Women, the academy, and work

A snippet from an email to an infrequent correspondent.

Drinks on the porch . . . that sounds so wonderful and relaxing. I’m having this insane summer—a conference paper, a two-month faculty development workshop, another paper I’m working on . . . I haven’t written a single poem this summer, and I’m so tired it doesn't even bother me much right now. We just got back from vacation, where we had no phone or internet, so that was a kind of enforced relaxation, but it’s hard to bring that mentality home.

I’m disheartened this summer by L’s resigning her position as the director of the X program at Y University—and another woman friend of mine resigned a good dean position dean because of conflicts with her boss. How on earth are women supposed to ever get caught up in the academy when it’s one battle after another? And these talented bright women decide they’d rather quit than fight constantly? I certainly understand the need to preserve one’s sanity, but if we don’t fight who will??? So how to balance the whole work/life thing . . .

Harry Potter hoopla

The Harry Potter hoopla is slowly dying down at our house. I think this is our third HP midnight release party? Certainly our second. It’s become something of a ritual. I wear my Hogwarts tshirt, and Laura pulls on her most recent witch costume. She wanted me to dress up in my Professor McGonagall costume, which I wore at the Halloween party last year. I did wear my Gryffindor scarf, which I crocheted myself (and on which I got loads of compliments!), but since the rest of the costume consists of this difficult witch hat—it really just will not stay on right—and my outrageously expensive graduation gown, I decided not. My robes really are perfect for the costume, since after all Hogwarts is based on British boarding schools and academic robes in the first place, but that outfit cost more than my wedding gown! The thought of chasing three kids around in a packed bookstore at midnight is bad enough.

Yes, we had an extra kid. We’ve taken along my nephew Harrison for our last two HP releases; this year he dressed very creatively as a Muggle. He and Laura were very close when they were little—they’re only a year apart in age—but it’s a different dynamic now that she’s about ten years more emotionally mature. Something about that boy/girl maturation rate, whew. He spent half the HP party running around sword fighting with his magic wand while Laura rolled her eyes at him in this very preteen way. Will went along for part of the ride this year, but Chris and I drove two cars so they could go home when the baby crash hit—about 11, well past bedtime. By that time most of the fun kid stuff was over—and Will wouldn’t get his face painted anyhow. Chris finally had to take him home because he started pitching a fit because he wanted robes like all the other kids.

We spent most of Saturday reading. Laura and I got our own separate copies, since she carts hers around in her bookbag and trashes them. We did meet Harrison’s folks for dinner and to drop him off, so Chris and Will listened to music while the three of us sat in the car reading. After dinner, we figured that while we were at it, we’d hit a couple other bookstores to see their festivities too. Check out the bracelet collection!

Chris is reading my copy now—it’s hard to share, because I’m ready to start rereading already, but I guess it’s fair he gets a shot early on too. He spent the time I was reading VI rereading V and being patient while I was away. Laura’s almost done, and I expect she should be to the serious stuff about now; it’s been very quiet in the living room for the last hour. She looks so intent and so beautiful and bookish, sitting on the couch with her nose in that book and her cute new glasses, which she’s finally remembering to wear when she reads. She will come in occasionally and ask me again to tell her who is the Half Blood Prince? (I won’t tell—but I did guess right on my second try.) Or to tell her what this word means: blasé? If I didn’t love Harry Potter on my own, I would love these books for this, if nothing else—they made her realize she could read something complicated, something big and fat, something more than just those cute little Junie B. Jones chapter books.

As a girl, I couldn’t have imagined a bookstore event, much less something of this magnitude, such worldwide scope. I checked out the maximum number of library books for years. We had no bookstore at all in my hometown until I was almost a teenager, when we finally got a mall with a B. Dalton. I thought I would die when I saw those tables of remaindered books. I met my first boyfriend in a library. I actually had a summer job waiting tables at Shoney’s one year just so I could stop by the bookstore after work and buy a book with my tip money—I literally read a book a day that summer. And now, when you ask my children what they want to do, they both want to go to the bookstore. I love that so much. I love that we have Harry Potter, and that Laura will have these wonderful memories of books in her childhood too.

I read today that Rowling estimates it’ll be two years before the last HP book comes out, and I just about died. What if something happened to her and she couldn’t finish the series? Good Lord. But part of me rejoiced too—because by then, when the last book comes out, William will be old enough to remember it too. It’ll be 12:01 a.m. some July, and we’ll be there no matter how damn tired and old I am, and maybe that time I’ll wear the full regalia. I make a pretty darn good professor, let me tell you.

Reading marathon

I just finished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and I am sure that I am not the first person to start praying that J. K. Rowling writes fast and stays in good health for the next year (and hopefully no more than that!). A Google search for “who is RAB?” turns up no results tonight—wonder how long it’ll take before that changes. Just a few days, I guess. I’m pooped, but I guess it’s about time to come home from Hogwarts, where the world is a little darker tonight.

Almost time

We're leaving in just a minute. I wish we had a better bookstore than Books a Million in town--I can't drive all the way to Charlotte in the middle of the night. I hate getting old.

In the doghouse

While I was cleaning the kitchen this morning and talking on the phone to my next door neighbor about her horrible divorce, I could tell Laura and Will were having some large conflict involving water. I ignored it as long as I could, until finally I felt compelled to intervene in this by commanding that all containers of water be brought to me—this instant, and don’t you argue with me young man and I don’t care who got the water out first and whatnot. Of course, about two seconds later I was distracted again by the even dumber thing my ex-neighbor said at the divorce mediation, and I promptly forgot to follow up on this order, which was diminished in the first place by being hollered from the kitchen rather than delivered in person.

I feel sure you know something bad is coming next.

A couple of hours later I found, shockingly enough, several large water stains and a cup sitting in its own perfect ring on my lovely old dresser. Probably it wasn’t an official antique when I got it, but that was thirty years ago now, so it probably qualifies at this point. Since I was already well versed this morning in parental clichés, it seemed only right to yell at Will and Laura: You two are in the doghouse.

After about two minutes of confused questions from Wiliam, it became abundantly clear that he had no idea what on earth I meant, but that he definitely knew he was in trouble. Off he went crying to Daddy to make that dog go away—I guess the one making Mommy so Godzilla-like. I never know what to do in these cases. Follow the immediate impulse and laugh? Move into the comforting parent role and then come back to Discipline and Doom Mom later?

Thankfully Chris took over at this point and I heard some comfort, some explanations, some mild fussing, all while I googled wood damage water rings. A peanut butter sandwich later, a little application of mayonnaise on the dresser, and evidently we’ve restored temporary harmony to the world. Who’d have thought mayonnaise was so powerful?

Snake Part II

I love email. Chris and I actually do speak in person at times, but certainly we would be in trouble without it. Today we’ve reversed our roles and I’m at work while he’s home with the babies and the snake.

From: Chris
To: Lisa
Date: 7/8/2005 11:46 AM
Subject: snake

The snake has been removed from the birdhouse.

I didn't have the heart to eliminate the possibility of it returning to the birdhouse, so I let it go at the edge of the yard (after displaying it for L and W). I think that should be a sufficient enough warning for it to understand that our yard is off limits.

I am now going to cut the grass to further assert my dominance over our domain.

c

Bombings and babies

While I spent today playing around with a new web page and my children, and then visiting my new baby nephew, people in London were dealing with bombings.

Unfortunately, I tend to associate terrorist attacks with children, particularly my own. Laura was three months old when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in Oklahoma City. Still seriously postpartum messed up, I sat on the couch watching the news, nursing her, and just crying and crying—those children in the daycare, my God. I was about three months pregnant with William on September 11. Five weeks later, I flew to Mexico for a conference, equally fearful of planes and terrorists and the military police walking around the airports with their very large guns—not to mention the more mundane matters of what might happen to the baby if I ate something in Mexico that made me sick, or drank the water, or needed a doctor. Combining hormonal surges with terrorism alerts will certainly get you going.

London notwithstanding, after Chris got out of class this afternoon, we drove to Columbia to visit our three-week old nephew. He is tiny and beautiful—about eight pounds of scrunchy boy, a sprinkle of baby acne and a little dry skin still flaking off to remind you just how recent his arrival into the world. Because my babies weighed quite a bit more at birth, Adrian looked so small, but he worked hard to hold his head up, butting his peach fuzz head against my shoulder when I held him. I could close my eyes and remember that slightly sour, slightly sweet, breastmilk smell from my own babies; pregnancy intensified my sense of smell, and even today I can open a tube of A&D and almost touch baby skin.

A rather conflicting set of associations: the touch of a baby’s cheek, the image of flames and bodies. My own experiences with terrorism have been mercifully distant—my small Southern town is not exactly the type of metropolis that would attract such attention—and I’m thankful. When I turn my head to my shoulder now and catch that faint whiff of baby, I can’t imagine combining that smell with smoke and blood and bomb residue. But today some mother in London had to.

At least once every day I have some thought, a prayer maybe, keep my children safe. I don’t imagine that some God somewhere would watch over my children but give over some other child’s life to suicide bombers, nor would I want such a God. But still every day, I offer up this prayer in hope and fear for my children, especially tonight, and for my new nephew, and in sorrow and too late for someone else’s child, with a terrible selfishness that every parent knows, and I think, might someday be able to forgive. Please keep my children safe.

Poison and snakes

After a massive invasion of our beautiful river birch tree by June bugs, the purchase of two bottles of insecticide, and the application of one bottle, a not entirely typical email exchange.
________________________________

From: Lisa
To: Chris at work
Date: Thursday - July 7, 2005 9:51 AM
Subject: POISON?????

Chris, did you use that Sevin that was sitting next to the back door at all? I walked in the kitchen a minute ago and found Will sitting there happily spinning the nozzle that attaches to the hose. Please tell me you hadn’t used that one yet.

Sad Wife

________________________________

Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 10:04:18
From: Lisa at another email address
Subject: HELP!
To: Chris

Email me back here. My groupwise email has just gone down.

There’s a snake in the birdhouse on the gum tree—the one the bluebirds use every spring? While I was checking the poison bottle at the kitchen sink to see if Will had touched anything other than the bottle, I saw something sticking out of the box and asked Laura to look at it because I can’t see squat (I have GOT to get my new glasses) and she came running back hollering about black snakes.

I can’t tell if the poison had been used or not—there wasn’t any kind of safety seal on it, which I guess is sort of obvious since the whole flipping thing is poisonous and therefore you’re not really worried about somebody slipping overdoses of Tylenol or cough syrup or whatnot in there. It looks mostly full. There doesn’t seem to have been any on the nozzle. Please write me back and say it was the second bottle.

I am bathing Will now.

Increasingly sadder wife

________________________________

From: Chris
To: Lisa at one email
Date: Thursday - July 7, 2005 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: POISON?????

No.
Did not use that one.
Put the one I used under the house.

________________________________

Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2005 11:03:46 -0400
From: Chris
To: Lisa at another email address
Subject: Re: HELP!

He’ll be fine.
There shouldn’t be much, if any, there since it was unused.

Re: snake. Stay away from the sharp end.

The quest for Vader

Tonight I tried to snooker William into thinking that Wal-Mart was fun, and for the first time the whole thing fell flat. The conversation went something like this:

Mommy (in a cheery tone): William, do you want to GO TO WAL-MART WITH MOMMY!?? We can look for Darth Vader!
William (in a defiant tone): No!
Mommy (still cheery): Do you want to stay home with Mommy instead while Daddy goes to Wal-Mart?
William (in a petulant tone): No, I want to go somewhere good! I want to go to the toy store.

Notice how I omitted that we were going for groceries? I wasn’t born yesterday. But evidently neither was he: it didn’t work, and all because we made the mistake last night of going to Toys R Us in Charlotte looking for a Star Wars Galactic Heroes Darth Vader. He loves those Star Wars guys so much, and we’ve never even seen Darth. I now know after searching fruitlessly on Amazon et al that Mr. Vader is a collector’s item already and can only be purchased on E-Bay, so I have a friend on a bidding quest for me (since I am sure I’d be bankrupt in about 20 minutes if I ever set up an E-Bay account. Even now I feel the horrible bidding pressure—17 minutes and 55 seconds to go and someone else could get my Darth Vader!!).

After the first five minutes at the toy store of chasing Will around as he yelled every two feet—I want this! I want this one! I don’t want Spiderman anymore, I want Batman!—I remember why we never go there anymore. Laura in her typical fashion settled instantly on a stuffed animal which she hauled all around the store begging for her allowance, and since it was rather past due we bought it for her. But even though she’s more tactful, you can still watch her angling for her budget—how far might we go? The $10 bobcat? The $15 My Scene doll? It’s absolutely exhausting.

Fortunately William is still gullible here and there. He may not think Wal-Mart is cool anymore, but he still thinks fixing muffins in the morning or cornbread for dinner is just loads of fun—as long as it involves breaking Humpty Dumpties. If I had to pick, that’s what I’d prefer.

Only three minutes left on my bid!

42 seconds and no other bidders!

My friend got it for me! The quest for Vader can finally end!

Sex, mosquitoes, and death

We’re back from Georgetown and the beach, and over the July 4th weekend, William suddenly started asking all those fascinating questions. Do you have a penis? Do I have a vagina? Why don’t I have a vagina? Why do I have a penis? Why does my penis get big? Will I have big breasts like Mommy and Grandma when I grow up? Lord. All kids ask these questions, and some a lot earlier than this, which is too bad because then they’re much harder to censor in public. At Will’s age you can introduce the idea that some of these concepts are private, not to mention the body parts. Although William had an interesting conversation with his penis about whether he (his penis) likes Batman or not while we were in a restaurant bathroom the other day, all the time I’m praying nobody will come in. My brother-in-law reports that my niece has been wandering around her house periodically exclaiming that she’s broken because she doesn’t have a penis like her three brothers. All this is cute, but can make for awkward dinner conversation.

Generally Chris and I solve this kind of parenting dilemma with simple answers and a book. We both have great faith in books, and between the two of us we’ve spent plenty of time in the bookstore prescreening titles like How Was I Born? and What’s the Big Secret? It might be a little tougher when Laura starts asking these questions again—our last round with her was when Will was born, when she was only seven. For Will this time it’s still fairly uncomplicated. You have a penis because all boys have one. Boys use them to pee pee, and when they grow up, they can help make babies. Mommies have breasts to feed their babies milk. I have students in my women’s studies classes who tell me they found out about their periods when they got them, who are amazed at the idea that parents might not only discuss these kinds of questions with children, but do it at a young age. Every time I teach the intro to women’s studies class we have a conversation about sex education which ends up with students asking me if I really tell my children stuff like that? The more I think about it, maybe it’s time to talk to Laura again before she asks about it.

While swimming in the boat ramp, Will and I also had some discussion about “what is dead?,” occurring directly in response to a big round of mosquito swatting. Mosquito bites are a problem for us, since Laura and Will and I are evidently very tasty, and because really most mosquito repellants aren’t recommended for kids (and if they can’t use any, I’m sure not going to). I do have a friend trying to convince me that it’s ok to use repellants with small concentrations of DEET, but generally I have a hard time with the idea that I should spray poison on my sweet children. (Instead, of course, I drug them up with Benadryl to counteract the inevitable bites, so I imagine it’s probably six of one, half dozen of the other.) At any rate, William seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of interest at the boat ramp this time in how the mosquitoes were dead, how they were really dead, how we killed them, how we could swat them good, how that mosquito would never bite him again, etcetera.

Dead is a fairly abstract notion for him at this point, mostly informed by the disappearing bodies of Disney villains falling off cliffs, which in contemporary Disney is almost always their own fault, almost never instigated directly by the hero, who defends him/herself but would never resort to brute violence. Or at least if so, it’s off camera. I think Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid is the last Disney hero I can remember who outright kills the villain on stage. Somehow equating a swatted mosquito with a dead cartoon bad guy doesn’t lend a whole lot of relevance to the less abstract question of what happens with real people in the world. Fortunately this isn’t a problem William’s had to deal with yet—the last death in our family was before he was born, and it looks like against all the prognoses Chris’s father is beating his cancer. When he was diagnosed a year ago, many of us believed this Christmas would be his last—if he made it that far. I hope it’ll be a long time yet before William has to deal with dead in the real world. On the whole, though, it was a weekend of very interesting conversations.

And some additional commentary:
Since this posting had some sensitive information, for which possibly William may kill me one day, I emailed this to my husband to have him run the “is this too personal to post?” censor. Mailer-Daemon paid me a little return visit.

The attached file had the following undeliverable recipient(s):
Chris@hisworkemail.com
Transcript of session follows:
Command: DATA Response: 552
Error: content rejected

I forgot that if the self censor doesn’t get you, the email one will. Guess I should’ve known better than to send something like that to work. Chris suggests that further email of this sort might employ hacker language: p3nl5 and 53x. Who’d have thought?

Perils of omitting the subject line

I tell my students all the time, if you don’t include a detailed and descriptive subject line, your email is likely to go straight to my junk mail folder, whether I send it there or whether the email spamming software does. William learned this lesson in life—not email—the hard way early this morning when he was hollering Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy while I was packing for the beach and talking on the phone. I kept hollering back I’m on the phone Will. After a while he switched over to hollering for Daddy, who was outside putting the kayak on the car. He needed to tell me his problem. The resulting email exchange with Aunt Shari.

From: Lisa
To: Shari
Subject: hollering Will

Well, now I know why he didn't come to see where we were. Because he was stuck on the top of Laura's bunk bed hollering for somebody to help him get down. Sigh. :)

From: Shari
To: Lisa
Subject: RE: hollering Will

Awe, poor thing. And he really was screaming politely :O)
See ya tonight.