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.

Monday, May 30, 2011

I Cleaned the Garage

Memorial Day.

I spent it cleaning the garage. I figured that on the scale of things one can do on this holiday designed to honor those who have died in the service of their country, garage-cleaning weighed better than shopping for a pair of black skinny jeans or curling up on the couch reading The Cookbook Collector (great novel by Allegra Goodman, by the way). Cleaning the garage seemed less self-indulgent, more, you know, disciplined, active, results-oriented, military. Particularly when one is cleaning the garage in south Louisiana, where the temperature by 10 am was 90 degrees.

Still, somehow, it did occur to me that sorting through old paint cans and tossing out broken badminton rackets was not quite what our national leaders had in mind when they created this holiday.

Although, actually, it's not all that clear what they did have in mind. For one thing, it's not clear who "they" were. According to some accounts, Memorial Day (originally called Decoration Day) started when Southern ladies began decorating the graves of Confederates soldiers with flowers. We do know for sure for sure that in 1868 General John Logan issued General Order No. 11, a command to decorate the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers buried in Arlington Cemetery, that by 1890 all northern states had recognized Decoration Day as a holiday to honor those who died in the Civil War, and that southern states refused to acknowledge the day until after WWI, when it became a day to honor the dead in all American wars. Now, think about what you have just learned, or perhaps already knew--although if you did know all that, geez louise, what kind of history nerd are you? I'm the ultimate history nerd, a history professor for pete's sake, and I had to Google that info. Anyone who just knows that kind of stuff needs to have sex more often. Really.

So where was I? Right. General Logan, Confederate-loving ladies placing flowers on Johnny Rebs' graves, and the Point of It All. Am I the only one who thinks it a bit strange that the origins of this holiday-- now officially a day to recognize and honor American military personnel, and particularly those who have died in combat to defend the United States-- rests in part or wholly in the South and in efforts to commemorate those who fought to destroy that Union of States that is the United States?

But, history aside, how is one properly to observe Memorial Day? When I was a small child, we'd always pile in the station wagon and head into the city to the cemetery, where we'd stand at my grandfather's grave for a few solemn moments--he was a Dutch immigrant, a garbage man rather than a soldier, but I guess Memorial Day made for a convenient duty visit--before careening out to look for evidence of gypsies in the grave yard: beer cans stacked high, plastic flowers, fried chicken bones.  And then it was off to Uncle Bud's or to the Deckers for good-hearted badminton games and Auntie Theresa's Sloppy Joes and grilled hotdogs and hamburgers and barbecued chicken and pototo salad and cole slaw and potato chips and brownies and popsicles, and the inevitable awful ride home, sticky all over, tired beyond belief, with an upset tummy. I don't recall any mention, ever, of the Fallen, or the Ultimate Sacrifice, or Those who Died so that We Might Live in Freedom.

I got more of that in high school, because I was in Band. Every year the Timothy Band marched in the Elmhurst Memorial Day parade. As I recall, we did a really spiffy, crowd-pleasing, marching version of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and then we'd end up in the central park where we'd  stand, sweltering in our woolen black uniforms, sweat trickling down our backs, feet aching, desperate to be released, while some local dignitary dithered on about Patriotic Duty,  and the smell of grilled chicken wafted through the air and babies screamed and kids shouted.

Still, I guess the point is that we did Something Special. We stepped out of our routines and in so doing, we said, "This Is Important." Maybe we weren't too sure what "this" was. Still, we celebrated it the way humans do--by downing tools, by eating til we were sick, by letting go and laughing lots and grabbing on to what makes life livable.

And today, I cleaned the garage. And I think, maybe, I kind of missed the Point of It All.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Just fine

I spent the last week in Chicago.

This is Not Good. It's akin to a recovering alcoholic taking a wine tour of southern France, or an addict deciding to vacation in an opium den.

I live my life in Baton Rouge and I am fine. I made my peace long ago. It's the Deep South and it's suburban and it's damned hot and it's provincial and parochial and politically primeval. . . but it's fine.

Until I go back to Chicago. And then it's. . . not fine. Because suddenly there I am, once again. Me. The Me who fits, who belongs, who gets it, who can explain it; the Me-in-embryo who stared out of the windows of our family station wagon during our tri-annual visits from the western suburbs into The City and thought, "I'm going to make this mine" And I did.

And then I lost it.

But I'm fine. I've made my peace. I have a great life. Keith and I enjoy satisfying jobs and the support of good friends in a very livable city. I bike to work along a lake filled with egrets and gigantic turtles and squabbling ducks. I while away the hours in an excellent local coffee shop. We live in, and can afford, an amazing house in a charming, tree-lined, historic neighborhood. We enjoy world-class drama, courtesy of LSU. We have a decent public radio station. A good airport. Easy access to New Orleans. A regenerating downtown. An . . . a . . .

Shit.

Chicago, it is not.

I'm fine.

But who wants to be fine? Just fine? I want to laugh so hard that I pee. I want the el. And the Cubs. And the ferocious wind off the lake. Brick bungalows. Plump parkas and deep dish pizza and hotdogs without the blasphemy of ketchup. Hispanic groceries jumbled against Korean take-outs and Serbian Cultural Centers and Polish bakeries. The flat Chicago aaaaccent. The breathtaking beauty of skyscrapers' reflections in the Chicago River. The startling combination of the accelerated metropolitan pace with genuine midwestern friendliness: "Hey, you OK?" And mostly, that adrenalin rush, that sense of yes, that smooth slipping into a place I always wanted and I always knew was mine.

But I'm home now. In Baton Rouge. It's fine. I'm fine. Just fine.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Binary Parenting

Son #1.

Owen came home from college with a suitcase full of unwashed clothes. It’s not that he expected me to do his laundry—my one Absolutely Right Parenting Act was to teach (and require) my boys to wash their own clothes once they entered middle school.

So anyway, Owen came home with a bunch of dirty clothes because he’d run out of money for the washing machines in the dorm. Pleased to have him home, I scoop up a heap of utterly rank jeans and corduroys and say, “I’ll start these in the wash for you.” Owen leaps up. “Noooo! Not those jeans!” I pause.

“They have holes in the crotch,” he explains. “Washing makes the holes bigger. So I never wash them.”

“Owen,” say I. “It's time to buy new pants.”

“Why?” he asks, utterly perplexed.

Son #2.

I find a pile of clothes that Hugh plans to try to sell to Plato's Closet, a teen clothing resale shop. In the pile, right on top, sits a brand new flannel shirt, tags still on, that I'd given him for Christmas--that, in fact, he'd picked out for Christmas. I demand to know what he's thinking.

"Well, it's about to be summer so I'm not going to wear a flannel shirt," he says in one of those "like totally, duh" tones of voice.

"Hugh. We have closets. Save it for next year," I reply.

He stares at me, horrified. "Like I'm going to wear last season's clothes!"

Grading II

Still grading final exams. Universal suffrage seems more and more like a really bad idea.

A student in my "Western Civilization since 1500" class thinks that Germany failed to defeat the Soviet Union in World War II because Hitler insisted on mounting the troops on elephants for the invasion.

Really.

I suppose she sat there, probably hung over, terrified of failing, knowing nothing, and somehow, in some mysterious way, a little glimmer, an inkling, a scrap of a fact, a ghost of a memory drifted down and settled in. Something about a commander whose name started with an 'H' and who suffered a terrible military defeat.

Hannibal. Hitler. Ancient Rome. The Soviet Union. All in the past. A bunch of dead guys. History.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Grading

I'm grading final exams and therefore, inevitably, I am depressed and out of sorts.

And then I hit this line in a student's paper: "If these secularizing trends continued, martyrs would be a dying breed."

I love my job.

Monday, May 2, 2011

The Problem with Bicycling

I've been bicycling to work, a fact of which I am ridiculously proud, considering it's only a 2-mile ride between home and the university. On a bike path. Along a lake. In the flatlands of south Louisiana. Still, temperatures are already in the upper 80s down here, so I do sweat. And thus have the right to feel proud.

I thought that the sweating would be the huge problem with biking to work, but there's still enough of a morning coolness and a light breeze that it's ok. So far, at least, I don't walk around all day smelling like a pile of dirty gym clothes.

But I do walk around with Really Bad Hair. This, I had not anticipated. If I wear the helmet, I look something like a tonsured Gene Wilder. If I decide to risk brain injury for the sake of my vanity and forego the helmet, I show up looking like the mad scientist in the Back to the Future movies. Today it was so bad that I actually stuck my head under the faucet in the ladies' room before I went to class. It didn't help things much. Instead of looking like a crazy old lady, I looked like a wet and crazy old lady. Ah well. It all keeps my students amused or, at least, bemused. The Batty Bicycling Prof. You know, the one with the hair.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Beatrice's Hat

Grace comes showering down in the strangest of ways, at the weirdest of times, in the most unexpected places. This week I've felt so world-weary and woebegone, beaten down and beaten up, tired out and stretched thin. And then along comes Beatrice's hat, and all is made new. How can I not love a world that produces such marvels, how can I not revel in a life that allows such delight? A curtsey to you, Princess Beatrice. You go, girl.