March
Spring is just around the corner, and spring break. The trees are not green yet, but I can see the buds on the trees in my yard and they give me hope.
I open my collection of Rumi’s poems, and I find this line: “What you seek is seeking you.”
You’re Alive for a Reason
One of my nieces posted this picture on Facebook this morning, and I’m pretty sure it showed up because I needed to hear it.
In my literature class this quarter, we’re reading monster books — Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. It’s a learning community combining English 101 (college composition) with an introduction to literature. Fifty-five students, many of them Running Start (that is, High School) students. It’s been a slog. I keep reminding myself that even when I assign “great” literature, my students tend not to be English majors, and they are often non-readers.
A long time ago, when my children were small, I read a book called Kids Are Worth It by Barbara Colorosa. The title says it all — even when your children misbehave, don’t listen, embarass you by refusing to come out of the big climbing tunnel in McDonalds, they’re still perfectly good little human beings experimenting with what works for them. It’s not personal, Mom or Dad. It’s just what kids do.
Students, too. Even when they gripe about the books I assign. Even when they plagiarize the paper on Wuthering Heights. Even when they check their smart phones all through class and think I don’t see them.
We talked in class today about how one of the things an author might be dramatizing by writing about a vampire or another undead sort is how hard it is to be human.
So, just for the record, I want to tell you that students are worth it, even when they’re monsters. And so am I.
Catastrophe
Catastrophe fits this post because I’m here to tell you about the death of a brave soul, our cat Daisy. Daisy joined our family in September of 2001 and I thought of her as our 9/11 cat, as that was when she showed up at my college, looking for handouts, and my feelings of helplessness and vulnerability led me to take her home. She was never as tame as our other cats, but my daughter Annie persevered in turning her into her best friend. On Valentine’s Day we learned that Daisy’s persistent difficulties with an infection stemmed from a tumor in her eye cavity. It was too late to do anything except let her go.
Catastrophe has a really cool etymology, and I’m pleased to learn that it was in use in the 16th century (the century in which my novel is set, and yes there is a cat in my novel):
- catastrophe (n.)
- 1530s, “reversal of what is expected” (especially a fatal turning point in a drama), from Latin catastropha, from Greek katastrophe “an overturning; a sudden end,” from katastrephein “to overturn, turn down, trample on; to come to an end,” from kata “down” (see cata-) + strephein “turn” (see strophe). Extension to “sudden disaster” is first recorded 1748.
And just to round things out, here’s a poem about my daughters.
On this Earth
“in which / all the characters who died in the middle chapters /
make the sunsets near the book’s end more beautiful.” – Tony Hoagland
All the sunsets are not more beautiful
but sometimes one is. Sometimes
the moon is so fulsome in its fullness
it’s like a soccer ball my daughters have left out
in the cul de sac, that close, that round and white.
I rest my foot on it and feel
for a moment the gravity of the earth
tugging us both from our orbits.
Sometimes the moon hangs there–
drop-dead gorgeous in her negligee of clouds–
I take my daughters out in their pajamas to see it.
I take them out in the night air knowing fully
what a cliché we are, I am, never forgetting
the poetry workshop advice to forget hearts and moons.
But knowing, too, that someday I will be gone
and for my daughters, some nights, the moon
will be more beautiful because I was here
on this earth with them, though I couldn’t stay.
The veternarian reminded us that cats live in the moment, and that’s partly what they seem to be here to teach us. She said, “Go ahead and cry, but try to think some happy thoughts for Daisy, too, because she’ll feel your emotions.” Goodbye, Daisy.
Hunger
I have been sick for a few days with the flu…ack! But meanwhile Kathleen Flenniken has posted my poem, “Hunger,” at her Washington State Poet Laureate blog, The Far Field. It’s a wonderful site.
And I was raised to say “Ki-yotes.” Not ki-yo-tee. (Kathleen was, too, and I think this may be why she chose this particular poem.) Photo credit to http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/coyote/