About Me

Woman, reader, writer, wife, mother of two sons, sister, daughter, aunt, friend, state university professor, historian, Midwesterner by birth but marooned in the South, Chicago Cubs fan, Anglophile, devotee of Bruce Springsteen and the 10th Doctor Who, lover of chocolate and marzipan, registered Democrat, practicing Christian (must practice--can't quite get the hang of it)--and menopausal.
Names have been changed to protect the teenagers. As if.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

A Headache Day

A Headache Day.

A day spent on auto-pilot, waiting til the absolutely-must-do stuff is done, so one can go home, take drugs, and vegetate in a darkened, quiet room. A day punctuated by deep breathing sessions and self-massage and failed efforts at self-distraction.

If I were a more spiritual person, I would use these days to deepen my journey toward God. I would use these days to remind myself what life is like apart from God and how every pain-free minute is a moment of grace. I would use these days to develop empathy toward the suffering. At the very least, I would use these days to cultivate a grateful spirit, to be thankful  that I have a job that allows me to go home in the middle of the day and crash.

I aspire to be that person. But I'm not there yet. Instead, I am grumpy and pissed off. I have Plans, goddammit! Things  to do. People to impress. Books to write.Plus, I hate hurting. I really do.

A couple of years ago, I actually took almost an entire semester's sick leave, in an effort to solve the Headache Problem once and for all.  I spent the months on a futile quest to convince my insurance company to pay for my treatment at a headache clinic ("We can only pay for treatment within the network area." But there are no headache clinics here and my doctor says-- "We can only pay for treatment within the network area."), waiting on hold for various lab techs and doctors' secretaries (not, by and large, happy individuals, I discovered), and keeping a headache diary (basically a fulltime occupation, as you have to log everything you eat, every shift in the weather, every activity you undertake, and every little twinge of pain with details RE the locus of the pain, the type of pain, what you were doing when the pain ensued. . . You become completely self-obsessed. You spend all your time watching and documenting yourself. It is Not Good for You. Jesus, I am sure, would never keep a headache diary.) I spent obscene amounts of money on massage therapy, physical therapy, chiropracty, various types of yoga, hormone testing, neurologists' visits, vitamins, and herbal supplements, Gregorian chant cds, and massive quantities of drugs. I alternated ice packs and heating pads. I watched "What Not to Wear" and discovered I was wearing it.  I still had headaches.

So I try something now and then--a round of acupuncture here, a set of stretching exercises there, an occasional consultation with a new doctor--and none of it makes a difference and I muddle through. It's just that days like today seem very muddley, not a lot of through, you know? Except at the end there's this gentle guy who rubs my neck and makes me dinner and lets me go to bed at 8:00 without laughing at me and seems to be ok with muddle. And that helps me through. Which seems enough, for now.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

On the Streets of Baton Rouge

I was bruised and battered
And I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself.

Springsteen fans, and anyone cognizant of important music in the 20th century, will recognize the above as the opening lines of "The Streets of Philadelphia," a beautiful song featured on the soundtrack of the movie Philadelphia with Tom Hanks.

The movie, as I imagine most of the world knows, is about a guy with AIDS, early in the AIDS epidemic (if you haven't seen it, you should; really). So why are those lyrics playing over and over and over in my head this Sunday night, as the weekend draws to a close? I do not have AIDS. No one I know has AIDS. I know that AIDS is an enormous global crisis, one that I should pay more attention to.

And I will. Truly. I promise.

But right now, I can't. I'm too bruised and battered. I can't tell what I feel. I'm unrecognizable to myself.

I'm not on the streets of Philadelphia. I'm just here, at home, in boring ol' Baton Rouge. (Tho' I gotta say, gumbo vs. cheese steak?? Gumbo wins, hands down.)

The thing is, I've just spent the weekend with Hugh. My 16-year-old son. And, all I can think and hear , the only thing that seems to make sense of the chaos in my heart and the churning in my gut and the ache in my skull is that song:
I was bruised and battered
And I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself.

Who do I become when I am with him? Who is this horror? This hectoring, righteous, ill-humored, rigid soul? And who does he become? My beautiful boy, my charming, funny, cheeky, handsome guy? How does he transform into this rude and cruel and self-centered hulk, this mass of IWantIDemandINeed WhatIsWrongWith YouYouAreSoFuckingLame?

When Hugh was 15 months old, I went to London for three weeks to do research. And when I flew home, Keith was there with both boys to meet me in the airport. And Hugh reached out his chubby little arms, smiled, said softly, "My mama," and nestled close.

My Hugh. Baby, where are you?

Grants

I spent most of this week on the utterly soul-destroying task of writing a grant application.

Now, for those of you grant virgins out there, let me just point out that not all grant applications are the same. I, for one, don't find applying for money for my own research to be spiritually annihilating, I suppose because I get to witter on and on about ideas that I care about and it's kind of a kick to try and make some group of unknown folks care about these ideas too.  (Perhaps I ought to note that for all my wittering, I'm amazingly bad at getting said funds. Which is why I am, and will always remain, an associate rather than a full professor. Not that I mind. Really. No, no. It's just my allergies. Something in my eye. A problem with my contacts. Really.)

This week, however, I was applying for "enhancement funds" for one of the undergraduate residential colleges at LSU. Don't get me wrong: I do care about this project, as much or more than I care about my own research. I mean, frankly, I research and write about British Victorian and post-Victorian religious culture. Not exactly gonna change the world, is it? Whereas this residential college, well, it won't change the world, it won't even change LSU, and it sure as hell won't change Louisiana where we just re-elected the horrific Bobby Jindal as governor by an embarrassing landslide. . . .but it might just change the lives of a few LSU undergrads. These residential colleges are a way of somehow sneaking the harmony and elegance and coherent community of a small liberal arts college experience into the cacophony and chaos of a huge state university. I had a wonderful, life-transforming and yes, even mind-altering (without hallucinogenic drugs!) experience at my liberal arts college and I passionately want the same for my hungover, disengaged, football-addicted, parochial, and utterly lovely students. (I mean, take this final sentence from one of my upper-level student's essays: "A new period began during this time, it has come to be known as the Victorian period, named after Queen Victoria, who ruled at the time." How unbelievably, utterly lovely is that?)

So, why then, did I find the experience of writing this grant so personally and emotionally and existentially devastating? Because, dear ones, winning the grant demands that the applicant demonstrate that the project will acrrue calculable economic benefit to the state of Louisiana. And tell me, how does one quantify, how does one calculate, the economic benefit of encouraging well-rounded, globally aware, internationally engaged, intellectually vital, politically active young folks?

I'll tell you. One makes stuff up. Not out of whole cloth, mind you, but one does grab meaningless numbers and one marshalls one's skill at crafting words to make those meaningless integers appear to carry profound weight.

I hate playing this game. A good liberal arts education, which is what I had--thank you Mom and what was then the Social Security dependent's benefit (axed by Reagan but not before I'd used it for all four years) and Calvin College and Northwestern University and an impressive array of underpaid, incredibly committed professors--teaches intellectual honesty. I betrayed that education in an effort to obtain at least some of the benefits of that education for some of my students. Sigh. How perverse is that?

Monday, October 17, 2011

Consequences

Teenaged son is miffed. To put it mildly.

Teenaged son does not  understand why, if the school has already inflicted a punishment (a draconian punishment, he would say, if he knew the word "draconian," that is, which I doubt as it does not surface very often on reality tv--ok, yes, I'm miffed too, to put it mildly, and as a result inclined to be incredibly bitchy and judgmental and downright snarky) for his transgression, we should then feel it necessary to reinforce the punishment at home.

"What's the point," he says. "You're not teaching me anything."

"Consequences, Hugh," I say. "You do stuff. You set things in motion. There are consequences."

"That's stupid," he says. "I've already learned what I need to know. There's no point."

Ah, darlin'. If only it were that simple: You fuck up; you learn; you move on; no consequences.

Sadly, it doesn't work that way. Just ask Shakespeare. Or the captain of the Exxon Valdez. Or the drunk drivers who wake up on Sunday morning to discover corpses in their rearview mirror. Or all those boys, all those girls, who suddenly find themselves facing parenthood. Things happen, my love. Things that last. Things that change everything.Things that matter.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

A simple declarative sentence

"I fucked up."

A fine sentence. The simple declarative. The clear subject. The active verb. So much better than "It got fucked up" or "I was fucked up." And when you're a mom of a teenaged son who has had a wee bit of trouble with that whole personal-responsibility/ choices-have-consequences thing, this simple three-word sentence, articulated by said son, is a thing of transcendent beauty. And unbelievable pain.

When Hugh was little, I used to worry I had some version of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. Munchausen by Proxy, for those of you who do not watch tv medical dramas, is a mental illness. Individuals with Munchhausen's deliberately make their children sick, to the point of injecting them with poisons and such like, so that they can garner attention and sympathy. Now, let me make it clear: I never ever did anything of the kind to Hugh, nor was I ever tempted in any way. I mean, dammit, unlike many of my friends, I didn't even resort to Children's Benedryl to make the kid sleep. But--I did, actually, enjoy it when Hugh was ill (which he rarely was, and never seriously.) Illness ratcheted Hugh down a few notches; when Hugh was sick, he became like other children. Easier. Gentler. More even-keeled. Less hyper. And  yes, more enjoyable.

So, this last week Hugh was home. He'd fucked up. And he knew it. And, wonder of wonders, he admitted it. It scared the shit out of him. And like when he was little and running a fever, he was lovely, with all the teenage aggression and hostility and don't-touch-me and what-do-you-care dammed up, forced into the holding tank by his desperate need for us and our unconditional love.

It was awful. To see him in such pain. To know how much "I-fucked-uppedness" hurts. To want to make it right, to make it go away, and yet to know you can't. This is his business. All you can do is watch. And love. And hope.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Flummoxing Netflix

I suppose it's an indication of the limited, somewhat pitiful life I lead that one of my greatest pleasures is flummoxing the Netflix computer.

Netflix (which is, for those of you living on another planet, the extraordinary dvd-by-mail company that has wiped our strip malls clean of video rental stores) keeps track of what you order and then suggests other movies you might like, the results of a complex algorithm about which I once read a really interesting article but of course can no longer recall any of the details or even any of the significant facts. (Gimme a break. I'm a middle-aged woman in menopause.)

Anyway, humanist that I am, I find the idea that I can be reduced to an algorithm profoundly disturbing. Thus it gives me great delight to know that I regularly give the Netflix computer conniption fits. But "I" in this case isn't actually just me. "I" embraces both my sons, for both of them know my Netflix password, and both of them regularly stream Netflix movies to their computers. (Me, I prefer the old-fashioned, out-of-date dvds that come in the cheery red envelopes.) The result of this password/account sharing is, from the Netflix computer's point-of-view, one really weird customer who enjoys indie movies about suicide, anything Jane Austen, and adolescent comedies about farting, vomiting, and masturbating. You should see what comes up under "Our Recommendations for Facing-50."

Tho' it does dawn on me that we have here the makings of a great reality tv show. A kind of American Idol for filmmakers: Come up with a movie that will please this Weird Person. Must be set in Regency England and contain a brooding but appealing aristocratic hero and a spunky but still gentlewomanly heroine, must also contain a suicide and weird camera angles and lots of awkward silence and an alienating soundtrack, while also being a rousing  and earthy comedy containing frequent references to body exhalations of all sorts. An Oscar awaits.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Queen for a Day

I came home from teaching, threw my bag in the corner, and shouted, "If I were Queen of the World for a Day, I would ban all straightening rods, straightening creams, and straightening blow-outs for all time!"

Keith looked at me, nodded, and immediately left the house.

Pitiful, isn't it? What sort of person chooses hair straightening as the thing that must be eradicated to make the world better? Not hunger? AIDS? Malaria? The Tea Party? Glenn Beck? And really, truly, I'd get rid of all those first, if I were Queen. Absolutely. It's a promise.

But I've had it with straight hair. For years now, I look out at my classes, and all the white women look absolutely identical. Same shoulder-length straight hair, seat after seat after seat. Absolutely utterly the same. It's weird. Creepy. Downright Orwellian. When I first started teaching, lo, these many decades ago, I had trouble tellling the white guys apart. They all wore baseball caps and sat in the back row and threw down their pens whenever I used words like "patriarchy" or "gender" or "femininity". The women, however,  were easy--some had short hair, some long, some in between, in a wide range from downright nappy to board straight. Jennifer stood out from Jessica; Alison could never be mistaken for Emma. Now the women in my classes look like they've all been cloned by some alien mastermind out to take over American universities. There's the occasional rebel with a variety of piercings and tattooss--but even she sports that same damned straight hair. I can't stand it. How am I supposed to tell Taylor from Dakota from Hannah from Jordan from Katelyn from Michelle from Holly? And good lord, what's wrong with a little curl? the occasional spontaneous bounce? even, God forbid, a wee bit of frizz now and then?

Scarlet Letter

I'm an adulteress. I've been unfaithful to my Hair Guy.

He's a great guy, and he's been incredibly good to me. Time and time again he squeezes me in that very day when I, frantic and fed up with the tangle atop my head, call and whine. He constantly tells me how great my hair is and how cute I am. I'm 51. I am no longer cute, but sitting there in that chair, he makes me believe it, for a few minutes at least. And, when he heard that we were having to send Hugh to boarding school, he gave me a free cut. "I know the budget's tight," he said. "Consider it my contribution to Hugh's future." This is the amazing Hair Guy that I have betrayed.

But, well, my hair hasn't been looking so good, you know? Not a lot of excitement. Same ol' same ol'. It seems like Hair Guy no longer understands me. We've grown apart. I just, I just want something more out of my hair. Is that so bad? so wrong? Is that too much to ask?

No, of course not, I told myself, but Hair Guy and I will work it out. We just need to spend more time together, work on our communication skills. We've both invested far too much to end it all now. So I told myself.

Until last week when I went to pick up a cafe' au lait at the coffee shop on Chimes Street just outside of campus--and just down the street from Eutopia Hair Salon.  In a moment of madness, overcome by my passionate hatred of my hair, I veered off the sidewalk, rushed up the steps, threw myself inside, and blurted, "Do you take walk-ins?"

One mid-morning caffeine-deprived loss of self-control. Oh, the self-loathing. The regret. The "if only" and "I wish" and "if I just would've"s.

Except I gotta say, I've got one funky cool haircut. I really like this cut. I may well love this cut.

I've booked my next appointment at Eutopia. So the question is, does a really great funky haircut distract from the scarlet letter on my chest?

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Neighborly

The dog next door is barking. The dog next door is always barking. I have actually contemplated buying a pound of raw ground beef, lacing it with rat poison, and tossing it over the fence. Except I don't throw very well and we'd probably end up with blood dripping down our side of the fence and glops of poisoned meat all over the flower beds. The thing is, I like our neighbors--the human ones. They're good-humored, good-hearted folks, just, you know, with a dog problem. So I grit my teeth and swallow hard, avoid the meat section of the supermarket, and try to focus on being thankful for my own quiet dog. He may be prone these days to bleeding and vomiting, but he's not a barker, bless him.

Plus my hunch is that the folks next door with the incredibly annoying dog often have to grit their teeth, swallow hard, and hold themselves back from sending us a nice neighborly plate of brownies flavored with arsenic. In fact, I fear that everyone on the street, or actually two streets since we occupy a corner lot, is having to do a lot of teeth-gritting and insult-swallowing these days, for we have become Bad Neighbors. More precisely, we have become The People Who Do Not Take Care of Their Yard.

I blame Keith. Now, "Blame Keith" is the default mode in most areas of my life but honestly, the yard has always been his thing. When we married, he had a condo with a small back yard, in which he'd fashioned a series of raised flower beds and vegetable plots. I had spent years as an apartment dweller, with nary a potted plant to my name. So he kept doing the gardening and lawn care, and I didn't. And when we moved to this corner house with its large front yard, side yard, and back yard, Out into the Wild he went, encircling the house with serpentine beds, laying out an enormous herb garden, experimenting with lettuce, planting perennials, grappling with ground cover, trimming, digging, culling, mulching, mincing, dicing, slicing, pruning, cultivating, and whacking away,

And then he changed jobs. And now he's far too busy, far too intellectually and emotionally and physically engaged in his work, to have time or energy or interest in the yard. And here in the semi-tropics, where plants grow several inches overnight and veritable armies of insects wage constant warfare, even a momentary lapse of attention allows nature to thrust in and take back its own. On our beautiful street, a boulevard lined with live oaks and a variety of flowering bushes that guarantee splashes of color all year round and a series of carefully cultivated lawns running in front of wooden porches, our yard stands out--and not in a good way. It's like the students who stumble into my 8:40 class at 8:55, their hair greasy and clumped, traces of last night's pizza still on their unwashed faces.

I get these moments, when I look at at the tangle out there and think, "I could do something about this. I should do something about this." And then I think, "why?" The homeowner gene seems to have passed me by. I realize I'm incredibly fortunate to own a house, but I've never found it in the least bit interesting.

So. The dog next door barks. Our weeds grow. I grit my teeth and my neighbors grit theirs. We meet periodically for drinks and remind ourselves how much we all actually like each other. And someday soon, I hope, we'll move. Maybe the new owners will be enthusiastic gardeners. Deaf enthusiastic gardeners, even. And all manner of things shall be well.