Cool Shiny Man

It was a day that I had Zoe with me, I think it was a Teacher's Planning Day, but definitely it was earlier in the semester.

She had convinced me to take her to the Student Union as some sort of bribe or reward or maybe just because it was lunchtime.

Anyway, it was after she had eaten and we cleaned the table that I saw him, sitting in his chair, eating his lunch.

My eyes went, as usual, to his legs, metal works of art and science where his knees and calves once were.

Then, as usual, I waved and smiled and went straight over to see him.

"Come meet my friend, my student. He's a veteran like your Grandpa Carl," I tell her, and she follows me.

Because he is sitting in his electronic chair and she is standing, they are face to face.

I introduce the two of them, and, I think, she waved hello instead of offering her hand.

After quick small talk, he asks me something about an online quiz for his class.

"Oh, yes, I knew that would be confusing so I sent an announcement about that quiz through Blackboard, earlier. Didn't you get it?"

He shook his head. "My computer is at home."

"What?" I asked, "How can you survive all DAY without a computer?? Don't you just check email on your phone? or your Blackberry?"

And then he gestured, and explained. "One arm. One hand. No thumbs. Makes texting and holding on to the phone kind of hard..."

We laughed at his imitating himself trying to text without dropping the phone, and I said "fine, fine, check your email when you get home. I explained when the quizzes close and what they'll be worth."

After saying goodbye, I took Zoe's hand and we walked back toward my office.

"I like him a lot," she said. "He's a cool shiny man."

Final Death Match

It starts out peacefully enough.

They are taking their Final Exams in the US Foreign Policy class, and I'm at the front with my Mac, shooting them appropriately scowling or supportive looks while grading online essays.

The he sneezed.

A minute later, across the room, she sneezed.

Seconds later, another sneeze from the other side.

Then another, and maybe another but that one could have been a cough.

It's an ambush, I think, hesitating before ducking under my desk.

I remember that I'm in command, at least until I submit their final grades.

"Stop trying to KILL me with your Swine Flu WMD!"

They laugh, then settle back into their chairs, filling page after page with stories for me to read.

Eye Contact

Really, I don't know.

It could be an option, it could happen, but I don't know.

For most of my adult life I have thought about it, but not in specifics, just in vague warm satisfying generalities.

"Yes," I'd say.

"Yes," I'd think.

"Yes, definitely, yes, I'd like to see Cuba. I'd like to see it some day.... " and then the conversation would meander and land where it was headed anyway.

And now, things might be changing.

OK, yes, they are changing, but I'm still standing in the same place, my arms crossed, mercilessly biting the inside of my lip, not exactly sure what to think.

Now that it really might be an option, I'm not sure if I'm ready to visit Cuba.

With my heart? OK, yes, undoubtedly.

In books? definitely.

But to really travel there?

Actual eye contact?

That, I cannot imagine.

Still, people ask me.

Today it came up in casual conversation.

He (a grad student) was excited; he was ready to party in Cuba, speaking only English, of course.

I shook my head, our conversation to brief to bother with a polite white lie like "yes, of course I'd love to go to Cuba... How are your Finals coming?"

No, I spoke the truth.

"I'm not ready. I need a warm up..... Maybe I could start in Santo Domingo.... um, they filmed Havana there, so that's something... and after that, maybe, if I need to, San Juan. And after that, if I STILL had time, I might go to Cienfuegos, or the city of Trinidad. I don't know.....Well, actually, I'm going to see my Abuelo in South Florida, and HE is my Cuba. I mean, if he were in Cuba, I'd go find him there, but he's here -- we're all here - and I'm too thankful to ask for anything beyond how great things are right now. You know? (silence, pause, this always happens when I speak my mind )Anyway, How are your Finals coming? Oh, wait, but the way, I have this GREAT idea for my students to earn a little end of the semester cash...."

Marta

When we said goodbye that last time, I learned not to look for her. I sought not her laugh, nor her touch, and, in the months that have scabbed over in ugly grief, I have spent more time looking in the sky than at pictures of her twinkling brown eyes.

And, I guess, I grew smug that the worst was over, that the healing had sewed it closed.

I waited, honestly and openly, for the next grief, convinced this grief had already flowered, born fruit and sat quietly, soaking up the sun.

Then I heard the lovely bittersweet news, that a baby would be named after her, and something about seeing her name across the screen pulled off that scar.

Did I Hear Right?

As I rounded the corner on the floor where faculty offices line corridors, I both saw and heard it.

They didn't see me, so I stood extra quiet, not really hiding, but also not even reaching for the door handle to slip away.

"Now listen to ME. I don't PAY you to yell and fuss at me," she said to him, fingers pointing, eyes narrowed.

He stood his ground, professioral as usual, in a suit, calm.

I shook my head, then slipped away, thinking that young lady has just asked for life to teach her a grand lesson on humility.

Still, I run.

In the moonless 

gusty darkness

it is unclear - 

are those clouds

menacing?

Still, 

I run.

Blessed are the Pacemakers

The call came while I was trying to find a yoga pose that would knock out the headache that had been growing all day and was spreading down my jaw and into my neck.

The first call I ignored, expecting her to leave a message or text me.

She did neither.

She called back minutes later, but I didn’t answer it because I was pulling my head down in a long stretch, imagining myself diffusing a huge red throbbing knot that was hunkered down like thorny weed right where my neck and shoulder meet.

Again, I didn’t answer.

This time, she left a message, which I played immediately.

“Please call me back, your Abuelo needs a peacemaker.”

Oh no, I thought.

The man gets tired, he’s cranky, and he can be misunderstood.

He needs me to fix something, to help someone understand him.

Of course I will help.

I sit still for a minute, incredibly thankful to be seen as a resource for peace.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” I reminded myself, then fell back into an anti-headache pose, mentally preparing to help whoever needed my help to find common ground, come together, and find stable harmony.

At 8:10, I give up on yoga and pop two Tylenol, figuring I’ll call my mom back when they start to work.

By 9pm the pills haven’t worked; neither has a heating pad or ice, leading me to imagine this headache is retribution from a weed I hacked apart with a machete, or karmic payback from a roach I once poisoned with a can of hairspray.

I call my mom back, speaking softly so the headache won’t wake up and seize me again.

She sounds bright and cheerful, and falls right into a story.

“I took your Abuelo to a new doctor today, and they did an EKG immediately and wanted to schedule surgery, but he won’t do it because he has obligations for Holy Week.”

I mumble my understanding, and then she continues.

“So the surgery will be Monday, unless he gets weak or dizzy before then; if so, he needs to go right in.”

“Wow. Wow,” is all I can say.

Just earlier that day Barb told me her son Sean was having heart surgery in Gainesville on Monday; I say a silent prayer for cardiologists, begging them to not compromise these delicate hearts with shaky hands, hungover from overstuffing themselves on chocolate bunnies or jellybeans.

“Should I come down?” I ask, then wish I hadn’t, wondering to myself why a grown woman would need permission to see her own grandfather.

She doesn’t respond directly, only keeps on with her cheerful tone. “I’m clearing my schedule for Monday; Tuesday he will still be in the hospital – hopefully discharged on Wednesday…”

“Ok, well I’ll be on hold,” I say, and then mentally walk through my schedule.

It would be hell to cancel my Diplomatic History classes next week; I’m just getting to Vietnam, to the Nixon Doctrine. We aren’t even near Ping-Pong Diplomacy, much less the Iranian Hostage Crisis, or end of the Cold War.

Two cancelled classes and I might never make it to 9/11/01, I think, not realizing that I am no longer listening to my mother discuss my Abuelo’s condition.

But he needs me, I think.

He needs me to be a peacemaker, and I should get down there. I exhale, noticing the knot loosening, leaving more of my attention free.

I start to tell my Mom about baby Sean’s surgery, and then think to ask, “What are they going to do to Abuelo’s heart? What is this surgery?”

My mom’s voice stays bright. “A pacemaker. Your Abuelo needs a pacemaker.”

“A pacemaker? I thought he needed me…” I say, voice trailing.

And then Zack screamed for me, and American Idol was ending, so we got off the phone.

“Blessed are the pacemakers,” I thought as my head hit the pillow, my headache ebbing just enough that I could smile again.

This Full Moon

In the silent stillness
of this full moon
my quiet mind
happily ignores
then finally forgets
separation.

Weeds, Duct Tape and Life

On Friday, under a dark haze completely unrelated to flora and fauna, I unleashed a bottle of murder on the weeds that were choking my neglected roses and banana trees.

Saturday morning I survey the damage, or rather, the lack of destruction.

Most of the weeds – especially the thorny, climby, sullen squatters who knew they were unwelcome – looked exactly the same.

Yes, a wildflower or two had turned brown, but that was it.

Not one to admit defeat, I pulled out the rusty machete that lives next to the rosebushes and began hacking and whacking and tugging and massacring, tossing the green and brown carcasses into untagged black bags, still frustrated, still sad, and then even more confused because I do not kill.

Seriously.

Ask my former student Danny, who once spotted a teeeeny ant marching down my plant and onto my desk, mashing it with his thumb, bringing me nearly to tears.

If that isn’t enough, ask Cedric, who smashed an ant with his fist, stopping our advising conversation dead.

“You just killed? Without even thinking about it?” He shook his head, maybe thinking, “she’s right,” maybe thinking “crazzzzzy lady.”

But on this particular Saturday, I am ready to kill, to defend my yard from intruders, to reclaim my garden.

After filling three large black bags, I stop for a diet coke and text a few friends, then pull my murdering gloves back on, grab the machete and return to kill the weeds that haven’t the sense to run or die on their own.

My phone rings. It’s Barb.

I’d texted her to let her know I was free to hang out with her daughter if she and Rob wanted to go to the hospital to visit with Baby Sean.

Yes, I knew they could sometimes bring Marina, but I know (first hand) that two kids is ten times more work than one kid, so maybe they could use some help.

When I answered, I swear I heard her exhale her cigarette smoke before talking.

"Yes," she said, she would take me up on my offer.

Yes, they were going to the hospital.

"OK, OK, we'd love to come play," I said, now chipper because I was needed and valuable.

"Hang on, it gets worse… " she blows out her cigarette smoke again, a then tells me he is back in critical care again, that he’d spiked a fever, his lungs had clouded up again, and he had a new chest tube.

The gravity of her words pull me to sit down next to my pile of weed corpses.

I lean on my machete, stare into space, listening.

Then I shower, pack a bag of snacks for the kids, and head over to her house.

The house – five times larger than mine, easily – is immaculate and welcoming.

The garden is perfect.

Soon enough, Barb emerges from her room, ready to drill me on the instructions.

"No playing in the backyard, it’s off limits, the retaining wall collapsed from this week's rain," she tells me.

I cover my mouth in shock.

"This is all clearly unfair," I say.

She shakes her head. "This is my life."

We move through the kitchen so she can pointing out babysitting essentials like bowls, juice and crafting stuff.

In the middle of our tour, she opens a cabinet near the sink, and there they are.

The bowl of pacifiers.

Newborn pacifiers.

A whole stock of them, ready for Sean who isn't here to use them.

Our eyes land on the pacifiers simultaneously, and just as I’m about to say something, Barb holds her hand up, then looks down.

This is her life, right on the line between grief and hope, right on the border of flexible and hard, this is her life, and it is not the life she asked for, but here it is anyways, hers.

We exhale, silently, close the cabinet door, and move on with the instructions so she can get to the hospital.

Then the attack comes, silent and swift, warrior-like.

For a second, I feel like a weed watching a machete swing down.

A long thick huge piece of wood swung down Barb's her head, missing by millimeters. I duck, instinctively.

"Your house is attacking you!" I point at the offender, a piece of crown molding from the top of the cabinets that had come loose at the joint.

Her shoulders round over, she looks down. "Can you handle this? Could you please fix this today, because this is pretty much…." then she stops and stares.

This could be it, I think.

She’s going to cry.

Ten years of non-stop heartache and loss, ten years of little and big things eating away at her, and finally she’s going to slide down to the floor and have a pity party.

But she doesn’t, because she can’t, because if she does, well, I don’t know what would happen, but it doesn’t happen.

I get an idea.

"Duct tape! That’ll fix it! "I start rummaging through drawers, opening other cabinets (gently!).

Barb shakes her head. "It’s in the garage." She disappears, then returns triumphantly.

I try to launch myself (in a dress) onto her granite countertop but she dismisses my civilian effort.

I tear pieces off while, handing them up to her, watching her piece things together, not happy, not complaining, shaking her head, jaws tensed.

Then she’s gone.

The three kids lead me outside.

We play with chalk, ride in wagons, play hide-and-seek, and then get ready to inside and color.

As I walk around the corner of Barb’s perfectly landscaped house, a singularly stubborn proud weed stands defiantly in her walkway, begging to be pulled or squashed.

Sobered from my killing spree, I step around it.


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