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.

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: