Larry the Lion was my special pal. He IS my special pal. He sits next to my desk, mostly because this room stays out of range from the marauding band of Dogs Who Like Plush Toys To Eat As Snacks.
Larry was given to me when I was in the hospital, recovering (?) from polio. That is what I recall. He might have been given to me that Christmas, which would have been a few weeks after I left the hospital. At any rate, I remember pulling Larry's string so many times - always until he said, "I'll protect you." (Here's a page of all his utterings.)
And here is a video of Larry in action.
My Larry is ratty, smelly, and very old. He's lost his tail (bar fight); lost most of his right ear (fight with one of the marauding band). He still has his whiskers (I remember chewing them some), and he's lost his voice. The string is gone. One would have to perform surgery on Larry to remove the mechanism and see if it can be repaired.
There's a small part of me that is trying VERY hard not to calculate how many eons of generations of dustmites have lived on him. I think I'll keep him, though.
He's here to protect me.
Showing posts with label memoir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memoir. Show all posts
December 20, 2010
March 30, 2009
Redemption
While teaching writing is not nearly as satisfying as writing, it is less work in some ways. And there is a limit to how much you can give to your students, and how long you will work on an assignment.
All that said, I am grateful to be back in the classroom, albeit on something of a lark. There has been no contract to sign, I have completed paperwork but received no official notification from anyone that I am the instructor of record. No, I just showed up with good intention, and the office staff also showed intention by making me a mail folder and being patient with my stupid somewhat irritated questions. The paperwork may come eventually, and I think I have to wait eight weeks for the first miniscule check.
I don't get paid enough, and neither do they. So we're all in this collective that decided to do this community service project, and make it look like college. The trick is that the accreditation people take this very seriously, as they should, and so we must all act like it is a very very important thing we do.
But in the end, it isn't all that important. I show up to work, I do some good, I go home. The student show up, think about stuff and go home to their lives. That's how it should be, really. I'm no saint, I'm no better than my students. I just have a body of experience and knowledge that they have some murky idea that they "need." What they want is not to spend three hours in a room with me twice a week, but if that's what it takes, then they are willing. They will gladly pay that in order to get the reward.
The best thing about these international students is that they have overcome big obstacles to get here, even if it was simply a matter of travelling many hours, filing the right paperwork and coping with the weird life here in America. One student from the Middle East appears to be from one of those mega-wealthy families, but he is the only one who has that air of entitlement, and it's hardly noticeable.
They are polite, filled with gratitude, eager to learn and somewhat shaky at the prospect of doing a full-on writing class IN a FOREIGN language where proficiency is expected rather than coached. And they show up.
So must I. But it beats asking "whip or no whip? skinny? decaf?" I too am grateful. Why? There's a darker reason.
Many years ago, in another state, I had the fortune of teaching at both community college and university in a town where writers were a dime a dozen. Swing a sack of dirty socks and you could hit a writer. But somehow I had an inside track on this shadow life of contractual employment, semester-to-semester.
Except for the time when my father had a stroke, and I missed several weeks to be by his side, cheering him with crossword puzzles and specially prepared thick soups and other things. And I missed all kinds of deadlines for re-applying for work. I was simply NOT available when the call came, and I found myself in November buying groceries on credit cards, and by December, I was buying wine on credit cards.
It was a dark time. I took temporary employment as an admin with a machine shop for three days, and walked out after lunch on the fourth day. I also made up some dramatic story why I had to quit the data entry job. I could not go into good honest labor. I felt ruined.
Somehow, someone needed an English instructor at a distant, new community college campus - some place just south of town where a large percentage of Hispanic and tribal folks took classes. In a weak and reluctant moment, I agree to teach two classes, both at the worst possible times.
Too far away from my house, too far away from my regular haunts, too far away from my recovering father who was not quite the same, not enough money to make ends meet, I felt compelled to do something unforgiveable. I was also applying for full-time jobs, and I agreed to take one MID-TERM. It was about 6 or 8 class meetings into the semester. I cannot remember if I had graded a set of papers or not.
But I quit. I told the dean, who could barely disguise her displeasure. She shifted quickly and professionally into CYA mode, finding someone to cover my classes and minimize the damage to students. My replacement was much less forgiving. I met both classes with him, introducing him and then slinking out like the ratfink I was.
I left town two weeks later to take that job, near my parents in my home town.
Though I returned to teaching four years after that, I never did penance, really. I justified and rationalized my actions. But this morning, as I prepare for class, I see clearly and objectively that I violated a near-sacred trust. I left my students in the middle of a semester. Granted my schedule prevented any other jobs, and of course the pay was horrible. I would not have been able to sustain myself for the full 16 weeks, so what happened, happened.
Many years later, though, unbeknownst to them, my students are providing me with something very important: the opportunity to meet the challenge, to foster their education, and to redeem myself on a karmic level. Even though I am compensated, it's not enough for the hours and work. But this is me paying it back (paying it forward) in a roundabout way. When the semester is done, we're even, and I can move forward.
But no way am I going to tell them that, nor should I. It will be my little secret. And ours.
All that said, I am grateful to be back in the classroom, albeit on something of a lark. There has been no contract to sign, I have completed paperwork but received no official notification from anyone that I am the instructor of record. No, I just showed up with good intention, and the office staff also showed intention by making me a mail folder and being patient with my stupid somewhat irritated questions. The paperwork may come eventually, and I think I have to wait eight weeks for the first miniscule check.
I don't get paid enough, and neither do they. So we're all in this collective that decided to do this community service project, and make it look like college. The trick is that the accreditation people take this very seriously, as they should, and so we must all act like it is a very very important thing we do.
But in the end, it isn't all that important. I show up to work, I do some good, I go home. The student show up, think about stuff and go home to their lives. That's how it should be, really. I'm no saint, I'm no better than my students. I just have a body of experience and knowledge that they have some murky idea that they "need." What they want is not to spend three hours in a room with me twice a week, but if that's what it takes, then they are willing. They will gladly pay that in order to get the reward.
The best thing about these international students is that they have overcome big obstacles to get here, even if it was simply a matter of travelling many hours, filing the right paperwork and coping with the weird life here in America. One student from the Middle East appears to be from one of those mega-wealthy families, but he is the only one who has that air of entitlement, and it's hardly noticeable.
They are polite, filled with gratitude, eager to learn and somewhat shaky at the prospect of doing a full-on writing class IN a FOREIGN language where proficiency is expected rather than coached. And they show up.
So must I. But it beats asking "whip or no whip? skinny? decaf?" I too am grateful. Why? There's a darker reason.
Many years ago, in another state, I had the fortune of teaching at both community college and university in a town where writers were a dime a dozen. Swing a sack of dirty socks and you could hit a writer. But somehow I had an inside track on this shadow life of contractual employment, semester-to-semester.
Except for the time when my father had a stroke, and I missed several weeks to be by his side, cheering him with crossword puzzles and specially prepared thick soups and other things. And I missed all kinds of deadlines for re-applying for work. I was simply NOT available when the call came, and I found myself in November buying groceries on credit cards, and by December, I was buying wine on credit cards.
It was a dark time. I took temporary employment as an admin with a machine shop for three days, and walked out after lunch on the fourth day. I also made up some dramatic story why I had to quit the data entry job. I could not go into good honest labor. I felt ruined.
Somehow, someone needed an English instructor at a distant, new community college campus - some place just south of town where a large percentage of Hispanic and tribal folks took classes. In a weak and reluctant moment, I agree to teach two classes, both at the worst possible times.
Too far away from my house, too far away from my regular haunts, too far away from my recovering father who was not quite the same, not enough money to make ends meet, I felt compelled to do something unforgiveable. I was also applying for full-time jobs, and I agreed to take one MID-TERM. It was about 6 or 8 class meetings into the semester. I cannot remember if I had graded a set of papers or not.
But I quit. I told the dean, who could barely disguise her displeasure. She shifted quickly and professionally into CYA mode, finding someone to cover my classes and minimize the damage to students. My replacement was much less forgiving. I met both classes with him, introducing him and then slinking out like the ratfink I was.
I left town two weeks later to take that job, near my parents in my home town.
Though I returned to teaching four years after that, I never did penance, really. I justified and rationalized my actions. But this morning, as I prepare for class, I see clearly and objectively that I violated a near-sacred trust. I left my students in the middle of a semester. Granted my schedule prevented any other jobs, and of course the pay was horrible. I would not have been able to sustain myself for the full 16 weeks, so what happened, happened.
Many years later, though, unbeknownst to them, my students are providing me with something very important: the opportunity to meet the challenge, to foster their education, and to redeem myself on a karmic level. Even though I am compensated, it's not enough for the hours and work. But this is me paying it back (paying it forward) in a roundabout way. When the semester is done, we're even, and I can move forward.
But no way am I going to tell them that, nor should I. It will be my little secret. And ours.
March 21, 2009
Body Issues, Pt. 1
I used to think I was fortunate in that I didn't have major hang-ups about my body. I've always liked it, and it's served me well in the sex department. However, that's a good and functional coping mechanism for what happened when I was a kid, and now overall as I age.
From age 3, I was sick a lot. Various things, mostly "normal childhood diseases." But I did somehow get hepatitis when I was 3, and then I had strep about every three months for a number of years. I remember getting measles and mumps. Measles - "both kinds" I recall my mother saying. I did not die. People get vaccines for these things now. But still, I was sick a lot.
When the polio vaccine came out, there were two version of that. Live and killed. Polio had been killing people, and injuring them for some 30 years in this country, and it was believed to be a miracle from somewhere... so sure, line 'em up and vax 'em down! Except no one in the military (I'm a military brat) heeded the precaution that those with weakened immune systems might not be good candidates for the vaccine. No, it was soldier up and take the medicine.
So, I got vaccine-dogpiled. And got polio from the vaccine. I have no way of knowing if my parents were ever apprised of the risks v. benefits, or just what. Or if they were told that I got polio FROM the VACCINE. It is clear that is what happened. And they told me as a child that "we caught it just in time" and the case of polio I got was "mild" because of their timeliness. But when I brought up this new awareness to them in the early 90s, they were in complete and total denial. Get it from the vaccine? No way, that's not what they told us! They had even forgotten that I was sick for months, on antibiotics nearly every month for a solid year before the vaccine.
I used to have my medical records from early early on, because we "hand-carried" them out of military life into retirement. As a single mom with baby on hip, I took them with me to Australia where I had planned to use them to assist with the anit-vax efforts down there, but that didn't work out at all. Sheer oversight on my part, I left them on a shelf in the home where I was staying, and when I left, it was not on good terms. So not good that the homeowner never replied to my requests for these valuable documents. That loss is keen. Still today. Losing them is probably the deepest wound I got from the whole experience. (The rest of my trip was quite wonderful - Australia is a lovely and beautiful place and its people are awesome. Perhaps more on that in future entries?)
My point is this: without my medical records, I could now never prove anything to anyone about the vax injury. But also the aftermath. There were at least 90 pages of physical therapy notes (extensive testing, these days not documented in as much detail), surgical notes for three surgeries, and similar. It would be important to me, in further medical care, in writing about my illness, to have those records. It would be important to others, I feel. Yes, the loss of those records is keen.
However, I do have the body still. The records only describe what was done to it, and I have the original body. The paralysis I suffered from polio at age 6 went up my left leg entirely stopping at my hip. I could not walk for a good three or four months. I did not lose function, at the time, in my right leg. The growth in that leg was stunted, but more importantly, the protocol after polio was to "take it easy." That was the exact wrong advice. After all the PT, wherein I learned to walk again, further exercise should have been allowed to build muscles and functionality. I grew but the left leg didn't catch up. There was an unequal leg difference and my slight limp became more pronounced as I grew taller. Scoliosis developed and I was put in a Milwaukee brace - from neck to hips. Special shoes were entertained for a few months but they helped nothing and caused pain, so I abandoned them.
You can imagine the social implications of this. Yeah, playground kids LOVE someone who limps. Oh, and the fun of 7th and 8th grade. Yeah. Good times.
Anyway, I had a permanent PE excuse. Great, except I was a very athletic-minded person. I wanted to be running, doing, riding bikes and horses, playing kickball, etc. I did as much as I could without incurring the wrath of my mom, but she never took the hint. I could stay out all day, come home completely dirty, sweaty and happy, and then get up the next day and do it all over again. But still they kept me away from sports and organized activity. After school, once we'd moved to the country, I was out every day with my dog, exploring the woods, climbing trees, trying to catch the neighbor's horses.
Which is why it is so hard for me now to get off my lardass and get to the the gym, or ride my bike, or whatever. But I'm going to do that now, as an experiment, so I can write about it here. It is so difficult to overcome the mental obstacles every.single.time I want to be active. Plus, there's the physical ones - constant physical limitations due to weight gain and now the onset of post-polio syndrome, with constant moderate back pain.
So when it's time to exercise, I can find a million reasons not to, most of which relate to the avoidance of pain, but a sizeable and significant handful of reasons are mental. First of all, it's just not fun for me to deal with all this. The fun is greatly lessened by the time I get into it. Secondly, it is not fun to be having fun and then suddenly lose balance or have a knee buckle and take a tumble, wrenching something in my back. That sucks, in fact. Thirdly, it's just rotten horrible lousy awful to be cranking along on weights or the elliptical, and have some idiot make an idiot comment. My anger at the whole thing is bubbling there just under the surface, and I want to throttle the unsuspecting idiot and remove them from the gene pool. Or hide.
See? Exercise is a good deterrent for depression and stress. Ha!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of Body Issues, post work-out.
From age 3, I was sick a lot. Various things, mostly "normal childhood diseases." But I did somehow get hepatitis when I was 3, and then I had strep about every three months for a number of years. I remember getting measles and mumps. Measles - "both kinds" I recall my mother saying. I did not die. People get vaccines for these things now. But still, I was sick a lot.
When the polio vaccine came out, there were two version of that. Live and killed. Polio had been killing people, and injuring them for some 30 years in this country, and it was believed to be a miracle from somewhere... so sure, line 'em up and vax 'em down! Except no one in the military (I'm a military brat) heeded the precaution that those with weakened immune systems might not be good candidates for the vaccine. No, it was soldier up and take the medicine.
So, I got vaccine-dogpiled. And got polio from the vaccine. I have no way of knowing if my parents were ever apprised of the risks v. benefits, or just what. Or if they were told that I got polio FROM the VACCINE. It is clear that is what happened. And they told me as a child that "we caught it just in time" and the case of polio I got was "mild" because of their timeliness. But when I brought up this new awareness to them in the early 90s, they were in complete and total denial. Get it from the vaccine? No way, that's not what they told us! They had even forgotten that I was sick for months, on antibiotics nearly every month for a solid year before the vaccine.
I used to have my medical records from early early on, because we "hand-carried" them out of military life into retirement. As a single mom with baby on hip, I took them with me to Australia where I had planned to use them to assist with the anit-vax efforts down there, but that didn't work out at all. Sheer oversight on my part, I left them on a shelf in the home where I was staying, and when I left, it was not on good terms. So not good that the homeowner never replied to my requests for these valuable documents. That loss is keen. Still today. Losing them is probably the deepest wound I got from the whole experience. (The rest of my trip was quite wonderful - Australia is a lovely and beautiful place and its people are awesome. Perhaps more on that in future entries?)
My point is this: without my medical records, I could now never prove anything to anyone about the vax injury. But also the aftermath. There were at least 90 pages of physical therapy notes (extensive testing, these days not documented in as much detail), surgical notes for three surgeries, and similar. It would be important to me, in further medical care, in writing about my illness, to have those records. It would be important to others, I feel. Yes, the loss of those records is keen.
However, I do have the body still. The records only describe what was done to it, and I have the original body. The paralysis I suffered from polio at age 6 went up my left leg entirely stopping at my hip. I could not walk for a good three or four months. I did not lose function, at the time, in my right leg. The growth in that leg was stunted, but more importantly, the protocol after polio was to "take it easy." That was the exact wrong advice. After all the PT, wherein I learned to walk again, further exercise should have been allowed to build muscles and functionality. I grew but the left leg didn't catch up. There was an unequal leg difference and my slight limp became more pronounced as I grew taller. Scoliosis developed and I was put in a Milwaukee brace - from neck to hips. Special shoes were entertained for a few months but they helped nothing and caused pain, so I abandoned them.
You can imagine the social implications of this. Yeah, playground kids LOVE someone who limps. Oh, and the fun of 7th and 8th grade. Yeah. Good times.
Anyway, I had a permanent PE excuse. Great, except I was a very athletic-minded person. I wanted to be running, doing, riding bikes and horses, playing kickball, etc. I did as much as I could without incurring the wrath of my mom, but she never took the hint. I could stay out all day, come home completely dirty, sweaty and happy, and then get up the next day and do it all over again. But still they kept me away from sports and organized activity. After school, once we'd moved to the country, I was out every day with my dog, exploring the woods, climbing trees, trying to catch the neighbor's horses.
Which is why it is so hard for me now to get off my lardass and get to the the gym, or ride my bike, or whatever. But I'm going to do that now, as an experiment, so I can write about it here. It is so difficult to overcome the mental obstacles every.single.time I want to be active. Plus, there's the physical ones - constant physical limitations due to weight gain and now the onset of post-polio syndrome, with constant moderate back pain.
So when it's time to exercise, I can find a million reasons not to, most of which relate to the avoidance of pain, but a sizeable and significant handful of reasons are mental. First of all, it's just not fun for me to deal with all this. The fun is greatly lessened by the time I get into it. Secondly, it is not fun to be having fun and then suddenly lose balance or have a knee buckle and take a tumble, wrenching something in my back. That sucks, in fact. Thirdly, it's just rotten horrible lousy awful to be cranking along on weights or the elliptical, and have some idiot make an idiot comment. My anger at the whole thing is bubbling there just under the surface, and I want to throttle the unsuspecting idiot and remove them from the gene pool. Or hide.
See? Exercise is a good deterrent for depression and stress. Ha!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of Body Issues, post work-out.
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