The note I never wanted to write

I have a tendency, I fear, to blog only when I'm riled up about something, or upset about something.  This probably gives the impression that things are worse than they are, when in fact so much of life simply consists of putting one foot in front of the other and simply doing one's work, with perhaps a little irritation that requires blogging thrown in on the side.  But every once in a while, the floor drops out.

I mentioned R a few months ago.  Pancreatic cancer is doing what pancreatic cancer does, and today my colleagues and I found out that she's been admitted to hospice.  We were asked to write her notes.

I don't want to.

I don't want to say goodbye to a young woman, a bright woman, a marvelous teacher, a tenacious and fierce scholar, a wise and gracious mentor.

I don't want to write a note.  Simply saying "thank you" seems totally inadequate, and I can't figure how I could possibly say goodbye.  

But not writing a note is a thousand times worse than writing a note.  And of course, I see the irrelevancy of saying that I don't want to do it; what I want to do or don't want to do has exactly no bearing on reality.  None.

Nine years ago, I lost another mentor, another kind, ferociously intelligent, savvy woman.  The world is immeasurably poorer for her loss, and I think of her often.  She died in the springtime.  I have a vivid memory of walking to the train on my morning commute when she was ill, passing through a grim development of Communist-inspired apartment blocks, thinking in time with every clack of my heels on the sidewalk, "I don't want to.  I don't want to."  There was an enormous old cherry tree in the middle of the buildings, and its blooms were the most audaciously beautiful thing I had ever seen, this bright splash of life and beauty in the middle of the grimness.  I was struck by the sheer nerve of the thing to bloom, to have so much gratuitous beauty, when someone I loved was suffering and dying.  But yet there it was, waving branches and spilling blossoms like the living thing it was.  When I think of her now, I think of the tree.  I didn't want to do any of it--the grief, the loss, the pain, the beauty, the polite conversations at a funeral--but not doing it would have been a worse choice.

And so much of life seems to be doing what we don't want to do.

I'm going to write a note.

Some Christmas present...

One of my mentors--a kind, savvy, and ferociously-intelligent academic--was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Say a prayer for R and her family if you think of it. 

A real béguine

There's a marvelous obituary in The Economist for Marcella Pattyn, the last living béguine, who died April 14 at age 92.

Read it all.

Don't clean up.

The attentive ones among you may have noticed that this post first appeared a few days ago.  Still trying to figure out precisely how blogger works... *sigh*

Several years ago, when I was at the major conference for my discipline, I attended a session on Women in the [Field].  There was a panel discussion among five or six scholars at all ages of their careers, and they provided witty and insightful advice about navigating the gender gap in our field. When I asked what advice they would give a graduate student or untenured professor trying to sort through the gender dynamics in a hostile environment, the panelists all hemmed and hawed a bit, deferred to each other, and then the most senior scholar, professor emerita after a distinguished career, looked me straight in the eye and said:

“Don’t clean up.”

Her words stuck with me.  If you want to be seen by your [male] colleagues as a colleague, then you behave as they do.  They don’t clean up, so you don’t clean up.  If I am here as your peer, I will not do your dishes nor your laundry.  I will not take messages for you, or organize the transportation to other events.  I. Will. Not. Clean. Up.   

And I thought of her again last night, as after a department reception, I looked around and saw I was one of four students who had stayed to help clean up: three women, one man. 

When I first arrived in the department *cough* years ago, 2/3 of it was comprised of men, 1/3 of women.  That's evened out now to roughly half and half, and yet the women in the department still do the lion's share of set up and clean up for every event, as they did when they were the significant minority when I arrived. Especially clean up. 

I know all this, and it is crazy-making, and yet I do it.  So why do I clean up?  I've figured out a few reasons: I'm good at it, I notice when it needs to be done, I have a strong sense of community loyalty, I like to do what I'm requested to do, I feel terribly guilty about leaving someone else with a mess to which I (by virtue of eating cheese and crackers and drinking a glass of wine) contributed...

And there are all sorts of subsidiary problems here, particularly problems of class and economics.  Why is cleaning up such a menial task?  Why do we disparage those who do it?  What kind of privelege are academics embodying if we are defined as people who can't pick up after ourselves? 

Is the best solution really to plead senior student status and retreat before the time for cleaning up draws near? 

ARGH. 

Gender, Generations, and Faculty Conflict

In today's Chronicle of Higher Education, historian Caroline Walker Bynum muses about coming of academic age in the 1960's and offers a little advice for modern academics and feminists: "With our squabbles about how and whether to 'have it all' and our talk of 70s versus 90s feminism -- behind which we barricade ourselves, defending our choices and definitions -- we are in danger of betraying our own next generation." Read it all.