Emergency Room Redux

A nasty dog bite sent me to the emergency room on Memorial Day. The first time I went to an emergency room, I was three years old and had blacked out after I'd tried an experiment involving an electrical outlet and a hairpin. What I remember from that trip was my surprise at seeing grown-up strangers wearing pajamas in the public waiting room. All that intimacy among strangers.They seemed to lack the purpose and drive I was used to seeing in adults. Yet, they weren't relaxing, the way my father did when he'd come home from work. They seemed more like me, a child, waiting to be called by whoever was running the place. I wondered, had they done something wrong too?

By the time my husband died seven years ago, I'd become quite familiar with ERs, each one seeming like a clone of the one I knew best at Sloan Kettering. They were all set up similarly. It didn't matter if we were in Pittsfield or Great Barrington or Manhattan, I knew by then what to expect from the many days and nights we had waited in one or another of those rooms. I'd learned to carry a sweat shirt and socks for the frigid temperatures and to give the strangers who shared the room with us some psychic space and pretend privacy. In such close quarters, I'd learned to focus on the television screen eternally blaring the "news," while ignoring the real news--people hurting and dying, new ones each time.

I'd learned to ask if there were any warm blankets for Al, and to offer to get one myself since the staff was too busy with paperwork and other patients. Since his heart hadn't stopped or his breath, or he wasn't bleeding, the wait could be very long. But I can't say that I learned patience. It was suspension that I practiced. Of thought. Of feeling. . . except hope. I never stopped hoping for one more save, until our last visit on his final weekend.

The overcrowded weekends still puzzle me. I can understand gunshot wounds and injuries from drunken brawls or accidents of children home from school, but why do so many people who are just minding their own business get so sick after 5:00 on Fridays until 8:00 Monday mornings? I realize that the answering services of off-duty doctors send them to ERs, but what I mean is why so many?

It's a child's question. The unanswerable why. I hear it from a distance, even though it comes from within. This place of crisis and angst stuns a part of me that apparently hasn't healed or moved on. The best I can do is isolate it and try to back away.

The mind is funny, isn't it, in its insistence on returning to the past. The trauma of the dog bite must have triggered my earlier memories, which remain so vividly real to me. I can't recall much about my recent visit to the emergency room in Hudson. It was practically a non-event. I do remember that I couldn't stop shaking, although it wasn't overly cold in there. My treatment was some minor cleaning, bandaging, and medication. My wait was short and my stay over quickly. Except for the scabs that are all that remain from the puncture wounds on my leg, no one would be able to tell it happened.

Red Geraniums

Every year, towards the end of May when the possibility of sudden frost has passed, I buy eight red geraniums to plant in my kitchen window boxes. It's a mindless excursion--just what I need to mark the end of a mentally draining school year. I chose my flowers by my senses. Like a hummingbird I let myself be drawn to the red of the moment. Some years it has a hint of orange. Some years blue.

But it's always red. When I moved into my house fifteen years ago, I was seduced by pinks and mauves, but unlike red, those colors don't hold the light. They don't draw my eye the second I turn the last bend of my driveway and glimpse home. They don't glow from a distance or blend into the weathered gray cedar siding. No consensus building here!

I want to be surprised by an opened bud when I l glance through my kitchen window. Bright and crisp, it has made it into this world where every element has to be just right to foster its growth. A cultivated flower in a root-bound setting, but you wouldn't know it to see it in all its stubborn radiance.

Color, life, growth--and all I have to do is add water.

The Place of In-Between

The newly-mowed grass, three days of rain, and a robin's nest in the crook of the birch tree outside my bedroom window all signal to my senses that I've moved into the new season of spring. The semester's over, but my brain hasn't stopped rehashing course work and final grades. At night my sleep in still troubled by self-interrogation. What went well? What needs adjusting for the next time I teach?

It will take some time to realize where I am--the in-between. I don't yet feel right in my spring season. I'm nervously anticipating the coming days when my self-discipline and sloth fight it out head to head. I'm wondering which will win out in summer 2014. And I'm still not free from my tightly-committed semester, when it seemed like every minute required being in two places at once.

Meditation would help, but right now nothing could convince me to sit still, contemplate my breath, and watch my thoughts arise only to let them go. I'm in no state to do that. . .yet. Like a racer who has just passed the finish line, my adrenaline is still pumping, fooling me into believing there are more laps to run.

It's taken me years of practice to even recognize this place of in-between, let alone attempt to dwell in it with some effort towards patience. It's stressful letting go of the known only to move into not knowing how things will turn out. I want to get it over with and move on to something tangible and nameable. Something other than the uncertain, out-of-focus present before my self-directed work begins. Or doesn't--it's up to me.

I tell myself that this state of in-between, as uncomfortable as it is, is where insights arise. I know this from experience. There I am buried under the oblivion of doubt and regrets, when suddenly I see a new, clear perspective that's just right for the present moment. Maybe I even need the distraction of chaotic feeling to let the shift happen. Each time it's a revelation to me that my mind has been active behind the scene, puzzling and creating new paradigms.

Just now for a more pleasant distraction while the gears turn in the background, I'm heading out into this breezy spring morning to the farmer's market to buy red geraniums.

On Turning Sixty-Five

Maybe it was the card I got from the government that got me to start telling my age again. I had taken a five-year hiatus from blurting it out, starting when I turned sixty. Before then I'd had no trouble, even been proud to declare I was forty and fifty and fifty-five. But sixty bested me. I found myself smiling and keeping mum when the opportunity arose for me to reveal my age in any conversation.

Without forethought or intention I went into a closet, where I hid an essential part of myself. What some might call discretion--no big deal--felt to me like a lie. I was no age or any age, but I was not my actual age. I left it to others to guess, assuming (hoping) that they would guess I was younger.

I tried to rationalize that a person's age should have nothing to do with shame or pride. Shouldn't those feelings be a result of our actions? But I realized that those "shoulds" meant that my argument had a weak foundation. I needed to focus on what "is" and not what "should be." Just like any other closeted person, I felt ashamed of myself for being, well, for being myself. In this case that meant being over sixty or just plain old.

You'd think I'd have known better. After all, I understood first-hand the alternative to getting old. In a previous five-year span, I'd lived through the deaths of my husband, mother, and father.  But what had been upper-most in my mind then--that life is precious and too, too brief--got buried under the cultural stereotypes of aging.

Despite such exemplary models of aging as Susan Sarandon, who seems immune to type-casting, and Jane Fonda, who exposes her own conflicts for the edification of us all, I let myself be swayed by the voice of television. I had used tv as an escape from the loneliness of bereavement, perceiving it as "white noise." But its constant and consistent message had gotten to me. Whether as "news," drama, talk, or advertisement, it calls anyone over sixty old, elderly, a senior citizen. It sells potions and creams for fine lines and signs of aging to thirty-year-olds, played by twenty-year-old actors. (Notice it's "signs of aging." They don't use the word "wrinkles" any more. The mere mention of "aging" is enough for us to react in fear and reach for our wallets.)

I bought what it was selling and paid for it with my hard-won knowledge. But I'm reclaiming it now. However I look to others, I'm sixty-five years old. Sometimes I feel just that age, and I like it because I have glimpses into what life is about for me. Sometimes I feel much older than my years with my intimate knowledge of cancer and dementia, care taking and the deaths of those closest to me. Sometimes I feel very young with much still to learn about life's mysteries and my own path.

Whatever it was that snapped me out of my cultural enchantment (that Medicare card?), I'm glad to be awake and struggling to be authentic. I suppose that struggle is a funny thing to be happy about, but it means that I'm alive, evolving, and looking forward to the next challenge.

The Best We Could Do

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

W. H. Auden

Last week my college sponsored a Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust. It took place in the students' cafeteria, and the first part was the reading of the names of the dead. They were children mostly, no older than 17, many much younger. The participants were instructed to read the names slowly and not to worry about mispronunciations. The eastern European names with all those consonants butting up against one another tends to trip up an American tongue.

Each volunteer read from the list for fifteen minutes. I was the last to read, arriving after my morning class. The crowded cafeteria was buzzing with the students' conversations. It took me a minute to locate the speaker at the very back of the room. She was standing behind a podium with the microphone turned down low, so as not to interfere with the studying, texting, and talking of the students.

I sat down at a table besides the podium and strained to listen to her reading of the names and ages of the kids killed in the Holocaust. As I listened I watched the kids in the cafeteria. Most were utterly absorbed in their own business. It was, after all, the week after spring break and close to the end of the semester. The pressure on them was intense. They had projects to finish and finals to take. They had summer jobs to find and, for some, graduation and its afterlife loomed. Their minds were in the future, not the past.

A few students who sat near the podium looked up occasionally from their iPhones to watch the speaker for a quick moment before diving back into their personal screens. I wondered why they had chosen those seats. They may not have had a choice and had to take the only seats left in the cafeteria, the ones that the kids who got there first had avoided.

When my turn came to read, I stepped behind the podium and considered the final few pages. All of the family names began with W. There were groupings of siblings or relatives who had shared the same last name. The speaker before me had read the age of each victim as a number, and I wondered if the kids in the cafeteria understood that these were children who had been executed. I had decided that when my turn came to read, I would say ¨five years old¨ instead of just ¨five¨ or whatever the age for each child, but somehow when I spoke I didn't deviate from the previous format. I was frustrated with myself for locking into a mode that had already failed to wake up this potential audience.

Or maybe some of them were awake and thinking of other genocides that had no acknowledgement or memorial service. Other genocides. Multiple genocides. Their innocent dead. That's enough to put anyone back to sleep or make them want to escape into the tasks at hand.

I stumbled many times as I spoke the names. My speech sounded too quick and monotonous to my ear. Those names should have been sung or chanted. Or echoed. Or cried. But I did none of those things.

In years past the ceremony was held in the school auditorium. It may have been moved because of a conflicting event, but more likely the reason was low attendance or no attendance. I myself have skipped it in the past because I was too busy, too tired, or not in the mood. On this day, in fact, I felt somewhat self-congratulatory for participating. I tried to kick away that feeling to make room for something more comfortable--solemnity or sanctity--but that was too much. I had to make do with just showing up, standing, and speaking to an indifferent crowd.

On this day passive reception had to suffice for us all. I, with my contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings. The students, with their overwhelming projects and fears for the future. All of us consciously or not, absorbed some essence of those children, aged one and four and seven--all the way to seventeen. Their names washed over us. Maybe for a brief time they connected us. It was the best we could do.

A Good Time to Remember

Last week we made a Seder for 28 people at my house. My nephew flew in from LA. David's relatives drove great distances for the day, despite the predictions for rain and snow. I started shopping weeks before, and cooked brisket, kugel, and chopped liver the previous weekend. Our friends brought the chicken soup and matzoh balls, tsimmes, and desserts. On borrowed tables and chairs, our blended family and friends followed the Exodus story in their Maxwell House Haggadahs.

There are more enlightened versions of the Haggadah around these days, but this was the one my parents, aunts, and uncles used, so that's the one I wanted to use. The history of my family, more than of the Israelites, was on my mind even before the Seder began. As I chopped and diced, I played the radio in memory of my mother, who used to sing while she cooked for holiday meals--all four burners going at once. Onions sizzling in a saute pan. Soup simmering. Fruit stewing. Water whistling in the kettle. When I sent David out to the market for one more piece of brisket, just in case, I remembered Mom fretting that there wouldn't be enough.

As I worried about the logistics of seating and serving 28 guests in my less-than-accommodating living room, I thought of her fitting her shopping, cleaning, and cooking into the hours from her full-time bookkeeping job. I don't recall her inviting more than twelve people at a time--the limit of her good china service and dining room table with all of the leaves inserted, but still... Had she ever awakened in the middle of the night with hives, as I did the week before, wondering if she hadn't overreached?  Or if all that brisket would turn out dry? Or how the weather would affect attendance?  The term "event planner" hadn't yet been created, but that was surely what she was, among her many other responsibilities at the office and at home.

And yet, all of her labors were secondary to the main event. Back in the 50s, the men took center stage for the Passover Seder, lecturing and leading the pre-meal service and deciding when everyone could finally eat. It was my father or uncle who called on a child to ask one of the four questions or an adult to read a passage that he chose for them from the Haggadah. I remember wondering, as a young girl, how he knew what should be read and what skipped from all that heavy text. There were some variations depending on the leader. Yet each man led with grave certainty. No one judged his choices, although I wondered at the time--how did he know? Had his authority been sealed in him pre-birth? Or was it the natural outcome of his Hebrew education, which was mandatory for boys only? In either case the men in my family accepted their roles and the women supported them.

David and I recreated this old act, he leading the Seder, I working behind the scenes. I didn't feel any particular impulse to resist these traditional roles for the few days of this holiday, although I would have in years past. I'd have insisted on sharing the spotlight in the spirit of gender equality. But so much has changed since I was a child. Life gave me answers to many of my questions. And then more questions. And understanding beyond both.

I was content to cook my versions of my mother's recipes and set the tables with pieces of her old china and silver interspersed among my own. I was pleased to provide a home for new memories. The ones who are gone lived with us that night. Maybe they always do, but I felt them, worrying, struggling, feeding, and loving us.

Phone Addiction in the Classroom

Now that spring break has begun at my college, I have some space to catch my breath and reflect on the semester. This has been a trying time for us all--students and teachers alike--from flu, bad weather, and compressed schedules due to snow days. It's been more draining than usual.

For me, some of the strain has come from the growing number of students who are glued to their phones. They can't put them down--not to participate in class nor to look where they're going in the hallways. They've more or less vacated the premises.

It seems as if every year the number of phone addicts increases, and this semester has been the worst. They will not be pried from their lifelines. Even my best students sneak a peek from time to time. The slackers don't or can't hide it. They sit in class in plain sight, riveted to the ethereal light glowing from their hands or laps. It seduces and then swallows them, their eyes first, followed by their spirits and minds, until all that remains in the classroom are their vacant shells and empty smiles.

I've tried humoring, lecturing, and scolding them, but they will not be deterred. I know one professor who collects all phones and tablets and keeps them in a basket during her graduate seminar in musicology. Her students may not like her Draconian measures, but they have a crucial stake in pleasing her. There's a good possibility that she'll be writing recommendations for them or referring them for jobs, so they comply.

I don't think confiscation would work with my students, many of whom are taking my literature courses as a requirement for completing their degree programs in art, design, business, or technology. The hard-core among them might revolt. I've considered marking them absent--or half-absent, since their bodies are present. I suppose they should be given some credit for hoisting themselves up from wherever they're parked (bed, floor) and making their way to a seat in my classroom.

I'm thinking of going into my classes after spring break visibly clasping my own phone. I'll stop intermittently during the lesson I'm teaching to gaze rapturously into the screen and lapse into long, deep silences. I imagine ignoring the class while I count in my head to 60 or 100. I don't think I could hold out much longer than that.

I wonder if I could make an impact. If somehow I could create a teaching moment about engagement and disengagement. About role reversal and empathy. I'd like them to ponder how their phone addiction distorts their thought patterns and corrupts their brain cells, but I'd be happy if they managed to glimpse all the lost hours that they will never regain while there is still time for a correction. Carpe diem, the term they learn in my literature lessons, relates to their very own young and fleeting lives.