Necessary Discomfort

Lascivious. Vulgar. Admonish.

These are some of the words my Advanced Conversation students wanted help understanding yesterday. And they happen to be some of my favorite words.

They are favorites not because of their definitions, but because of the way they feel in my mouth when I say them, and because of the reactions they can elicit from listeners. Few people react mildly to hearing about lascivious speech or vulgar acts. And no one likes to be admonished. Besides, when I hear or read these words, I automatically picture Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights," with all its wanton nudity and twisted depictions of tortured sinners.

Unsurprisingly, the newspaper article my student gleaned these words from concerned a college football player who had behaved very poorly in public and whose punishment was being benched for several important games. (Benchedwas another word my students were unfamiliar with.)

Just before our class started, I was overwhelmed with frustration about dealing with Project Learn and the public library for a space in which to teach this class. Being a volunteer, I am not high on Project Learn's list of Important Items to Take Care Of or People with Whom Communication Is Important. And even though I took the last two Thursdays off from this class to spend time with my husband during his vacation, I had the distinct gut feeling that I didn't want to continue dealing with all that bureaucracy in the future.

And then Ying came in and said, "I love this class! I look forward to this class, and I always want to come here for it!"

She stated it so simply and honestly that all my resolve to discontinue melted away. I tend to not do things I really don't want to do. However, as I've gotten older, the clarity of distinction between things I want to do and those I don't want to do has become fuzzier. Often I find myself doing something I'm not particularly enthusiastic about merely because it will help someone else feel better or because it is simply the right thing to do.

For instance, before my father died, I never went to any calling hours for friends' or relatives' departed loved ones. And I rarely visited sick friends or relatives, either in a hospital or at their home. I justified this omission by the fact that these situations made me uncomfortable. I also said to myself that the ill or grieving had others to support them emotionally, so why would they feel my absence?

Then, in the midst of my overpowering grief and loss at my father's sudden death, I noticed something. Cards came in the mail from acquaintances I hadn't seen in years, filled with kind words of sympathy and encouragement. Casseroles and desserts appeared on our back stoop from friends who understood how taxing it was to spend the whole day at the hospital agonizing over whether to remove a ventilator tube. Generous, loving support and comfort came pouring forth from people I barely knew, as well as from family members who had formerly been estranged.

The funeral home was absolutely packed with people who had worked with my father decades earlier, who had seen him regularly in the grocery store, who had been touched in small ways by his humor and his humanity. Each unfamiliar person who told me details about my dad buoyed my spirit and moved me. I started to realize the importance of these small gestures. I started to realize that no one "likes" to visit sick or grieving people, no one "likes" to help a loved one through a devastating loss, no one "likes" to send a note or give a condolence card or let you cry on their shoulder.

But these things make a difference; they are necessary. The small, simple act of showing up makes so much difference.

I learned this morning that my sister-in-law's father passed away yesterday after a long, debilitating illness. He died doing what he loved, gambling at a casino. And even though his death was a long time coming, even though my sister-in-law had years to anticipate it and prepare for it, I know she will need as much support as possible to get through these next few difficult days. And the days after that. And all the days and years of having no father that are to come.

She was there for me and my family five years ago; I will be there for her now. It doesn't matter whether I want to or not. It is necessary.

At the end of our class yesterday, after we had discussed the definitions of "quarterback" and "discipline," after we had practiced using phrases like "to reflect well on oneself" and "coming soon to a mall near you," I was exhausted.

I was also energized. The feeling of frustration that had formed a pit in my belly before our class began had dissipated in the rush of sharing my passion for words. Each time I gushed that that's one of my favorite words! my students laughed. The whole dictionary is your favorite word, they said.

Well, yes, in a way.

But, really, the act of sharing knowledge is very powerful. Sharing knowledge, sharing enthusiasm, sharing laughter, sharing grief, sharing a smile or a hug or quiet moment. These are my favorite things, my fuel for getting through the daunting, frustrating, confusing struggle of life.

So, while lascivious, vulgar, and admonish are wonderful words that elicit strong responses and feel so delightful on the tongue, some of the other words we worked on are even more powerful: ambassador, liaison, discretion. These words might not get such visceral reactions, but they do a lot more of the heavy lifting in life.

I ended class by informing my students that we don't yet have a classroom for next week, but that I will find us one, no matter what it takes. 

My Master, Myself

The transition from student to faculty has been odd for me in its ease. I thought I would have more difficulty thinking of myself as an instructor, especially because I don't technically instruct. I spend my days in the Writing Lab explaining, informing, and guiding, but I never instruct.

Still, I have a natural kind of authority when I'm around the students in Polsky. I'm sure it's in large part due to being twice their age. But authority is perception, so I'll take it however it comes.

The chain of command at Polsky, real or imagined, was thrown into fairly stark light last Wednesday, when a tornado passed through the Akron area. Chelsea, the most seasoned of our peer tutors, interrupted my session with a student to tell me—show me, actually, on her phone—that the University was issuing a tornado warning and that all faculty and students were advised to take shelter on the lowest level possible of the building. I had just received a similar warning on my own phone from the National Weather Service, so I wasn't exactly surprised.

I was calm, though. I was more calm than I can ever remember being during an emergency situation. I told my student to bring along her computer so we could finish working on her paper, and we got up to leave the lab. Another student, a young woman from Nigeria with whom I had worked earlier and who was still working on her own on a lab computer, asked us what was going on.

"It's a tornado drill; we're going to the basement," I said. "Bring your stuff; you can come with us."

Maybe I simply didn’t think the tornado threat was real. Maybe I felt comfortable finding the basement because I had explored the second and first floors earlier during my lunch break. Maybe I'm just not as excitable as I used to be. Maybe I become very calm when someone around me is more hysterical than I am.

Last year, my husband and I flew to Quebec City from Toronto and were seated apart from each other. I was next to a young mother holding her almost-one-year-old son. When we hit a patch of nasty turbulence, the young mother became quite frazzled and afraid. I—who am usually a sweaty ball of tension digging my nails into my husband's arm during bumpy flights—took her hand and began calmly asking her for details about her own husband, whom she had mentioned earlier. I kept my eyes focused on hers and steadily smiled while never allowing her to focus on anything but my voice and our conversation until the worst of the turbulence had passed.

The act of focusing on something other than the scary thing that was out of our control helped both of us keep control of ourselves. This is what I did in the basement of Polsky with my students.

Carneisha, the student whose session was interrupted by Chelsea's information, had eyes the size of dinner plates as we walked down the stairs with the crowd. As soon as we got to the final landing, she sat on the bottom step and opened her computer. I crouched next to her, and we continued discussing comma use and word choice until we had finished her essay. I knew it was due at midnight, so I didn't want to leave her hanging.

Young men in blue polo shirts with official firefighter logos on them periodically spoke loudly to the entire crowd, offering advice about where to find cooler air (the stairwells), information about toilet facilities (which were near the stairs and functioning), and when the order to take shelter might expire (5:45). Most everyone seemed to be on a cell phone checking The Weather Channel or tweeting their discomfort. One you lady showed my students and me a photo of the funnel cloud that appeared to touch down near Britain Road. I still felt calm. I worked with Carneisha until she felt her essay was strong enough to submit to her professor, then I talked with Rachel.

"Dis communication is amazing," Rachel said. "In Nigeria, dere is no way to inform all the people of something like dis. I tink dat is why God spares Nigeria from natural disasters."

I thought about that for a moment. I don't always like to be aggressive with my atheism; some believers get offended when I challenge their beliefs, even in the abstract. But Rachel had already impressed me with her poise and intelligence during our tutoring sessions. Besides, we were in a university setting, so challenging ideas felt de riguer.

"Hmmm," I said, furrowing my brow. "But what about places like the Philippines or Thailand? They're a poor country with no emergency warnings. Remember that tsunami a few years ago? Thousands of people died."

We were interrupted just then by an update from the young firefighters.

"May I have your attention, please. You may leave, if you want to, but you must leave the building if you do. You may not leave this floor and go to another floor. The university cannot be responsible for your safety anywhere else in the building."

The heat had been gradually increasing during the half hour or so that had passed since we all descended to the basement. I removed my pumps and the light sweater I was wearing. Rachel ate an apple while I called my husband. He had been at the grocery store when the sky darkened and a downpour raged, then it passed and he went home. Rachel lay her head on my lap and slept for a few minutes.

Eventually, the warning expired, and the university sounded the all-clear. The next day, I remarked to my husband how calm I had felt for the entire event. Even as I entertained the possibility of an actual tornado causing serious damage to the building, and all the attendant difficulties, I never once became excited in any way. The only remarkable thing about all of it, for me, anyway, was how nonchalant and even-keeled I remained throughout it.

I have never really thought of myself as calm. My mind seems to race at a thousand miles a minute, and I have to make lots of lists and keep a detailed calendar to keep some semblance of order in my life. I have noticed, however, now that I am finished with grad school and I have a steady job, a sort of contentment I didn't have before. I no longer feel like I have to prove myself to anyone; the piece of paper on the wall in my home states clearly that I am a master. And that's kind of how I feel now. I am a master of myself.  

My Future, Myself

I received the 2013 Annual Report from the International Institute in the mail this week. Seeing it sandwiched between ads for gutter guards and lower car insurance rates evoked an odd mix of emotions. Sadness and regret bumped up against equal measures of relief and…something else, something I couldn't name right away. It was something like the feeling a traveler might have who changes her plans at the last minute, then realizes the plane she would have been on went down over the Atlantic with no survivors. Or maybe it was like the feeling of seeing the guy you almost married in college at a reunion, now married to someone else and fat and balding, and realizing he is nothing at all as you remember him.

Disaster narrowly averted or escaped.

This is the project that made me change my mind about volunteering with the Institute. This is the project that made me change my mind about writing for other people, about writing for a living, about how much of my time and energy I am willing to invest in projects that benefit a bureaucracy more than individuals. It's also the project that helped me see I was still stuck in "thesis mode" three months after graduation.

The Report was short, more an extended postcard than a full report, with a brief overview of financial statistics for the year and a short note from the Institute's director containing platitudes about community involvement and diversity. I took special note of two mini-profiles of recent immigrants that were included, as a way of putting a face on the plea for contributions—a plea that encompassed fully two pages of the six-page document. Photos of the two men profiled were each accompanied by a short paragraph outlining the ways in which the Institute had helped each man assimilate to life in Akron and seek citizenship.

It was my much more in-depth profile of one of these men that was the catalyst for the end of my tenure as a volunteer with the Institute. And in hindsight, I'm so glad I left when I did.

I had interviewed that man and his wife in much the same way I did all the interviews of immigrants for my thesis. I also wrote the final piece about him in exactly the same way I had written all the chapters for my thesis: crafting a compelling narrative with rich sensory details and dramatic tension that said something about the universal human condition.

The short paragraphs in the Report served an entirely different purpose. They illustrated how monetary contributions to the Institute would help continue its services.

One of the main reasons I never pursued the copy-writing jobs many of my MFA colleagues did was because I cannot abide the type of insidious rhetoric advertisement copy requires. Also, I detest the entire idea of writing to please someone else. I write to please myself, and to say something about the world. And as high-minded as that sounds, I prefer my own agenda to that of a bureaucracy or corporation.

So, for a few moments anyway, I also felt a kind of satisfaction and reassurance in my choices I haven't felt in a long while.

As someone wise once said, regret is a useless emotion. I regret nothing and look only to the future, a future I am writing on my own, for no one but myself.