Overture: Why Me?
I am almost ten years older than my husband, so every milestone birthday he has had since we’ve been together (his 25th, 30th, and 35th) I have witnessed through my ‘been there done it, kid, you’re gonna love it’ eyes, the know-it-all elder’s wink wink nudge nudge of fun, if you will.
Then this one hits: Joey’s birthday, 2009.
Theme: ME ME ME ME
Joe turns 40 in two days. My 40th was a ceremonious, well-planned, spare-no-expense burst of fireworks, a fandango dedicated to ME. He took me, the woman coming into wisdom years, the sassy years, on a Caribbean cruise.
In stark contrast, our celebration of Joey’s 40th is turning out to be a quiet, starless land-locked event with which I am presenting a brief tour guide’s gaze through a skewed, old, limited viewing lens.
Here are the four reasons why:
One: His 40th is occurring just when I am starting down a new path, a deliberate change from teaching to once again being a student. I took this new direction three weeks ago, leaving students behind and picking up textbooks, and the newness of my choice is shaking me. I miss my students enough to know I am mourning. Woops.
Two: Thanks largely to a colleague who recently commented in an email that it takes a lot of ***** to be making such a change AT MY AGE, Joe’s 40th is reminding me of my 50th, just around the bend. I can’t help it. If 40 for him feels heavy for me, 50 for me could feel like a sentence, and I don’t mean a grammatical one.
Three: Because I’m trying to be a good member of a book club I joined, which I still infrequently frequent, Joe’s 40th is occurring just when I am dedicatedly but flinchingly reading and learning much more than perhaps I wanted to about a horrendous topic, the Nazis during World War II. I finished The Zookeeper’s Wife this morning and this afternoon am still languishing over the human condition. As I write, I feel I am carrying the world on my shoulders, which given all else is bad timing and way too much weight.
Four: Unable to afford these days (thanks, horrible economy!) a splashy 40th celebration like I had, we are celebrating Joe’s 40th with modest mini-adventures: going out to dinner, taking a quick get-away with our dog to a quiet spot on the lake, attending weekend film matinees, and having a party with friends at Joe’s favorite pub. But that’s all external. In a better mindset, I would rise to the occasion and invoke my normally happy demeanor that, as we know, is the real force behind celebrating with loved ones anyway. But no luck there. Externally and internally, I’m the birthday buzzkill.
In conclusion, I am taking my husband’s 40th personally. I am picking up his milestone and running with it.
Finale: MEEEEEE!!!!
I sit and write all this on a quiet afternoon immersed in woefulness and the song of lament I’ve created from it.
I know there will be brighter days, but this day isn’t one of them.
I gear up to edit, look at the notes of my ‘song’ I’ve put down so far. It’s pretty gloomy. It’s pretty weird. But I’m committed to not retract.
I need an ending to my milestone birthday dirge. But what? What note should I end with? A bang? A whimper? A simple fade-out? Fanfare?
Then, as though providence is looking out to help me, the way an owl can appear in the dream of one searching for guidance, HE comes through the door. The birthday boy two days from now who always takes everything in stride. Joey.
He has been away, at the Home Depot, shopping for things we need. Nothing fancy. Sealant for the balcony, a broom, new keys.
He comes through the back door—I cannot yet see him--and the first thing I hear after the close of the door and a shuffle of a few bags is his booming tenor voice: “Lordy Lordy Look Who’s 40!!” He is rhyming at the top of his happy lungs.
Then there’s a pause.
He finishes, with great gusto, like the end of some jacked up Gilbert and Sullivan aria, “Oh, I guess that would be MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.”
My heart swells, and I smile, and then I laugh from his impeccable, ironic timing. He walks into the living room and finds me absorbed in my laptop. I put it down after swiftly writing, as finale to my song, these words, that effectively make it his:
“This is why I love my husband. Levity, light, and love. All the rest is crap.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Incredible. You’re so un-vain. This song IS about you.”
Monday, September 28, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Green Hair, Spin Art, and Time
My college logic professor had green hair. This man--who said he swam in the mornings to clear his head (thus, the green: chlorine) and who stood under bright florescent lights in a large hall lecturing to a hundred undergrads for fifteen weeks about language, symbols, and reasoning--was, as far as I can trace back, one of the reasons I am here today, freewheeling in the blogosphere.
From those long, dry logic lectures on (I was so unlucky) Friday afternoons, I can proudly say that I nailed just enough knowledge of logic to keep my professors and my more practical-minded college friends (I had a few) from rolling their eyes at me during conversations, for all in all I was not prone toward logic. I appreciated Star Trek’s Spock. I just did not ‘get’ him, though his observation-heavy one-liners were zingers, as poignant as his ears were pointed.
I will not mince my words. Logic did not bore me. But I wanted to spend my time existing outside logic’s lines then.
So I did. And, from what I recall, I did pretty well. Venn Diagrams were one thing. My twenty-year-old spin-art brain was another.
With the help of my creative writing class notebook that semester and a gift for stealth (dear reader, read 'she hid said notebook inside her logic textbook'), I attended my logic classes regularly, to be sure, but I used the time as my own, if you will, to be really sure. Fait accompli: I became a faux student. And, I see now, a faux writer.
That semester, using my professor’s green-tinted man-shag image and professorial wide-tie coolness as inspiration, I sketched out a cast of characters for a novel I swore I’d write, about a corps of green-haired aliens planted on Earth as professors at Midwest colleges, programmed to take over the world in no small measure, including all overly-chlorinated college swimming pools, causing much mayhem, as you can well imagine, until a certain superhero--no need to name names, but he looked like George Stephanopoulos--stepped in.
Certainly, that was the beginning of my academic downfall though it did fully express my feelings then about the role of higher education generally. That a master plot for world domination could begin and end at the university level still gives me pause for thought. And goosebumps. Despite my poor studentship, I got through school, and I did a little writing. Then, after school, I did not much of either.
But now, thanks to the gift of many years passing, I feel the pulse of cosmos and my purpose within it shifting.
Rather than roiling its dayglo spin art ‘whatevs’ at me, my mind is chanting these days a little grown-up gray-tone mantra: “It’s time. It’s time. It’s time.” But time for what? The taking of toast and tea? No. The writing of an alien professor novel? No (I lost interest in green hair). A how-to book on how to write? Puhlleaze.
It’s time, simply, to write and--as they say in some assertive land I should probably visit some day—‘put it out there.’ No more hiding my notebook. What could be more logical than that, Mr. Green Hair Logic Professor Man?
May this blog represent what I should have been doing all along when I was in school: my homework.
Here, in my virtual notebook, we'll look at many things both real and imaginary, remembering that green hair is a reality depending on your perspective and (sigh) unfortunate Friday class schedule.
I hope you visit often and join in, scribble in the ol’ notebook along with me, so to speak. As the ageless, parental proclamation goes, ‘You can’t go out to play until you’ve done your homework.’ So let’s get it done.
From those long, dry logic lectures on (I was so unlucky) Friday afternoons, I can proudly say that I nailed just enough knowledge of logic to keep my professors and my more practical-minded college friends (I had a few) from rolling their eyes at me during conversations, for all in all I was not prone toward logic. I appreciated Star Trek’s Spock. I just did not ‘get’ him, though his observation-heavy one-liners were zingers, as poignant as his ears were pointed.
I will not mince my words. Logic did not bore me. But I wanted to spend my time existing outside logic’s lines then.
So I did. And, from what I recall, I did pretty well. Venn Diagrams were one thing. My twenty-year-old spin-art brain was another.
With the help of my creative writing class notebook that semester and a gift for stealth (dear reader, read 'she hid said notebook inside her logic textbook'), I attended my logic classes regularly, to be sure, but I used the time as my own, if you will, to be really sure. Fait accompli: I became a faux student. And, I see now, a faux writer.
That semester, using my professor’s green-tinted man-shag image and professorial wide-tie coolness as inspiration, I sketched out a cast of characters for a novel I swore I’d write, about a corps of green-haired aliens planted on Earth as professors at Midwest colleges, programmed to take over the world in no small measure, including all overly-chlorinated college swimming pools, causing much mayhem, as you can well imagine, until a certain superhero--no need to name names, but he looked like George Stephanopoulos--stepped in.
Certainly, that was the beginning of my academic downfall though it did fully express my feelings then about the role of higher education generally. That a master plot for world domination could begin and end at the university level still gives me pause for thought. And goosebumps. Despite my poor studentship, I got through school, and I did a little writing. Then, after school, I did not much of either.
But now, thanks to the gift of many years passing, I feel the pulse of cosmos and my purpose within it shifting.
Rather than roiling its dayglo spin art ‘whatevs’ at me, my mind is chanting these days a little grown-up gray-tone mantra: “It’s time. It’s time. It’s time.” But time for what? The taking of toast and tea? No. The writing of an alien professor novel? No (I lost interest in green hair). A how-to book on how to write? Puhlleaze.
It’s time, simply, to write and--as they say in some assertive land I should probably visit some day—‘put it out there.’ No more hiding my notebook. What could be more logical than that, Mr. Green Hair Logic Professor Man?
May this blog represent what I should have been doing all along when I was in school: my homework.
Here, in my virtual notebook, we'll look at many things both real and imaginary, remembering that green hair is a reality depending on your perspective and (sigh) unfortunate Friday class schedule.
I hope you visit often and join in, scribble in the ol’ notebook along with me, so to speak. As the ageless, parental proclamation goes, ‘You can’t go out to play until you’ve done your homework.’ So let’s get it done.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
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