emlocke

On My Epiphanies, Which Are Angel-Free

My British Literature of the Sixties professor, whom Kate and I likened to a weekender sailboat with his accent and merry smile and collarless dress shirts with the sleeves pushed up, gave us two choices for our final exam. We could have the typical self-scheduled short answer and quote identification test, or write a take-home exam where we chose a quote or passage from each of the major works that we had read and write a short analysis about how the selection was important in relation to the course, the author, or the work itself.

The class chose the quotation option unanimously. My choice was based on the fact that I know an opportunity to be a little creative when I see one. I also know that whenever I have to sit in a room and stare at a typed page of questions and names, I panic and spend the exam session listening to what must be a very tiny man playing Chopin in my head, and he’s not very good. Not only does my grade plummet on the spot, but it’s so boring to just sit there and kill time while everyone else writes the test.

Still, the project was a little dangerous for me. Though it wasn’t expressed this way in the assignment, my instinct was to pinpoint the all-encompassing quotes that defined the course, the author, the written work, and the era as a whole. Intellectually, I knew that wasn’t just unnecessary, it was impossible and so not the point. But I still found myself trying to channel de Beauvoir and Brecht as if I was to become the prophet who would retroactively elucidate a decade, even though doing so would, in many ways, break from the axiom of the sixties all together.

But it’s a habit to want to give everything a profound and invariable meaning. I’m always trying to define something, the day, the details, the passing moment. It’s why my writing comes in fits and starts. I’m waiting for that illuminating moment, with the break in the clouds and the rays of brilliant sunlight (no angels though, for some reason), when everything snaps into focus. Sometimes I just want to tell maybe-you-had-to-be-there stories and whine aboutcaffeine withdrawal. Is that all right? Is it okay if I don’t have an epiphany on the essence of me or my life or the world every day?

Before all could be said and done, the Brit Lit final broke me. I had to get it out of the way so I could move on to assignments that required continuous pages of formal and coherent thought, rather than freeform paragraphs, which should have been theraputic to write. I went down the hall to Kate’s room to borrow a book and became teary while she looked for it on her shelf. In a flash, she had her arms around me and was smoothing my hair, saying, “The sailboat wouldn’t want us to be worrying about this! He’d say, ‘don’t worry girls!’ in his British accent!”

I got an A. I made some connections that stretched the limits between critical and creative, but it was enough, and that’s all it had to be. I demonstrated that I was engaged and had an open mind and that I had learned something in the course, and I got an A, on the exam and for the course.

So, for whatever it will be worth in my last semester, I asked the sailboat to be my advisor. I went to his office to have the form signed, and I’m not even making it up, through the window behind him, I could see a break in the snow clouds and the rays of sunlight and he handed the form back to me with a merry smile and said, “Have a nice afternoon, Emily” and maybe you had to be there and maybe you didn’t, but it felt a little like an epiphany.

Friend-date

“Perfect timing,” Lily said, as we clomped toward the bus stop in almost-matching rain boots, and it was. The bus schedule, which I had extricated from inside her tote bag in a marvelously choreographed move, since her arms were full of almost every pair of shoes that she owned, said that the next bus would stop at Smith in four minutes, and we’d get an express trip back to MHC.

It really had been one of those days when everything just worked, clicked, fit together effortlessly. With my coffee just right, and my mascara clump-free, the gentle rain seemed to fall only to give me a good excuse to wear my rubber boots.

It all started with one lucky coincidence: Lily left a bag of shoes in her parentâ€™s car, and they happened to run into Melissa’s parents and passed the shoes off because they were on their way to visit her at Smith that day. Lily asked me to go over with her to pick them up because I knew where the apartment was, and because we hadn’t been to visit Mel since a rugby game early in the fall.

I had been looking forward to spending the day in Northamptonwith Lily all week. Sometimes, as an appointment or event or date, even a friend-date, gets closer, I begin to feel a weight grind down on every part of me, from my shoulders to my eyelids. It’s an imaginary but oppressive pressure. My own uncertainty, my own hesitation, and my own hang-ups combine forces to stir up anxiety that leaves me feeling vulnerable, hopeless and fatigued. I don’t always want to go out there because I don’t want to hit that sudden moment when I urgently crave the security that only my bed can offer. I don’t want to come home second-guessing myself.

Yesterday, something felt different. I stretched out my shoulders and neck and it took a moment to realize that the usual weight was missing. In spite of the weather, the day looked clear and I remembered what lighthearted anticipation felt like.

The thing about Lily and Melissa is that, in one way or another, they have been tied into my life for a long time. Lily and I have only been friends since we’ve been at Mount Holyoke together but, from our first in-person conversation, I’ve felt like we come from the same place, in more ways than one. We’ve lived less than five minutes away from each other for years without ever really even noticing. But it still amazes me how quickly we caught on to each other, the way we get each other’s stories.

Melissa and I, for all of our opposites, have connected since we sat beside each other for a month in the second grade –and then asked the teacher to separate us because, well, we made better friends than neighbors. She sent me a get well card from her cat and her dog when I had the chicken pox and we stuck together during the most critical social moments in middle school: between the bells in a hallway swarm of pre-adolescents. When we ended up at colleges less than thirty minutes away from each other, I couldnâ€™t think of anyone better to have close by, and though we donâ€™t see each other a lot, she has always been there, with an open invitation, an open door or an open bottle, at just the right moment. She can ask, “Em, are you going to be okay if we go to the sex shop?” and it doesn’t sound like an insult. I count on that. Iâ€™ve always counted on her.

It was one of those days when everything came together, and when I got home, I craved my bed. But only because I’m a lazy college student and I’d been soothed into a beatifically content Friday afternoon nap.

Political Avoidance Syndrome

Right before the 2004 Presidential Elections, I got it into my head that I wanted to be a political blogger. I designed a confetti-like red, white and blue background and opened a blog. Sort of. I called it “I Don’t Know Anything About Politics” because I don’t, and I wrote three entries.

I thought it would be interesting to record the thoughts, observations and questions of an environmentally aware, female college democrat voting for the first time. Someone who watched activism swirl all around her but stayed out of it all to avoid a) appearing ignorant b) appearing dumb c) getting in over my head and d) getting too wrapped up in it. Yes, I am one of the shameful Americans who hesitate to get involved. Guess what? Politics is an overwhelming subject. Also, politicians are intimidating. And one more thing: college activists can be downright scary!

After a week or so, as campaign excitement began to heat up on campus, I stopped thinking “This is great, I’ll learn a little something and get to participate, indirectly, in the big election of my college career –call me Wonkette 2.0!” and started thinking, “Wait, I don’t know anything about politics.” Maybe I wasn’t ignorant, but I was certainly naive and easily distracted and seeing classmates who were all fired up made me feel a lot like a fraud. It didn’t seem like such a great idea anymore, hiding my own political illiteracy and bewilderment behind the premise for a blog.

But if I had been ambitious [and brave] enough to stick with the idea, I would be following the Confirmation Hearings for Supreme Court Nominee Samuel Alito.

Let me start by saying, until they were broadcast on MA Public Radio at work, I didn’t even know what a Confirmation Hearing was (even though the last sessions were held for John Roberts in the fall. Case in point: I’m oblivious). I thought, “Look, my country is a democracy and this guy is going to have to prove himself!” How can you go wrong when all those Senators asking the tough questions and getting straight to the dirty facts? (Dirty facts is a political term, right?)

I decided to do some research about the confirmation hearing process, and a couple of things impressed me: everybody had a chance to speak and there are at least two rounds of questioning – opportunities for follow-up discussions – and even a third round if the senators want more time. And from what I was hearing on the radio, it sounded like the Dems were making their case.

But then I remembered a little thing called confirmation bias. Of course it sounded to me like ‘my side’ was ‘winning,’ I was unconsciously tuning in to hear the Democrat Senators speak and minimizing or tuning out completely when a Republican’s turn came. Meanwhile, I knew that I didn’t even have my own strong conviction for or against Judge Alito, so I felt a little pretentious rooting against him by Democrat-Default.

Judge Alito is expected to be confirmed on Tuesday and it doesn’t even look like I’ll get a filibuster out of it. It looks like it’s time to put the politics back on the shelf and start reading shopping blogs again.

We Always Sleep with the Dog In the Bed

One of my favorite things about visiting at home on weekdays, when I have the whole house to myself, is not having the whole house to myself.

I get to share with Maggie.

She likes to squeeze into the cube of space under my desk right where my feet are supposed to go so I have to lean way forward to reach the keyboard. I prop my feet up on her back and scratch with my toes. Sometimes we get in bed and spoon.

A while ago, Maggie stopped climbing stairs inside the house. She’s about eight years old, but she’s very active, her vet confirms that she’s in good health, and she gallops up the deck stairs from the backyard without a second thought (especially if you’re holding a treat at the back door.)

Maggie has been an upstairs-and-downstairs dog for most of her life. After years of ~~very~~ moderately good behavior, stubborn persistence and ignoring the rules, she earned the privilege of sleeping on her own bed on my parent’s bedroom floor.

At night, she turns in with my mom. She sleeps in the nude (you know, collarless) so her tags don’t jingle in the middle of the night. In the morning, my dad goes downstairs and Maggie trots out to get the newspaper with him. When he brings coffee up to my mom, Maggie scrambles up, too, and gets in the bed. She attends while my mom gets ready for work and then she sees her off (and gets a treat on the way out the door) and retires to the people bed for an almost all-day nap until my brother comes home from school and they romp a little.

She mastered the tip-toe, but if I listened closely, I could hear her paws on the hardwood floors and know that she was making the rounds to secure the premises and taking her post. The best sound in the house is Maggie clattering down to greet you when she hears the back door slide open.

So you can see how her sudden refusal to alight stairs was a serious hit to her upstairs-and-downstairs life. She became an and-downstairs dog.

She wasn’t happy about it. She cried at the foot of the stairs at night. She barked if someone seemed to be ‘hanging out’ on the second floor unnecessarily -“can’t you do your ‘hanging out’ down here?” When we encouraged her to come up, she would put one or two front paws on the first step and howl a few times, give us a pointed look that said, “I would if I could, but you know I just can’t do that,” and hunker down like a speed bump against the flat of the first stair, slumped in body and in spirit.

When Maggie’s spirits slumped, mine did, too. Visiting home wasn’t as cozy. I kept thinking I heard her tip-toe and I would listen for the clatter. I hated going to bed knowing that she wasn’t safe and sound, tucked in upstairs with the family. She moped at the foot of the stairs and we were all a little mopey without the click clack of her paws coming up and down the stairs to greet us, morning, noon and night.

We tried coaxing, prodding and tempting. We tried leading her by the collar. We tried ignoring her. My brother even hefted her up the stairs once, her paws rotating like a boat-propeller once she realized what was going on. She snuggled down and he said, “I don’t get it, she loves being up here.” My mom and I even wrote to a pet psychic.

Finally, my dad bought a roll of that grabby foam shelf-liner for dishes in cabinets and my mom lay out a strip on every step. It still takes coaxing, but now she has a little more traction and a little more confidence. She paces back and forth in front of the stairs, testing her paws on the first step a billion times like it’s a ritual before she gathers her courage and goes up.

This morning I woke up with the sun in my eyes, rolled over, smiled, and called for Maggie. I heard her at the bottom of the stairs, but she didn’t come up. I called a few times, I even fake-whistled because sometimes that gets her excited, but I just heard her prancing around to the hesitation blues. I got out of bed and went to look down and try to talk her into it and she was looking at me like, “No seriously, I totally would if I could, but look, I just can’t!”

The puppy-gate was up.

Skincare Regime

“You smell good, are you wearing a different perfume?”

“No, hand lotion tester.” Mom sticks out her hand for me to smell.

“Mmm, nice.”

“Your father will smell the same.” Sticks out his hand for me to smell.

“Was that one of those sample sizes that’s more than a single serving?” Mom nods. Dad realizes that he’s been given the leftovers of a beauty product tester. “That’s funny because when I first smelled it on Mom, I also smelled beer, but I usually associate that with Dad.”

“Why’s that funny?”

“It’s nothing, it’s just the lotion smell, it’s a little feminine.” Dad considers this.Â Mom tries to distract.
“Well, it’s great lotion. I put it on before I went to the store and after shopping and making dinner and everything, my hands are still soft!” Sticks out her hand for me to touch.

“Yeah, it’s really amazing how it stays on. I’ve watched through two football games!”

I Still Have At Least One

I tied a bandana to the end of a stick and ran away from home more times than I can count. Except that usually it was a cloth diaper tied to a yellow yardstick.

My great-grandmother gave a bunch of cloth diapers to my mom when I was born, but my mom wasn’t a cloth diaper kind of first-time parent, so they all became my blankies. Actually, they became my nigh-nights. The beautiful thing about the nigh-nights was that I got to be the kid with eight or ten blankies. I couldn’t tell them apart, so if one was in the laundry (nigh-nights doubled as excellent juice spill and baby drool absorbers), another was clenched in my fist, pressed against my cheek, or wrapped around a stuffed animal. Soft, white, scrappy squares of woven cotton fibers, all frayed around the edges. I used to roll them into sausages of soft folds, clumping the fine fringe at one end and pulling on it while I fell asleep.

Once, I spent the night at my grandmother’s house and forgot to pack a nigh-night. I had enough of them, you’d think it would be hard to forget to bring even just one. Without my comfort object, I cried upstairs in bed while my mom sat at the kitchen table, picking furiously at the hem of a dish towel with a seam ripper. Or maybe it was a machete, she was pretty desperate. She brought it to me in bed and I put the frayed edge to my cheek. I loved her for trying, but it just wasn’t the same. I loved sleeping over at my grandmother’s house. I felt safe there. But I needed to hold on to something soft and familiar to help me sleep.

The day before I came back to school for J-Term, I told my mom that I don’t think I’ve ever gotten very good at this coming and going thing, between school and home. I think I expected going away to college to feel a little like running away, indignantly packing up my things in a bundle and tying it to the end of a yardstick, slamming the door on my way out, calling home only once in awhile, and only just to say, “see, I don’t need you anymore!” That’s how I always felt, running away down the trail in the woods behind my house. Thinking that, if I had to, I could build a shelter in hollowed out tree trunk, catch the school bus from my neighbor’s stop like a fugitive, smuggle food from the cafeteria, even if I had to survive on Pop Tarts.

Or I could move to Grandmom’s house. After all, I had a nigh-night with me.

But then I would reach the end of the trail, time to set up camp, and without the sound of my own storming footsteps drowning out anything but childish anger burning in my ears, the woods sounded suddenly too quiet. I’d think about the sky getting dark and realize that I didn’t pack any socks and wonder what I was doing in the middle of nowhere and get just scared enough to go home.

When my dorm is this quiet at the end of a day when the fog never lifted and I don’t really know what I’m doing here, I don’t feel like I’ve run away with my pride and a Pop Tart tied up in a cloth diaper on the end of a stick. I feel like I’ve been sent to my room.

So, I’m packing to spend another weekend at home. I found a nigh-night in the hidden pocket inside my little suitcase. I think it’s been there for almost a year; I packed it there when I went to New Zealand, tucking it in my carry-on because it’s one of those things I didn’t think I could live without if the rest of my luggage got lost, and then forgot it was even there. I folded it up and brushed the frayed end against the palm of my hand, and then to my cheek. It’s still cuddlesome and intimately familiar to my touch.