'm getting better at managing this challenging task. If I set my alarm for 4 a.m., take an eye-opening shower, and eat or drink nothing before we leave, I can drive straight to The James without GPS and, usually, without a rest-room break. While my son gets his tests and treatment, I eat breakfast in the hospital cafe and suck in some caffeine so that I'm fully alert by the time we're ready to head back home in heavier traffic. 

So here's my reward for boasting about how well I'm doing: I have to do it again, and again, and again. 

It was a snafu not of our own making. His current treatment plan requires him to get a certain drug by injection four days in a row; he received the first shot during today's regular hospital visit and the remaining pre-filled syringes should have been delivered to our house by courier. Then the phone call came: the pharmacy was out of the drug and wouldn't be able to deliver more to our house until Monday. The hospital has enough on hand to give him the shots tomorrow and Sunday, but only if he can show up in person.

It's important that the treatment not be interrupted, and so, after a bit of back-and-forth on the phone, he agreed to get back to The James on Saturday and Sunday, but the hospital sweetened the deal by offering him some gift cards to pay for gas plus a deeply discounted hotel room for the night. Unless he can find someone else eager to take an unexpected junket to Columbus, I'll once again be doing the driving while he does the sleeping, which plays an important part in his recovery. While I'm getting better at driving, he's getting better at surviving. At this point, the tests are all pointing toward eventual success.

I thought he was asleep early this morning as I drove through dark and fog and traffic, but then he chuckled at the Fresh Air podcast I was listening to: an interview with David Sedaris. Near the end the author was asked why he still writes and goes on book tours and revises his work obsessively at the age of 69, and Sedaris said, "Because I want to get better." 

I immediately wished my students could hear--really hear--that message, but at the time I was thinking only in terms of writing. I have no desire to get any better at driving my son to the hospital, but if that's what it takes to help him get better, I guess I'll do it.

Let's wrap some rhymes around road hazards:

Long lines of orange cones
stretch toward the horizon.
Cars swerve--he's got nerve!
I've got to keep my eyes on
"variable speed limit" signs
and follow to the letter.
I'm not so hot on driving, but
at least I'm getting better.

Your turn: pour some pizzazz on a tedious task.

From bird-watching to word-watching.

So how was your holiday, I asked, and my colleague shrugged. I missed the library, she said. I need to be here to write.

Writing during summer break? What a concept. Writing Wednesdays begin tomorrow but meanwhile I've been too distracted to do any serious writing. Time to construct a list of summer priorities! But that feels too much like work. Maybe tomorrow.

Today I'm holding on to the last vestiges of joy from my weekend with the grandkids. I'm recalling how they infuse every moment with energy, how they play the piano with verve and invent silly games and put together Lego blocks in unconventional ways. The youngest showed me how her colorful Lego shark could swallow a swimmer and poop him out the other end. When she and her brother couldn't recall the theme to Jaws, they hummed the Pink Panther theme instead. 

I loved taking the oldest grandkid to riding lessons and seeing that petite person take a great big horse through its paces with confidence and skill. Where did she get that? From her mother, no doubt. Big animals make me nervous.

But that didn't stop me from trying to visit some bison on the drive home. I'd read about the bison herd at the new visitor center at Jesse Owens State Park, which isn't really on the way to anywhere but I didn't mind taking the scenic route down twisty country roads. 

Finally I turned in at the sign pointing to the parking area. I had to haul my wonky knee up multiple flights of steps, through a steep green area that will one day be a pollinator habitat, up to the top of a hill where the Visitor Center sat, and the first thing I saw was another lot where I could have parked to avoid the many steps. 

Today my knee is absolutely screaming, but at least I got to see the place where the herd of bison would have been if they'd been out. We've had rain. The lower part of the bison habitat was flooded. The bison were locked safely away from the mess, so I just enjoyed the view. Saw some killdeer. Heard some orioles. Dashed down the steps as fast as I could to avoid the sudden rain.

On Sunday I'd had lunch with an old friend and stopped by the heron rookery in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, where an idling tourist bus made the place sound and smell like a busy factory floor. When the bus finally left, it was as if someone had opened a door to birdsong. Herons were feeding chicks in many of the nests, but thick foliage obscured the view. So imagine how delighted I was today to stop on the bridge at the end of my driveway and see a great blue heron standing in my own little creek.

Good to get away, nice to be home, but soon I'll need to switch from birdwatching to word-watching. Summer break is here--so it's time for summer writing. Tomorrow.

  

At the heron rookery

 

Yellow warbler looking sweet

Oriole

Tree swallow looking sassy

Friday poetry challenge: Plenty of nothing

You don't have to write good poetry, I tell myself. There's already more good poetry published than you'll ever get a chance to read. 

I'm giving myself a little pep talk: You're not doing this for a grade. There is literally nothing at stake except a promise that you made to yourself. You're not going to stand over the keyboard threatening to slap your own hand with a ruler if you can't produce a little Friday poetry.

But I've got no motivation, no inspiration, not the least thread of an idea worth wrapping words around. I survived four days of meetings this week, dealt gracefully with some unreasonable people, cooked some decent meals, paid some bills, read a book, and failed to find a glossy ibis.

The ibis, a rare visitor to this area, was reported by the local birding group. I read the ibis alert while sitting not eight feet from a photograph I took of a glossy ibis at a wetland in Florida, proof positive that I have seen glossy ibises in person, but if a glossy ibis makes a pit stop at a wetland within an hour's drive of my house, I can't help it: I want to go and see. 

But I couldn't go just then (rain) and then I had more meetings the next day, but yesterday--more than 36 hours after the ibis report--my longsuffering husband agreed to take us on an ibis hunt. Directions were incomplete and GPS was not helpful, but we found the pond, as advertised, right next to the Hallelujah Barn. 

Alas, no ibis. So maybe the high point of my week was going on a long drive in the countryside to see an absence of ibis.

Pond without ibis,

poem without thought,

day with no meetings--

hurrah for what's not.

(And that's all I've got.)

Okay, your turn: wrap some words around a big ol' wad of nothing.

(Hat tip to my adorable daughter, who told me that if I have nothing to write about, I should write about nothing.)

Moving past panic mode

For academics, compliance is a dirty word, evoking visions of Vogons stomping through our lovely courses yelling Resistance is useless! We're happy to insist that students comply with disciplinary conventions regarding format, syntax, citation styles, and so on, and we absolutely insist that students comply with requirements for completing their programs, but we balk at complying with procedures mandated by our own institutions, much less federal mandates.

Which is why I had to try to talk some colleagues down off the ledge this morning. Panic may be an appropriate response to some situations, but it's not my favorite way to start a faculty workshop.

The topic was accessibility--big scary word that means a million different things, but at the moment it means that federal law requires us to make course materials accessible to all kinds of students, including those who are visually impaired. The deadline, thankfully, has been extended until next April, but that doesn't mean we should sit on our hands until the Vogons come stomping through and hold a gun to our heads--or, more likely, a lawsuit. So the Instructional Technologist and I invited faculty to join us for two workdays in a computer-equipped classroom, and we even fed them muffins and lunch. 

The plan was to provide guidelines and techniques for making course materials accessible and then set faculty loose to work on their own materials (documents, presentations, Canvas pages) while we offered one-on-one assistance. But first we had to defuse the panic.

I can understand the source of the panic: if someone told me to insert alternative text descriptions for every image I've ever used in a PowerPoint presentation, I'd panic too. But no one is asking anyone to do that. This workshop was called "Small Change, Big Impact," and the goal was to persuade a few faculty members to, at the bare minimum, make their syllabi fully accessible and to think about accessibility when creating new course materials. We're not interested in the past; we want to make small changes moving forward so that eventually we'll all be in full compliance with the law, though maybe the best we can hope for is that most of us will be closer to partial compliance.

Well this morning you'd have thought we were asking people to sacrifice their firstborns on the altar of Moloch. No one was holding a gun to anyone's head! We were just trying to help! Baby steps, people! Move the needle a few degrees! A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step! And now I'm running out of cliches to describe the minimal changes we're requesting.

At one point I looked at the sea (well, puddle) of angry faces and realized that I don't even need to be there. I'm retiring in December! I could just ignore these new guidelines and fade off into the sunset before the deadline, but instead I was sitting there trying to figure out how to format class readings so they're be comprehensible to a student relying on a text reader. It has to do with formatting headings, and establishing reading order in PowerPoints, and inserting alternative text for images. Not rocket science, in other words, except for the STEM people in the room who have to figure out how to translate complex scientific images into readable text. But we have a year to figure this out! Let's take advantage of the time available and get it done.

(What about a student too visually impaired to be able to see through a microscope? He could become James Thurber is what I want to say, but probably someone else is better equipped to come up with a helpful response.)

By the end of the day we'd all learned a thing or two and made at least a few improvements, and many of us will go back and continue the process tomorrow, keeping the panic at bay as much as possible. Here's what really scares me, though: Less than one-fifth of our faculty showed up for today's workshop. What about the rest? Who will motivate them to make the changes needed to comply with this federal mandate?

Maybe it's time to send in the Vogons.

Finding beauty in a world of hurt

Yesterday in the midst of hanging around the hospital with my son, I kept remembering that it was both my oldest grandkid's 13th birthday and the tenth anniversary of my mother's death. This morning my prosthetic memory showed me adorable baby pictures but also reminded me that on the day after my mother died, I went to a park near her house and saw juvenile anhingas stretching their wings. Birds are good therapy, then and now, but I can't get away to Florida at the moment so I've been outside watching the ordinary birds that visit our yard.

I've been hearing brown thrashers calling but finally caught a glimpse of a handsome one today. And for the first time I saw male cowbirds performing their mating display, puffing up their chests and making that peculiar gurgling sound to attract the attention of a female that seemed profoundly unimpressed. Cardinals, woodpeckers, mourning doves, towhees, finches, sparrows, chickadees, titmice...is there anything more relaxing than sitting in the quiet morning sun while birds flit here and there? Just what I needed after the week I've endured.

A few Sundays ago while I was driving to church a red-tailed hawk slammed into my windshield with a sound as loud as a gunshot. I was so startled I nearly drove off the road. I checked my windshield for cracks and saw only a gooey smear but no other sign of the hawk. I can't imagine that it could have survived such a collision, which really upset me. I love hawks even though I know they often eat smaller birds. 

Anyone who pays attention knows that nature is not always a warm and cuddly place; the juvenile bird stretching its wings today may be a smear on a windshield tomorrow, and the cowbird mating display that amuses me today may result in eggs laid in other birds' nests so that the fledgling cowbirds can destroy the other chicks. Life and death are partners in the grand dance, but as they swirl there's time to celebrate a whole world of beauty.  

Juvenile anhinga

 

Towhee

Male cowbirds vying for the attention of a female.

Brown thrasher

Downy woodpecker

Chickadee

Tulip poplar,  blossoming

Mourning dove

Infused, transfused, and woobering away

I'm sitting in a waiting room at The James, stressed out after a bizarre and busy week and exhausted after driving two hours in the foggy morning to get my son to Columbus in time for chemotherapy, a blood transfusion, and a lumbar puncture, so I close my eyes and listen to the lively music someone is playing on the grand piano in the lobby. Lovely. But wait--is that the theme from MASH? A high-tech hospital resembles a MASH unit the way a calculator resembles an abacus, but beyond that, what sane person sitting at a piano in a cancer hospital full of patients undergoing excruciating and sometimes futile treatment thinks it's a great idea to play a song called "Suicide Is Painless"? 

The player is highly skilled but the selections are eclectic: the charming holiday tune "Some Children See Him" followed by "The Entertainer" and "Lord of the Dance." And "Suicide Is Painless." I take comfort in the assurance that a majority of the people listening aren't aware of the lyrics. 

My son is weathering his treatments well, starting with an infusion of Madagascar periwinkle (vincristine) in the early hours while I suck in an infusion of caffeine. How early do I have to get up to fulfill my early-morning trasnport duties? Fourish. Autocorrect thinks that should be nourish, which reminds me of the transfusion nurse who keeps trying to feed us and finally takes me to a locked room containing a refrigerator with a big sign on the door: Patient Nourishment Only. Uncrustables and ginger ale--sweet! I'm not a patient but I leave there well nourished.

In my purse is a book that ought to nourish my soul while I wait, but after the early start and the long drive, my eyes and brain are too fatigued to focus on the words. Instead I listen to the nurse's enthusiastic explanation of the need for a transfusion: red blood cells are like little delivery vehicles transporting oxygen and other essential elements all over the body, but chemo cripples the blood-cell-making equipment. What do you do when your car breaks down? You call an Uber! It's amusing to think of a fleet of tiny Ubers zooming into my son's blood vessels, but it's even funnier when the nurse keeps pronouncing it Woober. 

If retirement gets dull I suppose I can pursue a second career as a Woober driver, given my recent mastery of the art of driving long distances while barely awake. But the pay can't possibly be worth the hassles. I'll get up before the sun and drive to Columbus to help my flesh and blood battle lymphoma, but I'd be less motivated to transport people who aren't my son. I am not, after all, a red blood cell. I need to take time to nourish my own soul with poetry and nature and music.

Though maybe not "Suicide is Painless."

Working through the glitches

In the quiet darkness of the planetarium I may have heard some snoring, but I swear it wasn't me. I was breathing deeply and at times my eyes were shut, but I was just resting. Honest.

Well you can't blame a bunch of faculty members for falling asleep in the dark right after lunch on our big workshop day. Final grades were due at 9 a.m. and I know some profs were scrambling right up until the last minute, but enough of them showed up to make our morning workshop sessions worthwhile. We learned things, shared stories, and laughed together, which was good enough for me.

Which is why I was a little annoyed this morning when a colleague expressed sympathy over how badly the workshop turned out. How could we have been at the same event? Granted, we endured a few technical glitches--an intransigent computer, a clock stuck in a time warp, and a presenter delayed at a rail crossing. But while we waited for these problems to resolve, we filled the time by talking about great things our students had accomplished this semester.

If there was one unexpected throughline in the day's presentations, it was the need to accept and learn from imperfection. A presenter talked about what he'd learned from a new assignment that was "somewhat okay some of the time," and a small group discussion led to a great piece of advice for profs facing disruptions to teaching plans: "Accept imperfection." Another presenter reminded us that we need to acknowledge our students' right to fail: if they resist all our attempts to help them succeed, then "we may feel like we have failed them when they've failed us."

Our campus caterers didn't fail us: the lunch was perfect and the conversations even better. And then a bunch of us went over to the planetarium to see what the whizzy new equipment can do, except those comfy chairs in a darkened room were an invitation to relax perhaps a bit too deeply. 

We've all worked hard this semester and we needed some relaxation, and some laughter, and some commiseration, conversation, and compassion. I offer no apologies for presiding over a glitchy workshop. We're imperfect people working in imperfect circumstances and sometimes being somewhat okay can feel like triumph.

Time to hang up the regalia

Clues that it's time to hang up my regalia for good: 

Early in my career here I taught a terrific student...who returned for this year's Commencement as our distinguished speaker. How did she accomplish so much so quickly?

My second year here I served on the search committee that hired a wonderful young colleague...who will retire as soon as he gets his grades turned in this week. How could someone I hired beat me to retirement?

I survived all the standing and processing and sitting in uncomfortable chairs at Commencement ...but afterward my legs were so sore I could hardly walk. When did I get so old?

We suddenly need to fill in some blanks in the teaching schedule because of a colleague's unexpected departure...but I don't want to step up and teach any of the unmanned classes, even for overload pay. What happened to my sense of duty?

After Commencement I should have carefully hung up my regalia so it'll be ready the next time I need it...but it felt like too much work, so I left it draped over a chair. When will I need academic regalia again?

 

Pencils down, forks up

What a semester! I'd like to put a fork in it and call it done but the thick bits are still stewing. 

I've graded all the final exams except for one that a student had to take online, and of course it's a pain for me to write an online version of a face-to-face exam and post it to Canvas and arrange for online proctoring but it's more of a pain for the student who broke his leg very messily and is still at home recovering from surgery. So I did all the things and checked yesterday to make sure his exam was complete in Canvas but I didn't grade it, but now that I've graded all the hand-written exams (and my goodness my students wrote some great essays!), I can't get into Canvas at all because it is "currently undergoing scheduled maintenance." Did I receive an email about this scheduled maintenance? Maybe I did. I don't remember. At any rate I can't finish that last bit of grading or post the grades until the scheduled maintenance is complete so here I sit, stewing.

I've been stewing a lot lately over any number of silly little things, which is probably one reason my hair is falling out. It's probably not noticeable to anyone else, but my hair has been thinning on top since around March, due, no doubt, to stress caused by trying to live a semi-normal life while helping my son endure the throes of cancer treatment. But at least I still have hair. The chemo was making my son's hair fall out in clumps, so he finally got a buzz cut to even it out, and my husband got the same cut in sympathy, so now they have matching hair. So okay, one is more gray than the other, but you can certainly see the family forehead.

So while I'm stewing over any number of annoying little things, I have to remind myself: I still have hair, and my students wrote some wonderful essays, and the grading is nearly done. At some point scheduled maintenance will be complete. Meanwhile, I'll sit here with my fork at the ready.

A triumph of boredom

The thing no one tells you about cancer, I told my son yesterday, is that it's really boring. 

They tell us it's a journey, an unexpected adventure that might lead to new wisdom and purpose, or that it's a battle in which we might find triumph, but more often cancer is just a slog through muck that tries to enforce stasis, or an attempt to stay awake despite overwhelming fatigue, or an inability to relish things that once brought joy. Like food, for instance. When chemo destroys the taste buds, everything turns bland, and orange Gatorade can only go so far to assuage the ennui.

Mostly it's about waiting, but any cancer patient's patience can be tested when appointments require a two-hour car ride that makes you queasy, followed by various snafus and delays at the hospital so that your two-hour appointment turns into a 13-hour day, most of it deadly dull. Get a lumbar puncture and then lie flat on your back for an hour or so staring at the same old boring ceiling tiles. Sit still while chemo drugs drip, drip, drip into your blood vessels. Wait for test results, wait for answers, wait for food, and then regret it when it arrives because it tastes like sand.

So when my son's Gatorade supply ran out last night and he asked me to take a quick drive down the highway to pick up more, I suggested that he come along for the ride, just to get out of the house. Not much new to see--some new tar and chip on part of our road, a spot where milkweed is coming up on the shoulder, a view of the creek, the river, the sky. But it was better than staring at the same old boring walls in the same old boring house where nothing much ever happens. 

One day, I told him, you'll back at this time and it will be a boring blip in an otherwise exciting life. And I hope that's true. Meanwhile, there's always Gatorade.

Friday poetry challenge: reining in the nightmares

I show up at my office to find it changed, my books all gone and my art replaced by garish posters and one whole wall knocked down to expand the space and the carpet replaced by dull beige shag, and there's this woman there, young and pert with short dark hair and a bright smile, who says it's her office now. But I haven't retired yet, I insist, and I want to know where all my books and pictures have gone, not to mention the Jane Austen action figure and the Potato Head family and my stained-glass kaleidoscope, but she says she won the job in an online competition and if I have a problem with it I should take it up with HR, which I do, except when the HR director arrives she's a woman I've never seen before who can't understand why I'm upset. Yelling ensues. The argument ends when the HR director states that they had to hire this new person because she won the contest fair and square--and besides, she's so darned cute.

And that's when I wake up.

Is this my first retirement anxiety dream? Not very realistic. I mean, I'm sure some colleagues are already salivating over my lovely office, but even if the Powers That Be agreed to tear down a wall or put the carpet out of its misery, it wouldn't happen overnight--not without drastic revision to current purchasing policies. Once years ago a former colleague persuaded the PTBs that she couldn't move into a particular office unless (this is true) the doorway was moved to a different part of the wall because she didn't want to look at every dude who went in or out of the men's rest room across the hall, but I don't have the kind of clout required to move doors or walls or carpets. I doubt that anyone does.

We don't hire faculty via online contests (yet) or install them in prime offices because they're so darned cute, but any kind of faculty search would be preferable to no search at all. The PTBs have already selected replacements for my administrative roles, but my department was not permitted to replace the last couple of tenured professors who left us s0 they may be forced to replace me with an adjunct or two. Or a bot. Why not? They're hot! Suddenly I feel some doggerel coming on:

We've got
a bot.
Why not?
They're hot!
And cute
to boot.
Astute
offshoots
of bytes,
they might
delight
all night
and day
to stay--
no pay!
No play!
All work!
(A jerk.)

Now you try: rein in your nightmares by tying them up in rhyme.

What we've got here is failure to imaginate

Not a standard word, of course, and there's really no reason for imaginate to exist when imagine works perfectly well, but this morning in class I was thinking what we've got here is failure to communicate. I didn't dare quote the line because I feared that none of my students would be familiar with Cool Hand Luke--and why should they know anything about a film that came out decades before they were born?

I don't know who I represent in this scenario--the prisoner or the brutal captain--but I know I struggled to get students to imagine themselves in the starkly unfamiliar scenario presented in Natasha Trethewey's poem "Native Guard." I had to stand there and endure the awkward silence when they refused to look up unfamiliar words or read footnotes about unfamiliar historical events, but the most awkward silence occurred when I asked them to find the first mention of the word history in the poem. I had told them that Trethewey loves to examine gaps and erasures, stories left out of received histories, and I wanted them to think about how the poem employs history itself. It's a long poem, but history first appears in the tenth line:

Yes, I was born a slave, at harvest time, 
in the Parish of Ascension; I've reached
thirty-three with the history of one younger
inscribed upon my back. 

I endured the long silence as my students stared at the text hoping someone else would find the line, and then the silence grew even more awkward when I asked what sort of history a former slave might have inscribed on his back and how we might go about studying that sort of history.

I get it: it's the wrong time of the semester to ask students to think too much. They're tired. We're all tired. But we started the semester with Walt Whitman's "The Wound-Dresser," which took us on a guided tour of a hospital ward full of soldiers wounded in the Civil War, and I like to end the semester by taking another look at the Civil War to see if there's still anything left to learn. 

There is, but it requires some imagination. Trethewey suggests that poetry can help us understand gaps in the historical record by drawing us deeply into imagined lives, but do I really have to drag students kicking and screaming into engagement with imagination?

Some students you just can't reach--and I don't like it any more than they do.

The day you deserve

Among the bumper stickers on the battered little car in front of me was one that said Have the Day you Deserve, and I'm not sure what more a person can ask for. 

Today, apparently, I deserve to drive along a tranquil river reflecting abundant sunshine, and I deserve to enjoy the rhododendrons and azaleas that make Marietta the prettiest little town on the planet this time of year, and I deserve to walk past fragrant lilacs and see the peonies just beginning to bloom on campus, and I deserve to nab the parking closest to my office--so close, in fact, that I can look out my office window and wave to my adorable little car, not that it would notice.

I parked next to the President's residence, which still shows signs of damage from the nasty hail-and-wind storm that battered Marietta last month. All over town I see fly-by-night hail-repair services popping up, and I hear about scam artists offering great deals on repairing roofs and windows. I don't know what my colleagues did to deserved pockmarked cars, leaky roofs, or broken glass panes in the greenhouse dangling overhead like the sword of Damocles. The storm was very localized and selective, smashing holes in siding and windows all over one side of a house but sparing the others. On one street I saw three houses in a row with big blue tarps over holes in the roofs, but the next street over has none.

I missed the big storm because I was in Columbus helping my son wend his way through chemotherapy and all the indignities of cancer treatment. Not sure what any of us did to deserve cancer, but that's not how it works, is it? If the book of Job tells us anything, it insists that rewards and punishments are not equitably distributed--that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Or the hail, as the case may be.

What did we ever do to deserve cancer is just as ridiculous a question as What did we ever do to deserve peonies? Gratuitous suffering lives on the same block as gratuitous beauty. But I can't think about that this morning. Instead, I plan to accept the peonies as one small part of the day I deserve, even though I did absolutely nothing to earn it.

 

Friday poetry challenge: a shove out the door

Second-to-last Friday of the semester and my students stand ready to dash off into summer, to jobs and internships and adult responsibility, or perhaps to sleeping late, doomscrolling, and soaking in the summer sun. They stand at the threshold of something new, in a liminal space much like that described in the Anne Sexton poem we discussed on Wednesday, "Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman," in which a mother addresses a daughter who stands in the passage between childhood and adolescence. 

Earlier in the semester we'd read the first chapter of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, in which a mother uses the occasion of her daughter's first period to tell her a terrifying story about a village that rises up violently against a woman who bears a child out of wedlock. It's a "story to grow up on," warning the daughter that if she steps outside of bounds, the village will watch and take revenge.

Anne Sexton's poem provides a more gentle message from mother to daughter. The mother recalls her own transition to puberty, when she heard "as in a dream / the conversation of the old wives / speaking of womanhood," but she adds, "I remember that I heard nothing myself. / I was alone. / I waited like a target." She wants her daughter, on the other hand, to be wrapped in love and surrounded by supporting words. "Your bones are lovely," she says, adding, "there is nothing in your body that lies. / All that is new is telling the truth." The final stanza urges the daughter to seize the burning power of newness with a confidence set in stone.

Just before that final rousing word, though, the poet describes herself, as if in afterthought, as "an old tree in the background." When newness springs forth like a vine in a bean patch, it's easy to ignore the old tree in the background, but that's where I stand right now. My students are working hard to finish well and in a few weeks they'll scamper off to experience newness, and at that point my only job is to stand in the background stolid as an old tree and trust that we've equipped them for whatever lies ahead. 

With just a few more class sessions to prepare them for the journey, what words of wisdom might a tired old tree impart? Let's keep it brief with a little haiku:

Roots burrow deep while
limbs seek the sun: a bare tree
bursts with fresh spring leaves.

Now it's your turn: share some words of wisdom with the young folk who stand in the doorway, and give them a little push as they pass through.

A sharp wind blowing through academe; or, when chickens fly the coop

I drove through a lot of wind yesterday but saw no signs of damage at home--only because the resident chicken fancier had already done his work.

When I arrived home he was down in the meadow fiddling with the chicken run, and it wasn't until later that he told me what I'd missed: the wind had lifted the chicken run and lofted it across the meadow, leaving the chickens free to take a walk on the wild side.

I don't know which was more difficult--restoring the chicken run or retrieving all the chickens--but he got it done. Not without drama: There's this chicken the grandkids call Pineapple because they say it looks like it's wearing a Hawaiian shirt (because of course they do), and sweet little innocent Pineapple had escaped detection by hiding in the tall grass. It might have remained there all night if the guineas hadn't squawked at the hiding place, bringing it to the attention of the chicken fancier. Yes: poor Pineapple got ratted out by a pair of officious guineas.

That's the way we live these days, both at home and at work. This morning I stumbled into the never-ending discussion about the difficulty of counteracting students' reliance on AI for everything. It's clear that a sharp wind is blowing through academe upsetting all our tried-and-true methods, and many of us are running around trying to corral the chickens and restore the structures while a few wily chickens hide in the tall grass. Do we strengthen our containment structures, give the chickens a good talking-to, or import some guineas to squawk at the miscreants? 

Or is it time to declare victory and depart from the field? Retirement is just seven months away. Why can't someone else take charge of these chickens?

They look innocent, but don't be fooled.

 

Tag-team parenting, in and out of the rookery

A great blue heron soared toward a sycamore tree and landed near one of many massive nests. It poked and prodded its partner on the nest, which rose up, shook itself off, plodded out onto a limb as if to take stock of the wider world, and soared off as the returning partner settled onto the nest. Tag-team parenting: as good a way as any to get it done.

I thought we'd reached the empty nest era in our house but my husband and I have been doing some tag-team parenting of our own, taking turns dealing with our son's health problems so that we can maintain some semblance of ordinary life. He's home from the hospital once again and rejoicing in the news that the tumor has shrunk to nearly nothing, but he still needs help getting to treatments and tests and we need to be alert in case he takes a turn for the worse, as he did last week. 

Today it was my turn to soar off into the distance to see my daughter's choir concert. Two hours driving, 90 minutes of music, and two more hours driving back--but worth every minute on the road, just to fill my senses with beauty in the company of my grandkids. 

An added bonus: the performance space was five minutes away from my favorite heron rookery. Family, music, beauty, birds--food for my soul to sustain me through a busy week. 

Random bullets of Wednesday, with sighs and howls

The accreditation team has left the building. Repeat: the accreditation team has left the building. And the entire campus heaves a sigh of relief.

My last time teaching "Howl" this morning and I wonder how today's students will react. So many words! So many opportunities to take offense! Taking offense would be evidence that they've actually read it, but I suspect that "Howl" is tame by today's standards of discourse. 

I wanted to howl myself yesterday, and yet here I sit in my office quietly not howling--but I'm howling on the inside. My son was in the local emergency room yesterday (not the main one in Marietta but the branch in Belpre, which I wish I'd known before I spent so much time circling the horrible parking garage at the Marietta hospital) getting tested and pumped full of electrolytes before they sent him off (in an ambulance this time, not a helicopter) to Columbus with possible pancreatitis, which is a common side effect of one of his chemotherapy drugs with a name that sounds like asparagus but isn't. I spent some time with him in the ER (in Belpre!) before he left. My husband left this morning to be with him at The James, and I'll drive up tomorrow or Friday if he's still there. When I'm with him I think about all I'm not getting done on campus, and when I'm on campus I think about the need to be with him in Columbus. Howling on the inside wherever I am.

Meanwhile, yesterday I shot the best photo I've taken in years, entirely by accident. I stepped out of my building in the afternoon, looked up, and noticed sun shining through dogwood blossoms while storm clouds passed over. Raised my phone. One shot. There it is. Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time (and sometimes every place is the wrong place)--but you won't get the shot unless you look up. 

 

Correspondence concerning "The Correspondent"

Dear old friend,

I've been wanted to send you Virginia Evans' novel The Correspondent but right now I can't seem to organize my life enough to put it in the mail, and on second thought it's the kind of book I look forward to reading again so maybe you should find your own copy. Sending you the book would be the kind of gesture that, over time, builds a friendship like ours, but you're the kind of friend who will understand that sometimes it really is the thought that counts.

How are things with you? Kind of difficult here, with frequent disruptions due to my son's health problems, although I hesitate to call them disruptions because it sounds so negative, as if I resent him for getting cancer. I would gladly take the cancer away from him if I could but since I can't, I'll drive him to Columbus for extra tests, cook the foods he likes best, clean up his vomit, and closely monitor my phone throughout an important meeting with the visiting accreditation team because my husband took our son to the emergency room while I was still barely awake this morning and I need to know what's going on. (Electrolytes are low. Maybe something more. Who can say? Nothing I can do for him at the ER so I'll keep busy here as much as possible considering multiple distractions.)

One of the things I really like about The Correspondent is how our main character, Sybil Van Antwerp, deals with the distractions that interrupt a life she considers alternately mundane and miraculous. A retired attorney and judicial clerk, she devotes her life to writing letters (some by hand, some by email) four mornings each week, an ongoing "correspondence that is her manner of living." She writes letters to friends and family members; to famous people like Joan Didion, Ann Patchett, and Larry McMurtry; and to strangers, some of them hostile, whom she somehow manages to transform into friends over time.

But that makes the book sound too saccharine. She's a feisty old lady, revealing fragments of herself to a variety of correspondents and requiring readers to assemble the puzzle of her complex character. Her voice is, by turns, angry, prickly, condescending, sarcastic, self-righteous, cranky, curmudgeonly, conciliatory, tender, and loving, and in the end she's a character with whom I'd gladly spend more time--hence my desire to re-read the book. 

You might enjoy this book because Sybil shares our love of reading. Nearly every letter refers to some book she's reading, and her letters to famous authors reveal how reading helps her understand herself and her world. In a letter to Ann Patchett, for instance, Sybil explains why she appreciates a particular character in State of Wonder: "I saw some reflection of myself in her. The agonizing ethical questions for which the reader puts her on trial. That amazement one feels at this stage of life--a sort of astonishment that is also confusion, which leads to a sort of worry, or a sort of fear, I guess. How did we get here?"

And I see some reflection of myself in Sybil's seeing some reflection of herself in Patchett's book, making the book a Russian nesting doll of character analysis. 

Like Patchett, Evans invites readers to put her main character on trial. Sybil has always welcomed the clarity law provides; at one point she explains why she pursued a career in law at a time when the field did not always welcome women: "The appeal for someone like me (us) to find, on the face of this mad, inside-out, senseless, barbaric, intolerably fraught and painful and mind-spinning planet, some semblance of order...well, of course it's appealing. There's nothing quite like the comfort of the law, black and white."

But the letters reveal that nothing is quite as black and white as it appears. Feisty Sybil first resists admitting culpability for both minor blunders and major disasters, but over time the blinders come off her eyes--even as she is literally losing her eyesight. She tells various versions of the truth to different correspondents but reveals the whole truth over time only to a correspondent she calls Colt, whose identity is revealed late in the book in a tender but harrowing revelation of personal pain.

Moving toward the end of an eventful but misunderstood life, Sybil seeks connection and significance. "I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction," she admits, adding that it is

a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch, and sometimes (this is what I'm getting to) sometimes you see in the distance some lights and it heartens you, the lone house or maybe a village and you come into the warmth of that stopover and go inside.

She returns to this image late in the book, after her correspondence has brought together disparate people from all over the globe, people who would not have known each other except for their connection with Sybil, who has transformed these isolated nodes into a rich and thriving community, including one character to whom she reveals her shame over a long-ago tragedy, a character she tells, "it's taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid, so thank you for that."

And that's another reason I wanted to send you this book: you have been on this road with me, have welcomed me into a comfortable space with a warm fire and a table laid, and I'd like to thank you for that before it's too late.

That's ultimately why the correspondence exists: to share the bumps in the road with someone willing to walk alongside. For Sybil, the letters she has sent out and those she receives 

are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle, or, a better metaphor, if dated, the links of a long chain, and even if those links are never put back together, which they will certainly never be, even if they remain for the rest of time dispersed across the earth like the fragile blown seeds of a dying dandelion, isn't there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one's life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it's a very small thing, to someone?

And that, I guess, is why I write to you and why I'd like to send you this book, to scatter puzzle pieces or chain links or dandelion seeds across the miles in hopes that some meaning will survive beyond our separate selves. If I can't send you the book right now--well, you're just the kind of correspondent who will understand.

Friday poetry challenge: mxd mssges

I'm tearing through my to-do list, prioritizing and tackling and crossing off tasks until I hit an item that stumps me: a tiny yellow sticky note that says....something? It's my handwriting for sure and I definitely recall writing this note and attaching it to my laptop so I'd be sure to attend to the matter today, but now I can't read the words or remember why they're important.

The second word is Laugh, capitalized and underlined, but the first word(s?) is (are?) Inchworm, Inc hour, Inchon, I wear, I charm, or some other incomprehensible scribble. It must have been important or I wouldn't have written it down but if the meaning doesn't come back to me soon, it's going in the trash.

For a person addicted to using words to bring order to chaos, it's a little disconcerting to leave myself commands I can't decipher. I'm happy to comply with the second part of the message--Laugh--and in fact I'm still a little tickled by what a student said in class yesterday when I asked her, during a discussion of Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," what she was laughing about and she said, "I can't help it--you have an infectious laugh." What was I laughing about while discussing "Cathedral"? I don't remember, any more than I remember what that sticky note is trying to tell me. If laughter remains after language fails, then I'm definitely equipped for an eventual slide into dementia.

Well maybe I'm just tired, bone-crushingly, soul-destroyingly tired, after the ordeal of the past month, if it's been a month already, not that I can tell since the concept of time seems to have abandoned me as well. I might be able to read that note on another day when I'm well rested and refreshed, but today I'm tired of squinting at the squiggles so I think I'll put it aside and see what sort of verse such nonsense can inspire.

I found a note
from I to Me;
the content I
can clearly see,
but if they're words,
I can't discern
what they might mean.
(We live and learn.)

I know I want
to talk to Me
but Me can't cope
with squiggles. Gee,
if I and Me
part way with words
there's naught to do
but laugh. (Absurd!)

Okay, that's the best I can do under such ridiculous circumstances. Anyone else want to produce some nonsense? 

Lane change

I swung my car around a blind curve and caught sight of a new sign beside my road--One lane road ahead--but I barely had time to register the meaning before I came face-to-face with a pair of stout poles blocking my lane.

Good thing I don't take that curve at speed! Anyone swinging around there above about 20 mph is in for a rude awakening, doubly so if a car is coming the other way. Or a truck. Lots of trucks on my country road. 

There's no doubt that the road needs repair; we've seen slippage for years, but now that whole lane seems to be on the verge of sliding down into the creek. One of these days I'll come around the curve to find heavy equipment and construction workers shoring up the bank. A flagger might be a good idea, or at least a little advanced warning.

This spring we've seen more than our usual share of sudden shocks along the road, so it feels good to turn a corner and enter the reconstruction phase. My son's tumor keeps shrinking and he's even had a chance to drive his own car, which sat idle for the three weeks he was in the hospital. More chemo Friday, but so far he has tolerated the poisons pretty well. I had to pivot to Zoom teaching with help from colleagues, but this week I've gone back to face-to-face teaching without a hitch except for the occasional odd feeling that I don't belong in the classroom. I've settled in back home, reclaimed my kitchen and cooking chores, and tackled piles of claptrap to get caught up on administrative tasks.

It's shocking how much simpler life can be when I'm in my usual place. Yesterday I arrived at campus and marveled over how easy it is to get to my office: park, lock, walk. Arriving at the hospital to see my son was a complex multi-stage process every stinking day: Drive into parking garage; stop to take ticket; wind around level after level to find an open space: walk to the pedestrian bridge; walk through the scanner at the security checkpoint; walk through again because something in my purse always makes the scanner beep; walk to the welcome desk; hand over the parking ticket for validation (so I can get out for $3 a day); hand over my driver's license; tell them my son's name and room number; spell his name at least twice before they can find it in the system; get my photo taken; slap the visitor's sticker on my shirt; put away my license and parking permit--and only then am I ready to get in the elevator and go upstairs.

Well, goodbye to all that--maybe not forever, but for now. Today if the weather holds up I may even make it to a college baseball game, my first in over a month. I've had my share of sudden stops and I'm ready for some easy driving.  

 

  

 

The doctor is in (again)

Here I am back in the office again surrounded by all my books, complaining about all my meetings, engaging with my students face-to-face instead of on Zoom, with a lot more gray in my hair and eyes so tired they want to close every time I sit down, but I'm here and I'm grateful for all the people who helped me cope with being with my son in the hospital for the past three weeks, and yes my son's health is improving and he's happy to be home but he still has to travel to Columbus once or twice a week for treatments and tests for the foreseeable future but fortunately I have a semi-retired husband at home who can do the driving while I finish the semester right back here in my office, which right now is exactly the right place to be.

 

Comforts of home

After we'd left behind the vomiting and the city traffic, after we'd made the big turn toward the south into the hilly part of the state, my son sat up in the passenger's seat and said, "I'll bet we can get the Guardians' home opener on the radio."

And we did. I can't tell you how thrilled I was to be driving my son home from the hospital while listening to our baseball team on the radio, with the sun shining brightly and redbud blooming exuberantly in the surrounding woods.

At our bridge I stopped so we could listen to the creek and look up the hill at the trilliums blooming, and then we got to the house and found the resident he-man ready to haul all our stuff in from the car and then serve us lasagna and garlic bread, piping hot from the oven. And then to sleep in my own bed, rise to a pot of my favorite tea, and go for a walk amongst the spring blossoms--well, it's good to be home. I have a list as long as my arm of things I need to do before returning to campus Monday, but just for today let's just relish the comforts of home.

trillium!

Just a few trout lilies hiding amongst the ramps.

critter on a pawpaw bud

buckeye

fertile stalk of field horsetail

dutchman's breeches

a few remaining bloodroot blossoms

 

squirrel corn mingling with the dutchman's breeches

mayapple

redbud

Goodbye, Columbus (I hope)

I'm sitting alone at a four-top because there are no tables for one in the whole restaurant. Awkward. Last week my husband and I enjoyed a fabulous meal here, thanks to the generosity of friends who sent a gift card for a very nice restaurant near the hospital, but now the hubby has gone back home to prepare for this weekend's Easter services. (And how did Easter arrive already? I've missed the whole season!)

So anyway, I know there's a little bit of credit left on that gift card and it'll just go to waste if I don't use it tonight, which ought to be my final night in Columbus for (I hope) a very long time. I'm determined to use that gift card even if I have to eat alone.

How long have I been here? I have to look at a calendar: My son walked into the emergency room in Marietta on March 14 and got whisked away to The James by helicopter that night; I followed early the next morning by car. So tomorrow will be my 20th day hanging out at the hospital while my son gets poked, prodded, scanned, treated, and prepared to be released back into the wild--tomorrow.

Yes, they are letting him go home tomorrow. He's not cured--far from it. He'll have another round of chemotherapy tomorrow and then more tests, procedures, and treatments at least twice a week for months. The cancer center back home can conduct some of the tests, but he'll still make regular trips back to Columbus for treatments--a two-hour drive each way, with gas prices going crazy. But let me tell you this: it's cheaper than a helicopter.

I see how he struggles to stand up and walk across the room and I wonder whether he's well enough to go home (to our guest room because he can't live alone just yet), but the doctors are sure that he's not in danger. Three weeks ago when this all started, the tumor was squeezing his heart and blood vessels enough to constitute an emergency, and I hope I never again have to hear an ER doctor talk about the very real possibility of sudden organ failure. (They call it decompensation, which doesn't help.) 

I haven't seen my house for three weeks but my husband assures me that it's in good order. My only task for tomorrow, then, is to pack all my things, clean out the duplex, teach a class on Zoom, drop a book off at a friend's house, find some lunch, keep my son company through a chemo drip that will take more than an hour, pack up all the stuff he's gathered in his hospital room, and drive him and all our stuff home. Chemo hasn't caused serious side effects so far, but his taste buds are all out of whack and he's prone to an overwhelming tiredness, which is just the ticket for a two-hour drive. As long as I'm awake enough to drive, he can sleep as much as he wants.

But that's tomorrow. Tonight I enjoy a little private celebration at a very nice restaurant. I'll raise a glass to Columbus with gratitude to everyone who has made this stay bearable, but as good as the city has been to me, I sincerely hope I don't have to live in it again for a long time to come.

A little urban nature hike

This morning I saw a skunk, which wouldn't be surprising if I were in my own yard, where skunks often dig for grubs. But I don't expect to see a skunk waddling across the front yard of a house on a crowded street in the middle of Columbus, Ohio. A quick bit of Googling reveals the presence of several companies advertising skunk removal services in the city, so I guess they get around more than I'd expected.

I haven't spent much time outdoors in the time I've been in Columbus (Two weeks? Three? I've lost track) but I've nevertheless spotted a cormorant, a bunch of ducks and geese, a great blue heron, and, today, an adorable little snail, plus the usual robins, sparrows, and squirrels.

The snail was crawling across a bike path that runs for many miles along the Olentangy River, a lovely trail beside a beautiful river that, for much of its length, has a major highway running along its opposite bank. On the east bank, gorgeous park; on the west, busy highway. That's urban nature for you: kneeling to peer at a tiny snail to the constant accompaniment of traffic sounds.

There's not much growing in the yard at the duplex we're renting in Columbus aside from dandelions and dead-nettle. Everywhere the pear trees are blooming and blanketing my car with pollen, and at the park we saw some sort of buttercup blooming en masse. I miss my trilliums and hope I'll get back home before they're gone, but meanwhile I'm keeping a lookout for growing things wherever I go. When I'm spending my days lingering within the labyrinthine walls of a hospital and watching my son suffer through one procedure after another, it's good to be reminded that somewhere out there the world is still turning and beautiful things are still growing.

  

The white line on the other side is the highway.