Take Care of Your Knees, Whippersnappers

No Telling

You only have two, and it has been my experience recently that while you can get by with one good one for a while, two good knees are preferable. Trust me on this.

All those foolish things you did when young and vigorous? Well, they’re going to come back and haunt you when you’re older and less springy. There’s no talking to the idiocy of youth, however, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have listened two seconds had someone warned me. We’re all bullet-proof and immortal until we reach our forties, and little can be done to stop that train.

I had my knee surgery on Friday, and there’s more to such a thing than I’d imagined. On paper, it sounds cut and dried, but I didn’t have my scope on paper. I had it in the hospital like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, it seems I tend to wake up once put down. This happened once before during a carpal tunnel surgery, but that’s a funny story and involves me – in medias res – illuminating the surgeon on the finer points of correct procedure. I woke up in recovery to a gaggle of laughing nurses and other amused onlookers.

Luckily, I don’t remember much about waking up during Friday’s knee surgery. It appears I woke more than once, however, and they really put the anaesthesia to me. The result was a tricky 48 hours of scoline pain. I don’t wish that on my worst enemy. It’s right up there with labor pain, except everywhere – I couldn’t get out of a chair or even hold a pen.

All that’s over now and soon I expect to be better than new. Better than before all that damage I did back in my late teens and early twenties, anyway, when I was limber and bullet-proof.

Seven Things I’ll Miss About Spring Break

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1. See picture above.

2. Lounging around in unattractive sweats all day.

3. Reading whatever I want, whenever I want.

4. Leisurely coffee in the morning from a pot I made myself.

5. Unhurried, inspired scribbling at odd hours.

6. Extended, guiltless Ebay searching.

7. Snuggling up on the couch, watching the Backyardigans with that boy in the picture.

Warning: Whining Woman Ahead

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It’s been a very long day. It’s been a longer five weeks and I feel like having a little bit of a whine. I’m due.

I’ll keep it brief. I limped around for a few weeks on a bad knee before one day it just quit me with a loud pop. Lots of drama, x-rays, nine days in a wheelchair, now a fancy rolling walker, MRI, knee specialist, more x-rays, knee specialist scratching head, that sort of thing. Maybe cracked bone, certainly bruised bone, maybe torn meniscus, osteoarthritis from old injuries, Doppler for blood clots, found none. Like that. Surgery on April 3rd.

April 3rd. The pop heard round the campus was five weeks ago. April 3rd is 2 1/2 weeks from now. The rolling walker, not nearly as sexy as the one above but almost, is getting old. The pain is getting old. I’m also getting old. Rapidly.

I’ve kept a sunny disposition thus far, but I’m flagging. Everyone has been helpful beyond words – all my classes moved in one building, folks helping with Em and The Perfect Grandson, rides to and from work, even concierge service in the rain since I can’t hold the umbrella and the walker simultaneously. Em has been my legs around the house and an angel.

I know there are people out there much, much, MUCH worse off than I am. This is temporary and I’ll get over it. But in the meantime, I can’t pick up The Perfect Grandson or babysit him while his mom’s in class. I can’t lift him out of his bed in the morning for our conspiratorial, dark-thirty goofing off. I miss it all something terrible.

I’ll probably wake up tomorrow morning with a new and grateful attitude. A little sleep does wonders. So do anti-inflammatory drugs. Eighteen more days. I can do this.

Note on the Fridge to my Daughter

No Telling

You’ve become an amazing woman. I’m just lucky to be your mama.

The Perfect Grandson, in all his no-pants glory, is going to have a fine life. It will all be due to you.

As for the rest of you out there, go read How Girls learn About Freight Trains and you’ll see what I mean. This should be required reading for Bristol Palin and every other young woman out there staring down life with a baby on her hip.

I love you, sweetie. You’re going to make it and you’re going to shine.

Geezers on Twitter

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Yep, I finally did it. I’m Twittering. I’m not doing it well, but I’m slinging tweets here and there all the same. This isn’t throw-down, addictive twittering, though, because 1) I still refuse to text and so have limited A-B-C skills with a cell phone, and 2) I can’t answer the “What are you doing?” question with anything interesting. Really, who cares that I graded papers and whined about Daylight Savings Time last night? Nobody.

And most people I know aren’t twittering. None of my friends, anyway, who might actually commiserate on the grading thing. My family’s generational/technological divide makes twittering any of them a complete waste of time. My daughter and all her Gen Y buddies are still living and dying on Facebook, and my parents (bless their hearts) still call to tell me they’ve sent an email. Maybe my sister – in all her Gen X splendor – is a twitterer. I’ll send her an email today to find out, because that’s how we Gen Jonesers roll. I do all my twittering on a laptop anyway.

My colleagues? Forget about it. There’s no way a whole department of writing professors can can keep it to 140 characters. Ever.

Other folks leave fascinating tweets and I’m following a few of them. Some leave must-read links and information randomly throughout the day, but there have been a few addicts who, while they initially seemed interesting, have turned out to be even more dull than I am. It’s a mystery to me why someone with a thousand “followers” thinks we care what kind of coffee they just bought or what time they plan to call it a night. Life’s too short to waste it reading inane shit like that.

I suspect I just haven’t found my Twitter-Voice yet. I’ll get to work on that and tell you how it goes, although you could probably follow me on Twitter and find out for yourself. I don’t recommend it, really. Until I figure out my basic rhetorical strategy, it’s pointless anyway.

I Heart Scribbling Students who Read Poetry Aloud for the First Time

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You know, the ones with the secret notebooks who sit there at the poetry reading flipping raggedy stained pages over and over, listening to the brave one up there reading, and thinking, hey – my stuff is this good, I’ll do this. But the chair they’re sitting in is too far away or the clapping quits too soon or goes too long and the time they semi-rise to take the moment they’re beat by by some other sweaty-handed poet. There’s defeat and safety in that second when the butt hits the bottom of the chair. Exhale.

See, what happens then is they make the decision to close the notebook or just take the goddamn room like a poetry-slinging Visigoth, and when the clapping stops for the last one I can read it all over them in bold, black, Sharpie slashes under their eyes, boiling warrior adrenaline and ready, I tell you, ready.

So when they finally do lift off their seats there’s no looking right or left, just the stark front of the room where the distance between teller and crowd is a coliseum staring you down, harboring literary expectations, demanding: Don’t. You. Dare. Suck.

And they don’t. Much.

After, the body still pumps hard-wash through them. Glazed eyes and fingers crazed, wringing that sacred notebook until the covers go soft, curl to fit in a fist. The next poet is on the floor but the last one is still blood-pressured, eye glazed, sweating into a t-shirt and writing in his head the better one for next time. When it’s over he’ll write for hours scratching cheap ballpoint pens on disfigured pages and that chemistry homework will just have to be late.

Why Valentine’s Day Passed Without Comment and How the Universe Got Even

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We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. – Tom Stoppard

And it still might have passed without a word from me, except that two things happened willy-nilly that made me shed a little residual love-bitterness.

The first one was a Facebook request. Please keep in mind that I only joined Facebook a few years ago to make class groups for all my students. I quickly found that while they never check their email, they live and die by Facebook. It’s a teaching strategy and it works. Since then, Generation Jones – the check-writing parents of all these students – invaded Facebook and hijacked collegiate sovereignty from their kids. Suddenly, all of these people I haven’t thought about since high school started popping up and asking me to “be their friend.” I’m not comfortable with mixing my professional and private life on Facebook, so I’m a pretty lousy “friend.” My students don’t need to read any “remember the time we…” on my wall, for instance.

But back to the request. I logged on the other day and there is a request from John, the first boy I ever kissed and meant it. Seventh grade. Behind the lockers. I don’t need to recreate this moment for you because we all have this flutter-heart moment at least once. It’s pure and young and lives forever in an unsullied place no matter how cynical we become. John and I were beautiful and then he moved away. All that sneaky practice-kissing and playing at love without the pain of junior high infidelity or break-up dramatics. He simply moved away and left all this delicious longing. Most of the boys after that weren’t so kind. Neither was I.

I checked his profile and John is everything he should be, I guess. Married, father of four, a Republican. He’s an insurance adjuster and his favorite book is the Bible. A textbook-perfect Southern treasure of a man. Not for me, necessarily, but for the type of woman who is now Mrs. John.

The second thing actually happened over a month ago, but I filed it away quickly because it was too much to think about at the time. John and Facebook made me think about it finally and for good.

At UCA, we have a composition celebration of first-year writing students called AfterWords. It’s an opportunity for freshman comp students to share their writing with each other and compete for cash money prizes. The whole process wraps up with a day or two of public readings and is quite a good idea.

One afternoon during the celebration while students were taking turns reading their crafted narratives behind a podium, a sweet young thing stepped up and broke all our hearts by reading a very personal and gut-wrenching account of her reckless, wayward father and the day he died. The poor child had a difficult time getting through the reading and I didn’t blame her one bit. It was clear, however, that her pain and anger required voicing. I wept with her as she bravely read.

At one point in the narrative she and her sister stand in front of his headstone, and she reads her dead father’s name as if to conjure or damn him or both. Jay _______.

And I froze.

What are the odds that a sweet boyfriend I loved 33 years ago would later marry, have a daughter who by chance attends the very college where I teach, who then writes a story for a competition, and reads it in the very room where I sit as audience when she finally reads the anger he’s given her? My sweet boyfriend when I was fourteen became an addict and a no-show father. He died from the failures he became and that I never saw coming. Jay was 49.

You can understand why I filed it away. I’m still unsure how to process that kind of coincidence.

The boys I loved are men now and some are dead. They are special because I can freeze-frame them individually at the age they were when I loved them, before they became the men I couldn’t really love or the ones who would tear my heart out. These boys belong to me and I can replay each of them at their best, at my best, the 8mm camera in my head selecting only the loveliest parts of us.

So today I’m giving my inner love-cynic a rest. I’m putting down all the baggage and recursive disappointment and I’m going to put my feet up, thread the projector, and allow the prettier times to cast their smiling shadows on the wall.

Happy Valentine’s Day, boys. I won’t forget again.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

No Telling

There are so many things I love about Arkansas. To the north we have the idyllic geography of the Ozarks, hills rolling and tree-covered, the land covered with fossils from an ancient sea-time. The south is a red-clay pine forest where, if you look very carefully, you can find diamonds. The people here are proud, stubborn, fascinating survivors of the economic turn from rural farming to whatever it is we are now becoming. Sure, there are metropolitan areas. Little Rock is a fine example and just big enough to trip over itself while it morphs into a large city.

I love it here and find it hard to imagine living anywhere else.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have times when I shake my head in bewilderment. Yesterday the Arkansas House of Representative voted to allow concealed weapons in churches. Seriously. They did.

The argument is that smaller congregations can’t afford expensive security forces, so it’s every man for himself in the pews now. Legally.

The kind of change Arkansas is going through now is tough for most to stomach. I understand that. I even expected a little paranoia, which we exhibited full-tilt during the last election. But I think we’ve crossed the line when we begin legislating concealed weapons in houses of God. I can’t imagine sitting there on a Sunday morning and wondering if the deacons are packing.

Not that I actually sit there on a Sunday morning, but, you know, if I did it would be most disconcerting.

So what’s next? I’m almost afraid to find out.

Potty Training Little Boys: A View From the Cheap Seats

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The Perfect Grandson won’t keep his pants on. This is a male phenomenon I’ve got little to no experience with, although everyone tells me it’s What Boys Do. Interesting.

I raised a daughter. My parents raised two girls, and most of my experience with small children is braiding hair and sitting with books and picking flowers and hugging stuffed animals and incessant talking. Little boys are different. The Perfect Grandson is a running, jumping dervish. Every waking moment he’s on the prowl, fixing things with plastic tools and throwing them with deadly-accurate aim. These are boy-things I expected, and it’s a great fun to watch him scamper everywhere to do everything Right Now.

It’s the naked-from-the-waist-down business that’s a challenge, though. A few minutes of quiet at naptime usually means a semi-naked boy peeing between the crib slats and onto the floor. He likes to point, then, at his little parts and growl “Heeeaaah!” proudly. I’m not allowed to laugh.

And that’s if we’re lucky. A tossed diaper full of poop is, well, exactly what it sounds like. Yikes.

So even though he’s only a year-and-a-half old, my daughter has begun potty training The Perfect Grandson. She bought a lot of books, scanned the internet, then introduced him to a convincing plastic potty that he immediately took apart and reassembled half a dozen times. So far his gnat-like attention span allows him to sit on it for two, maybe three seconds before running across the room and grabbing a soccer ball instead. Again, no laughing.

I’m not much help. My potty-training expertise is nil. A million years ago I bought the potty, my daughter sat on it, we read books and sang potty songs until – voila – the child was trained. I don’t think it took a week. There was a Sitting Still component to that experience that doesn’t look promising this go-round.

There’s also the lack of a Visual Aid in this manless house, if you don’t count the dog. Boner (don’t ask) our little black daschund is also a boy, but he’s constantly lifting his leg on bushes in the yard. He’s no help at all and has other bad habits that make him more of a cautionary tale than an example.

The word out there is that boys take a long time to potty train. Sometimes forever, they say. A friend of mine raised boys and tells me with a straight face there’s a trick with floating Cheerios and aiming and such. What? In the meantime we’re keeping an eye out for his lightning-fast Pants Off maneuver, my daughter is giving me stern looks, and I’m not supposed to laugh.

“Heeeaaah!”

Sarah Palin: Literacy Unplugged

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Sarah’s shopping a book deal, bless her heart. Since she’s already proven her shopping ability, this should be a piece of cake. What will she say to cuddle up to the reported 11 million-dollar advance? The real issue isn’t politics, though, it’s the glint in some publisher’s eye. If Rumpelstiltskin could spin straw into gold, publishers can, too.

Let’s be honest. I’m sure no one – no one – thinks she’ll tackle this without a competent ghostwriter. Not even Sarah herself has that kind of audacious hope.

So who’s the ghost going to be? Probably someone with years of ghostwriting experience and past successes. If they really wanted to follow through with the Sarah Palin template, they’d choose a relatively unknown writer. Someone folksy from some tiny town or state with scads of guns and churches. Someone, perhaps, who’s never really written anything before, but who has all this potential and is a quick study. The publishing house could gather a whole bevy of aides to teach the ghost things like verb agreement, comma usage, and – perhaps later – paragraphing. All of these skills could be learned on the job.

If a good portion of the country was willing to let our collective futures ride on such things with Governor Palin, surely some forward-thinking publishing house could do the same with her ghostwriter. It’s only money, take a chance.

Why, any one of us could fill that bill. Most of us are even over-qualified, so let’s do it. Got a catchy title? Already envisioning a snappy opening line? Maybe there’s a whole literary concept rattling around in your head. Post it in the comments. Who knows – Sarah may just snatch one of us up and hand us our Fifteen Minutes of Fame. Remember Joe the Plumber?

Exactly.