Piled higher and deeper

When a new magazine arrives I want to read it right now, but sometimes I have to let them pile up for later. In grad school I would ruefully watch a tower of New Yorker magazines growing ever taller while I dutifully focused on comprehensive exams and dissertation revision and oral defense, and then when it was all over, what a reward! Months of my favorite magazines awaiting my perusal. Where to start?

Now I find myself with different kinds of piles of stuff awaiting me, things I've had to postpone attending to while dealing with surgery and recovery and my son's health and my big lecture. But now that's all over and the delights I've been postponing can no longer be deferred.

Magazines aplenty, plus some books I'd like to read (for fun, not work) and some interesting puzzles. But I also have 15 boxes of my campus books downstairs, all needing to be sorted and stashed in the waiting bookshelves. 

I'm unlikely to tackle that project until I finish clearing out my campus office, a job I've whittled down to the tough stuff. On Friday I found yet another mold infestation--an old computer cord pouch that was growing its own ecosystem. I tossed the pouch in the trash and saved the cord, even though I don't know which computer it belongs to. Last week I persuaded the IT guys to come over and take away a monitor, keyboard, mouse, portal, and a nest of miscellaneous cords, but this pouch was stashed deep within the cabinet in my office, a space where I didn't expect to find mold. 

So I cleaned out that whole cabinet and found one other water-damaged item: a signed framed photograph of Don Knotts as Barney Fife, so damp it's become swollen and wavy. Only two more items remain in that cabinet: a cloth tote bag full of clean gym clothes that I'm afraid to touch in case it's covered in mold, and a row of old DVDs and videotapes about four feet long.

I don't know what to do with the DVDs and videos. I could box 'em up in five minutes flat, but then what? Many of them were for classroom use, but our classrooms are no longer equipped with VCRs and now many of them don't even have DVD players either. Because of the changing technological landscape, I own versions of A River Runs Through It on videotape, DVD, and streaming--all paid for, of course, by my own hard-earned cash.

I want to take a few of the DVDs home but most will be added to the giveaway pile, just in case someone wants to transform them into festive holiday decorations or something. I'm planning to hold Open Office days when anyone can take whatever they want: books I don't need at home, a whole shelf of old Norton anthologies, excess coffee mugs, toys, and tchotchkes, and now DVDs and videos. I'm even leaving behind some of the bird photos that have hung on the walls of my various offices for 26 years. I have duplicates at home, so maybe my birds can brighten up someone else's office.

One last big office task: the moldy chair holds a pile of moldy books that I will need to photograph and catalog so I can submit a request for replacements. Maybe a dozen books, which doesn't include the moldy paperbacks I've already thrown in the trash. These are hardbacks, some of them quite expensive, a couple of them out of print. I don't even like to look at that moldy tower of tomes, but I'll have to get my hands dirty if I want replacements. 

I'm much rather tackle the tower of magazines piled up next to the sofa at home. Here's last month's Atlantic! Time to get caught up on everything I've been missing.

 

I mean, who has room for all this stuff?

The giveaway pile. All of it.

 

Basking in the moment before getting back to the trenches

I'll admit it: I enjoyed the standing ovation. It doesn't happen often in the life of an academic, and the huge respect I bear for the people out there doing the applauding made it even more special. But it was just one high point in a day full of joyful moments.

Like when my department chair said such nice things about me during his introduction that he nearly made me cry, which was a problem because for a half hour before my talk I'd been up in my office practicing the last section over and over again, trying to find a way to get through some lines from Li-Young Lee's "Persimmons" without crying. If I'd dissolved into a sloppy puddle of tears from the very start, I would never have made it to the end.  

Or when I asked the audience questions about the opening paragraph from Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," which I'd projected on the screen, and they played along, coming up with charming and intelligent responses even though most of them had never read the story.  

Or afterward, when a former student told me I think of you literally every time I teach--and meant it.

Or when some dude who graduated 45 years ago came up after my talk and told me You've got it, and I knew what it meant.

Or much later, after I arrived home exhausted and started rooting through gift bags and discovered two of Percival Everett's books signed by the author. Yes: a wonderful colleague had taken a bunch of our students to Ohio University last week to hear a talk by Percival Everett--a talk I couldn't attend because I was recovering from surgery--and had made sure to get the author to sign two books for me. By that point I didn't bother trying not to cry. It was inevitable.

Or much much later, when a colleague from upstairs sent me a sketch he'd made of me speaking with the words from a Robinson Jeffers poem in the background: Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained hearts found / The honey of peace in old poems. No livestream, no video, no official photos, but I welcome my colleague's sketch, especially since I'd been talking about our shared passion for leaving a mark on the world.

I think I did. If the crowd that showed up to hear my Best Lecture yesterday can be believed, I may have spent the past 26 years doing something worth celebrating. And now I'm getting ready to do something completely different--but first I have to get through the rest of the semester, powered by that round of applause.

Afternoons with Chester and Beverlry

Meet Chester. 

Chester is a chest. Kind of puny and unisex and hollow as a chocolate bunny.

Chester's primary quality is the ability to take all kinds of manhandling without squirming. He's not ticklish, and if you happen to sneeze straight into the void where his face ought to be, he doesn't flinch. 

This makes him a great test subject for people learning how to replace the dressing on a central line. If, for instance, you were planning to serve as the primary caregiver for a flesh-and-blood human being with no functioning immune system, you would want to practice your dressing-changing skills on someone impervious to damage. Like Chester!

Now that my husband and I both know how to change the dressing on a central line, our next lesson will be learning to flush the line daily, all in preparation for the next stage of craziness we will encounter when he finally gets released from the hospital. Our son, that is--not Chester. Chester seems perfectly happy where he is.

Also in Columbus today a receipt at a fast-food joint provided a novel spelling for my name: Beverlry. Sounds like a portmanteau of Beverly's Revelry.

We'll enjoy some Beverlry when I present Bev's Best Lecture at my retirement event tomorrow afternoon. It's Homecoming weekend so who knows who might show up? I've been waking up at 3 a.m. running through lines from my talk, which has not increased my confidence level one bit. Will I get nervous? Maybe so, but I now have a sure-fire solution: I'll just picture an audience full of Chesters. Chester can't applaud, but neither can he complain. If the Best Lecture bombs, Chester will silently sit on his hands. Except he hasn't got any hands. 

Maybe I need to forget about Chester and get some sleep, including, ideally, sleeping right through that highly active 3 a.m. hour. Pretty soon tomorrow will be here and then--let the Beverlry begin!

A lag in the system? What system?

We seem to have a lag in the system, said the librarian, and I said Me too. 

We'd been standing by the copier talking about my difficulty completing a print job. I'd sent about 30 pages to the printer earlier but only the first page printed; I sent it again, scanned in my ID, and watched the printer spit out two pages and then quit. So I complained to the nearest reference librarian, who probably didn't earn a Masters in Library Science just so he could wrangle recalcitrant printers, but his desk is right there and who else was going to help me? He launched into a long explanation of recent problems with the printers and while he was talking the printer spat out three more pages of my print job, paused, printed two more pages, paused, and went on that way until the entire job was done.

And this pretty much describes how I've been living my life lately: a bit of activity, a little rest; a little more activity, another rest. My usual frantic multitasking is impossible, so I'm focusing on putting one foot in front of another and sometimes simply standing still until I feel like moving again.

Lag in the system indeed. What system? Whoever is responsible for fair distribution of pain and suffering seems to have spilled a decade's worth on my family's heads in the past few months, so even when I'm physically present on campus, I'm mentally in Columbus with my son, who's struggling through the aftereffects of the bone marrow transplant. I ought to be spending my final semester teaching things I love and raking in the congratulations before retirement, but instead I'm struggling to pack up books in a moldy office and wondering if I'll have the strength to stand up long enough to give a talk to alumni and friends this Friday.

On the one hand, having specific goals helps keep me going, so I relish the chance to focus on introducing my students to James Baldwin or Annie Dillard. On the other hand, my brain's not functioning well enough to come up with the rest of the sentence. 

Step. Pause. Step again. Pause again. 

Step. Pause. Step.

Pause.  

Please join me in a weak and wimpy hurrah

Monday again, one week after surgery, and I'm back to the real world: get up at a civilized hour, eat breakfast, shower, wrestle into that horrible post-surgical bra that makes professional teaching clothes bunch up awkwardly, drive to town, prep, teach, grade, prep, teach, force myself to walk over to the library even though I'm so exhausted I'd really like to lie down and sleep on the cold hard floor, post grades, post attendance, send three print jobs downstairs, walk to the printer to discover one print job done and the other two missing, send them again, cross one item after another off my to-do list when I would really really really like to lie down on that comfy sofa and not get up again for a week, but then suddenly in the middle of all that effort to pretend that everything is normal and I feel fine and there's absolutely nothing wrong I get a text that tells me the pathology report has been posted to my online chart, so of course I go to my chart right away and open the report and even though I'm not a doctor and can't decode all the medical terminology I note the word negative in all the right places--no cancer in the margins of the tumor, no cancer in the lymph nodes--and I don't have the energy to jump up and down for joy but maybe I can write a single sentence, just one, and then drive home and celebrate with a nice cozy nap, if only I can stay awake long enough to drive myself home. 

Friday poetry challenge: Counting on you

In the early-morning quiet of the sleeping household, my grandson sat on the sofa working on a Sudoku puzzle while I granted myself a silent round of applause. I may be incapable of accomplishing much in my current weakened state, but by golly I can teach a ten-year-old to solve Sudoku.

They arrived yesterday, my son-in-law and the two youngest grandkids, to pay a visit and work on some projects, and they jumped right in to help make the house habitable. My son-in-law hit the ground vacuuming and then addressed a plumbing problem, and later today he'll assist with a little wiring project. The kids helped Grampa gather eggs from the hens, set the table, and chop okra for Limping Susan. Most of all, they provided a needed break in a mostly blah week. 

I feel okay, but little tasks wear me out--taking a shower this morning felt like a major endeavor. Yesterday I took my car to the dealership for scheduled maintenance just to get out of the house, assuming that loafing in the waiting room would require no more effort than loafing at home, but a television blaring Weather Panic interspersed with Screaming Political Rhetoric felt like a ball-peen hammer pounding against my head. All right, I get it, there's a storm coming, but can we all take a chill pill?

My son got through the bone marrow transplant without any immediate side effects other than drowsiness, which didn't deter him from watching the Cleveland Guardians win last night's Division Series game and force a fifth game tomorrow. Our Guardians seem to be pulling together all their strength just when it's most needed.

Which is exactly what I need to do. On Monday I'll be heading back to campus to teach and lead meetings and move toward my big retirement event next Friday, so it's time to pull up my socks and get serious about class preps, agendas, and PowerPoint slides. First, though, I've got grandkids in the house. Time to pull out the crayons and do some therapeutic coloring. 

A Sudoku-inspired poem:

To tell you why I'm feeling fine,
I'll write the reasons one to nine:
One, fresh pawpaw ice cream--sweet!
Two, my grandkids like to eat
fresh pawpaws and fresh okra too.
Three days until I'm finally through
recuperating. Four small hands

to gather eggs and help the Grands.

Five hours til my pain pills are gone. 

Six days until I see my son.

Seven crayons, colors bright.

Final exams in eight weeks--right!

Nine's the limit we can use

to fill the grid with numbers. Choose

the digits well and win the prize:

a chance to solve another. (Sigh!)

Anyone want to throw some numbers back at me? Put them in the comments.

Grampa's little helpers

Who knew I needed a mantis model?

Tucked away within the bounty of the giant gift basket my colleagues gave me last week was a kit for constructing a praying mantis, which I put together yesterday morning just to amuse myself. My fat fingers struggled to fit together the tiny wooden bits, and the instructions didn't help much. The print was so tiny that I had to take a pic with my phone and blow them up, and then they said things like "please avoid sharp, do not eat" and "fireproof, waterproof, moisture-proof, sunscreen."

But the result is an adorable little praying mantis, more fragile and less fierce than the mantis I admired not long ago in this post. Back in August I set myself up as the protector of the praying mantis, but now I'm relying on this mantis model to protect me from boredom and cheer me on in my recovery. Maybe I ought to give her a name. Suggestions?

Am I blue?

Psychologically speaking, the answer is yes, sometimes I get a little blue, and why shouldn't I? I'm recovering from surgery after a scary diagnosis, and I'm restricted to home during my fall break while the leaves are turning beautiful colors, my adorable grandkids are constantly growing taller and more delightful many miles away, and my son is undergoing unpleasant treatments in Columbus. He won't be entirely alone--my husband will be with him on Thursday for the bone marrow transplant--but I get blue when I think of my helplessness in the face of his huge challenges. But undergoing the stress of travel is inadvisable so soon after my surgery, so I stay home.

And I get blue when I think about my classes. I am completely confident that my wonderful colleagues will do a fantastic job teaching my classes for the rest of the week, but I won't be there to see how my Nature students react to Sylvia, the woodsy girl in Sara Orne Jewett's "The White Heron," and I won't get to observe my African American Lit students struggling to figure out whether they're allowed to laugh at the Battle Royal scene from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. And Gwendolyn Brooks! I know my students will enjoy discussing Gwendolyn Brooks with a bona fide published poet, but I want to hear their responses to "the mother" and "kitchenette building" and, especially, "The Lovers of the Poor":

Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is--something less than derelict or dull.

I love to see the lovely ladies of the Ladies Betterment League leaving the tenement at the end of the long poem, 

Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the leaden air.

Fun fact: when I googled to find this text, the AI preview referred to "The Lovers of the Poor" as free verse. Really? Look again, AI. You can do better. 

But I won't be able to share any fun facts with my students this week, which makes me a little blue. Metaphorically.

But am I also literally blue? Yes I am. I didn't realize how blue I was until I was washing up the other day and noticed that the blue dye that helped the surgeon to locate the lymph nodes for biopsy had not only turned my urine blue but had spread its effects all over my body. Blue arms, blue legs, blue hips and thighs and ankles, blue belly, blue back, blue blue blue. I look like a space alien or mythical monster or a sideshow freak, the Blue Hag of Borneo. I'm not allowed to shower or use deodorant for a few days and I have to wear a post-surgical bra 24 hours a day, which is less sexy than you might imagine. The post-surgery instructions tell me I'm allowed to resume sexual activities as soon as I'm comfortable, but as a scarred stinky blue woman trussed up in a surgical bra, I wonder: Did the Blue Hag of Borneo ever manage to reproduce? And how would anyone know since I just made her up?

So yes, I am a little blue, metaphorically, sometimes, and a little blue, literally, all the time. But this too shall pass. And meanwhile, look at all the free time I have for writing blog posts! That's bound to help with one kind of blues if not the other.

Greetings from the Altered States of Euphoria

The lumpectomy went well yesterday, thanks for asking, and now I have to wait a week and a half for the pathology report, which will determine "next steps," as the medical folks like to say because it sounds less threatening than the possibility of radiation and chemotherapy. My surgeon thinks it unlikely that I'll need further treatment, but it all depends on what shows up in the lymph node biopsy.

We'd driven up to Columbus Sunday afternoon so we could spend some time with my son before he entered the grueling regimen of whole-body radiation that will destroy his bone marrow this week, and we spent the night at a hotel where we'd stayed before, close enough to the fairgrounds that we could smell the horse barns while hearing trucks whizzing past on the interstate. The room was a bit tricksy: getting the door to shut and lock properly was a challenge, and someone had rigged the TV to come blaring on right in the middle of SpongeBob. But I slept well, avoided eating or drinking after midnight, and arrived at the hospital ready to get chopped.

Which was fine. I mean, I was sedated the whole time, so what do I know? I'm in no pain at all today, thanks to lots of Tylenol and Ibuprofen. They prescribed some Tramadol just in case, but so far it's been unnecessary. After previous surgeries I often tried to do too much too soon and suffered the consequences, so today I'm loafing around in my jammies and leaving more comments on blogs than I generally have time for. 

There were, however, side effects, some of which were a complete surprise. For instance, thanks to all those pain-killers, my knee doesn't hurt! And my daughter beat me at Spelling Bee! We have a friendly rivalry over several of the New York Times daily games, where we're pretty evenly matched. She's more likely to beat me at Connections and Wordle, but I almost always come out ahead on the Spelling Bee. Until yesterday, when my brain was apparently in a different place.

What shall we call that place? La-la Land, Spaced-Out Sector, The Altered States of Euphoria? I paid a lengthy and unpleasant visit to Nausea Nation, which is not uncommon after anesthesia--in fact, I'd warned everyone who would listen, including the anesthesiologist, that I often get vertigo and I'd once suffered a severe bout of vertigo after being sedated with Propofol. He gave me a little lecture (between sneezes that he blamed on asthma) about how Propofol is really the best option in this situation, and he promised to give me something to counteract the vertigo, a little Scopalomine patch on my neck.

It didn't help. In fact, the patch was so unhelpful that the recovery nurse tore it off when my vertigo kept me tied to the bed holding my head completely still to try to make the room stop spinning. They gave me a barf bag and I had some dry heaves but nothing came up, which is not surprising since by that point I hadn't eaten for more than twelve hours.

In fact all I ended up ingesting the whole day were a few dry crackers, two little bags of pretzels, and a can of ginger ale. They sent another can of ginger ale with me to get me through the drive home. We'd hoped to leave by 5 p.m. so we could listen to the Cleveland Guardians game on the radio, but I spent so much time in the Extended Recovery Unit that we watched most of the game on television. Well, I saw bits and pieces as I swung in and out of a drug-induced doze. It was close to 10 before we finally made it home, which I wish the Guardians had managed to do a few more times.

But I'm back and I feel pretty okayish, considering. Among the things I'm not allowed to do today are showering, vacuuming, lifting a laundry basket, or mowing, to which I can only say Hurrah. The discharge instructions warn me not to make any important life decisions or sign any contracts for some time after anesthesia, which is a good thing because if a hit-man had been hanging around the recovery room while I was fighting vertigo and nausea, I definitely would have put out a contract on myself just to make the room stop spinning. 

My only goal for today is to write a blog post, which I can now cross off my list. Next I'm planning to dig into the massive care package my wonderful colleagues gave me, dig out some chocolates and Sudoku puzzles, and wrap myself up in the warmth of the love I've been feeling from all my friends and readers. I appreciate every one of you, even if I'm sometimes too spaced out to say so.

Care package with everything I need, including chocolates, Goldfish crackers, and Jane Austen.

Here I am in recovery, rocking that hospital gown while the Guardians lose their game.

Friday poetry challenge: Passing the test

The whisper of pages being turned and papers shuffled, the gentle scratch of pencil on blue book--as my students write their midterm essays, the room is so hushed that the clickety clack of the computer keyboard up front sounds like a series of gunshots. So I turn off the computer and start typing on my phone, a challenge in the best of times, which this isn't.

Typing on the phone slows me down. My fingers are too fat and awkward to fly accurately across that tiny keyboard, and if I don't proofread, I end up with ridiculous spellings. Just a minute ago I typed sliws, and the other day I nearly hit Send on a text message that said I hope it all hoed well. Hoed? Goes!

But today I am even slower and less accurate than usual because I'm a little overslept. Overslept? No! I typed verklempt but autocorrect didn't like my sowlling. Spelling. Whatever.

This morning some wonderful colleagues came into my office carrying a huge gift basket, a care package to get me through my surgery and my son's bone marrow transplant next week. It's full of things I live--er, love. Like chocolates and hand lotion and puzzles and a whole stack of cards that I will enjoy reading when my eyes get a little less teary. It is good to be loved and supported by such terrific people.

But it's hard to write about it on this tiny screen. 

My nature students are writing midterm essays about the costs and benefits of being tested in the wilderness, so I think I will attempt a little test of my own: can I write a Friday poem in the time it takes them to write an essay, using only my phone? Well it's worth a try:

The pencils fly across the page

As students reach that trying stage

When midterm in-class essays test

Their progress through the wilderness

Of education. Meanwhile, I

Attempt to make my fingers fly

On tiny keyboard, mangling words

Until my message is absurd.

To pass the test, my students pay

A price: more study means less play.

I pay a toll in awkward rhymes

Composed in very trying times.

(The benefit, of course, is clear:

I get to post my poem here.)

 

A sonnet! I wasn't expecting that. Did I pass the test?

And how about you? Write a testament to your trials and leave it in the comments.

That's one way to increase cancer awareness

So I'm sitting in the waiting room in an ill-fitting beige robe, surrounded by women wearing identical ill-fitting beige robes, each carrying the same accessory--a clear plastic bag containing bra and shirt--and I'm pulling my beige robe a little tighter where it gapes open in front while trying not to notice the traffic whizzing past just outside the wall of windows, when I receive a campus email announcing an upcoming Breast Cancer Awareness Lunch. I want to send off a snarky reply pointing out that I've recently reached my lifetime quota of breast cancer awareness, that in fact I'm sitting in the freaking Stefanie Spielman Comprehensive Breast Center being comprehensively inundated with breast cancer awareness, but I decide against it. A simple no will suffice.

And so I won't have an excuse to show off my handy-dandy little card announcing that I'm radioactive. I've never before been required to carry a card explaining my radioactive state to anyone whose Geiger counter goes off in my presence, and it would be a shame to possess such a card without ever having the opportunity to use it. I'm especially fond of explaining how the doctor announced that the radioactive seed had been successfully inserted in the tumor in my breast: "Okay, she's hot!"

Come to think of it, if I do happen to set off any Geiger counters, I could forego flashing the explanatory card and just announce, "Don't worry--I'm hot!"

The tiny radioactive seed marks the tumor so that my surgeon can find it easily when she goes to yank it out next Monday. Today I spent the day in Columbus being prepared for surgery: pre-operative education, lab tests, EKG, chest x-ray, radioactive seed placement aided by ultrasound, mammogram to make sure the seed was placed properly, meeting with the radiation oncologist, and I don't remember what else. I was comprehensively cared for by a horde of medical professionals whose names I could not recall if my life depended on it. My life may depend upon their competence, but if it takes me two weeks to learn the names of a classroom full of students, I can't be expected to instantly remember the names of all the medical professionals crowding around the ultrasound room and remarking upon my hotness.

Everyone--nurses, doctors, lab techs, schedulers--keeps saying perfect, an odd word to bandy about while wrangling with the imperfections of ailing bodies. Have I stopped taking ibuprofen? Perfect. No family history of breast cancer? Perfect. Blood pressure lower than last time? Perfect. 

But I can read and I know my blood pressure wasn't perfect. I'd drive through horrible city traffic and was comprehensively stressed out, so my blood pressure was no more perfect than anything else I've experienced since radically increasing my breast cancer awareness, but if the nurse wants to apply the word perfect to the fact that I've successfully managed to don the ill-fitting beige robe, then I guess I'll accept it. 

Today's gold star goes to the phlebotomist who drew four vials of my blood before I even knew she'd stuck the needle in my arm. I generally walk away from lab work with multiple band-aids and bruises on both arms, so getting a good blood vessel in one painless stick is just short of miraculous. 

But four vials is nothing--nothing!--compared to what my son and daughter have been experiencing in a different building at the same hospital. My son will be admitted to The James Friday to begin the long process of preparing for his bone marrow transplant, and my daughter spent seven hours this morning having bone marrow harvested, though I reject the use of the word harvest to refer to my child's blood products. The advance testing process had required her to give up fifteen vials of blood at the same time, and for the past week she's had to inject herself with a drug that increased her body's production of white blood cells--and made her feel tired and achy like someone coming down with the flu. But this morning's seven-hour harvest festival produced a precious gift that will help her brother get healthy.

But first he has to get less healthy. Over the next week or so, his diseased bone marrow will be destroyed to eradicate the cancer and make room for his sister's donation. That's not a pleasant process, and for a while he'll have no functioning immune system. But then that perfect gift of healthy marrow should start making him better over the course of the next couple of months.

So right now our whole family is more aware of cancer than we've ever been, and we're trusting in the comprehensive care of a horde of medical professionals to get us through the coming challenges. If one day we get so far removed from all this pain and anguish that we can allow our comprehensive cancer awareness to lapse--well, that would be just about perfect.  

 

Brother and sister.

 

Debris, decay, deliciousness

After neverending rain and repeated flooding, our lower meadow is finally drying out--which is good news because the new chicken coop is arriving next week and I wouldn't want the truck that hauls it to be mired in the mud.

So we took a walk around this morning, poking around the edges to see what the floods left behind. The garden was flattened, of course, but the okra patch survived the inundation and continues to feed us. We eat fried okra several times a week, and yesterday I arrived home hungry to find that the resident gardener had followed online instructions to fix a massive bubbling pot of gumbo that warmed me right down to my toes.

Fig trees that were under four feet of water have sent forth a tiny crop--two little green figs--while banana trees loom overhead looking lovely but producing no crop at all. (Hardy banana trees can weather our winters, but the growing season is too short to allow them to fruit.) 

Flooding left debris hanging from trees all around the meadow, mostly bits of straw from the neighbors' fields. Some debris is stuck on limbs higher than I can reach and some higher than my husband can reach. I asked him how high the highest deposit was and he said, "Taller than a basketball hoop." Our creek can dunk!

The floods deposited patches and bars of thick silt on garden and meadow, wore away high banks along one part of the creek and left a layer of gravel over another. A rock the size of a bathtub got plopped down right in the middle of the creek, a visitor from Elsewhere.

I crave stability but stand in awe of a landscape in motion, the borders of my world shifting as the water comes and goes. The flooding couldn't stop the fig and okra from growing and it won't stop us from enjoying the beauty in a changing world.

The okra patch stands tall in the flattened garden

Fig

Banana tree looming above the figs

The gardener under his fig and bananas

The pad for the new chicken coop, uphill from the meadow

Chickens came within a few feet of being washed away

Debris in trees all over the place

Tree left behind by flood

Where did that rock come from? Elsewhere...

A chunk of barrel?

Sand bar left behind by Lake Hogue

 

Friday poetry challenge: Color my world

I was mesmerized yesterday by the iridescent pink-and-purple blades of the scissors wielded by the woman cutting my hair, a stylist I'd never seen before, adorned in pink blouse, pink sweater, pink-and-gold hair, and gold lip studs, who moved those satiny pink blades so slowly and smoothly that the motion nearly put me to sleep.

They reminded me of the highway I'd driven on that morning, a pink-and-purple swath of road that looked as satiny as a bridesmaid's dress, the wet road reflecting a sky painted in soft hues of yellow blending into pink and then mauve and then deep purply gray. It was so lovely I wanted to stop and take a photo, but before I could pull over the gray clouds shrouded all the colors and the whole world turned to drizzle.

I'd like to thank whoever was responsible for injecting such beautiful colors into a gray and cloudy day, but instead I'll squeeze my gratitude into a little haiku:

Pink blades snip, pink road 
slips past; light pours color on sky,
blessings on the day.

What colors light up your world this week? 

The same river twice

My final time teaching A River Runs through It and I realize I don't know how to teach this text. The film, sure--focus on how color, composition, and movement emphasize the connection between people and nature, etc. But the book? Students find it boring, all those words, all those long descriptions of geology and fly-fishing and fish. I put students in groups and ask them to identify what would constitute paradise for each main character; I talk about fallenness, how people are a mess who need grace and strength and art; I read passages aloud, about the rhythms of life and Paul's being encircled by a halo in the water and the moving closing lines:

Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

Norman is haunted by waters because the waters tell stories of loss--of innocence, perfection, and loved ones. The loss of his brother looms large throughout the book, which is why it's so shocking that Paul's death takes up no more than a page and a half of text. The question of how to help Paul, though, suffuses the entire novella, alongside the larger question of how anyone can help anyone else, particularly those closest to us. How do we help those who don't want our help? How do we accept help when doing so requires admitting vulnerability? How do serve as our brother's keeper when our brother resists the very idea of being kept by anyone?

Maybe my students are too young to find such questions compelling, but for me, the questions grow richer and more meaningful with each passing year. I have seen loved ones struggle to help those closest to them, and I've seen the pain that results when someone close can't be helped. I've kept my deepest struggles to myself so as not to burden others, but now I want to--need to--help my son as he faces his most demanding trial, and all I can do is offer money and comfort food and encouragement. He is grateful, but it never feels like enough. 

Now others are stepping up to help me and my family: covering my classes after my surgery, offering meals when I'm in recovery, sending gifts to help with my son's medical expenses. It's all more than I could have dreamed of and more than enough but, at the same time, I wish we had no need for anyone's help and could turn it all away.

And so I read A River Runs through It through different eyes this time, knowing the weight of loss like never before and wondering whether I can get through those final pages without collapsing in tears in front of my students. I may just lead them out into the deep waters and encourage them to feel the mist rising, ensconcing all of us in a halo of waters, and then I'll let them find their way back to shore on their own.    

Overwhelmed? Just a bit

Today I had to explain to my upper-level literature students the meaning of bits in the Zora Neale Hurston story "The Gilded Six-Bits." 

I am definitely getting too old for this.

And too tired. I went home exhausted last Friday, worked all day Saturday and part of Sunday, and have been scrambling today just to avoid falling hopelessly behind on this week's work. To actually get ahead, I'd need a whole extra day in the week--and then I'd probably just sleep the day away. 

Part of this frenzy of activity involves preparation for the three days of class I'll miss after my surgery. I've copied texts, written group work prompts and reading quizzes, provided contexts, goals, and discussion questions for the wonderful colleagues who will be covering for me, and tried to anticipate any problem that might arise. All this advanced preparation will pay off when I spend a few days not thinking about classes, but at the moment it's a lot.

Another task bogging me down right now is the need to pack up my office in the moldy building. Every time I'm in there I fill another box or two, but I keep finding new deposits of ick. Today, a full two months after I discovered mold growing on my carpet and a month after the College conducted in-depth cleaning and installed heavy-duty dehumidifiers throughout the building, I found a row of books on the bottom shelf that were wet to the touch, some of them moldy and some warped from moisture. Working in there more than a few minutes makes me cough and sneeze and stuffs up my sinuses, but I'm only about half done with the packing job. I keep thinking of Thoreau's image of his townsfolk who inherited property and spent their lives "well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing a large barn." That office weighs on me but I can't just set down the load and walk away. Someone has to deal with all those books.

So I truly have no time for blogging or walking or photography or fun, but nevertheless I have shamelessly indulged in all these activities in the past week. It's required. Literally: last week's leader at a campus workshop challenged each participant to write down one leisure activity unrelated to our work that we would promise to do before the next meeting, and then he collected the notecards. Will there be a quiz at the end? At any rate I felt obliged to do some leisure activities, which makes it no so much leisure as work, but whatever. The photography walk I'd promised myself was difficult to squeeze in between thunderstorms, but somehow I managed to get it done, though there wasn't a whole lot to photograph aside from pawpaws and standing waves in my creek where no standing waves ought to exist at this time of year.

But I got out of the house and away from my work and looked at pretty things, and now my whole house smells like pawpaws. They're not particularly abundant this year but the ones we've harvested are fat and juicy, a benefit of our unbearably wet, muddy summer. Maybe the only benefit. 

I mentioned the pawpaws to my students and few of them knew what I was talking about, but if I brought in pawpaws and sold them for two bits each, they'd all go hungry. 

Friday poetry challenge: So bad it's good, but not quite good (or bad) enough

Once again I've found buried treasure while cleaning out old files in my office: 

• my very first tenure-track contract, which offers definitive proof of my nonexistent negotiating skills
• a cache of envelopes, both letter size (bedecked with the college logo) and manila mailers, all rendered unusable because the moisture in my office glued the flaps shut
• expense reports and receipts from every conference I ever attended with College funds, back when I regularly attended conferences (and the College had funds) 

But the most unexpected item I located in the current sweep was the 2002 JAM Anthology, a printed collection of prize-winning poetry from the Julia A. Moore Bad Poetry Contest sponsored by the Flint, Michigan, Public Library. Although I doubt that this fact ever appeared on my Vita or in my tenure file, it is nevertheless indisputable that my poem "Shopping for Words on a Snowy Evening" was a finalist in the 2002 Julia A. Moore Bad Poetry Contest.

And the crowd goes wild!

I had entirely forgotten entering a bad poem in the Julia A. Moore Bad Poetry Contest, but I certainly remember a research project that required me to read a lot of bad poetry by the likes of Julia A. Moore ("The Sweet Singer of Michigan") and James Whitcomb Riley (the perpetrator of "The Happy Little Cripple"). Julia A. Moore is perhaps best remembered (?) as the author of "The Great Chicago Fire," a poem of monumental awfulness that ends with a resounding thud. I mean, go and read it. It's really bad.

My poem included in the anthology is, I hope, not quite that awful, which is why it was merely a finalist rather than a prize-winner. I know I could do better today, which would make me even less likely to win a prize, which is good, I guess? Anyway here it is, fresh from the JAM Anthology that has been nestling within the moist and moldy confines of my desk drawer since 2002:

Shopping for Words on a Snowy Evening

Whose words these are I think I know:
He's listed in the footnotes, though
He will not see me stopping here
To copy sentences--and mo'!

My editor might think it queer
To cut and paste words without fear
Out of that text, from which I take
Whole paragraphs, and move them here.

If caught, I'll say, "There's some mistake!
I never really meant to take
Those words! At least, not take for keeps.
Oh please do not my books forsake!"

The words are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have contract terms to keep,
And books to crib before I sleep,
And books to crib before I sleep.

I don't know which is worse: the badness of this poem or the fact that it wasn't bad enough to earn a prize. But what sort of person wants to win a prize in a Bad Poetry Contest anyway? (That would be me.)

So go ahead--try to do better! 

Doing my breast--er, best--to be transparent, but not too transparent

The next question, of course, is what to tell my students--and when.

Seventeen years ago when I was fighting an entirely different type of cancer with a treatment plan requiring radiation every weekday for a month and chemotherapy every three weeks until Thanksgiving, I knew from the start that I would have to tell my students something. My hair started falling out during the first week of the semester so I couldn't pretend everything was fine. Besides, I had to arrange online activities for chemo days, so from the start I enlisted my students' help in making all the logistics work right.

This time is different. No chemo, no hair loss, and not much chance that I'll look visibly ill before the surgery. Afterward I'll have to take a little time off, but how much do my students need to know about why?

The good news is that the lumpectomy itself will be on October 5--in the middle of our four-day fall break. I plan to stay off campus that whole week and I've already found colleagues to cover my Wednesday and Friday classes. The Thursday capstone students were already scheduled to have a research day in preparation for their annotated bibliography assignment, and I trust them to use the time wisely even if no one is in class taking attendance. 

But I have to tell my classes something about why I won't be on campus and why I won't necessarily be responsive to emails, and I need an explanation more compelling than because I'll be taking really great drugs.

I don't remember how much I told my students last time--did they know what kind of cancer or where? Would they even know the meaning of endometrial? I think I kept it vague, but I don't remember. 

This time I'm telling them that I need to have a medical procedure that will keep me off campus and mostly inaccessible for a week but it's nothing to worry about. Is that too vague? I mean, I don't want students thinking about my breasts, and I certainly don't want them thinking about the fact that one of the pre-op procedures involves inserting a tiny radioactive seed into my breast ACK OOF YIPES. I'd rather not think about that myself so I'm certainly not telling anyone else about it. (Except you. You I can trust.)

Most of all I don't want my students thinking about me at all. I want them to think about poetry and fiction and nature and culture and history, but it's impossible to do that when someone is poking a radioactive breast in your face. So I'll shut up about the breast.  

So we've agreed on a plan: be as vague as possible; focus on the course material; reassure them about the positive prognosis. Don't even breathe the word breast. (Breast breast breast breast breast.) 

Attack of the killer anomalies

I'm sitting in my classroom watching my students take their first exam when I realize that I have once again become a nonperson. My previous laptop used to periodically decide that I was not authorized to access campus resources, especially wifi and printers, but that laptop is dead and gone. This morning I'm using the computer in my regular classroom, which won't let me log in to campus email or Canvas or any other resource requiring a College password. "You are locked out," says the error message. No indication of why or what to do about it.

Can't record attendance. Can't read or respond to email. Can't access course materials. Can't check my employee records to see if that stipend has come through yet. Can't do anything I need to do during class except text a message to the IT helpline.

I emphasize that it's not an emergency but nevertheless the IT guy shows up at the door while my students are taking their exam. After a whispered conversation, he promises to come back after class, but when he does, all he can do is inform me that only one person in the IT department is authorized to unblock me and he's out sick today.

So naturally I panic. 

I've been doing that a lot lately. Because of the anomalously disastrous year we've been enduring, panic hovers so close to the surface that it takes very little to urge it out of hiding. After all our floods and storms and falling trees, I hyperventilate every time a dark cloud rolls overhead, and a night-time storm keeps me awake long after my rational mind assures me that there's no danger in falling asleep. 

So naturally when I get locked out of all campus resources, my mind assumes the unthinkable: I'm getting fired. Maybe the Powers That Be found out that I taught in jeans last Friday while a prospective students was visiting my classroom. (Nice black jeans! On Friday, when half of my colleagues teach in college T-shirts and jeans!) Maybe they finally got fed up with my grousing and decided to show me the door but then forgot to inform HR. Maybe campus police were instructed to escort me off campus but got confused by my dual roles and showed up at the wrong office. It could happen!

But of course it doesn't. It's all just a computer anomaly, the aftermath of a power outage that hit campus for a few hours last night. Why it decided to banish no one but me from the island remains a mystery, but by 1 p.m. I'm no longer locked out of campus systems and I am fully authorized to attend to my usual duties.

All that panic over nothing! Next time, someone should take me to a dark room and make me breathe deeply and listen to whale songs until the urge to panic passes, except I would probably panic over the possibility of whales invading my office and thrashing my books to smithereens. 

But no time to think about that now. I've got exams to grade and attendance to record and stipends to hunt down and I'd better get it all done before the next anomaly wrecks my day.