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.