September 4: "Surprise," First Day of School, New Routine

I don't like surprises.  Never have.

I always go into a classroom with a lesson plan; start my days prioritizing tasks; type up itineraries for trips; create lists and lists in my planner so nothing is overlooked or forgotten.

If I'm ever taken by surprise, I've failed in some way.

But Billy Collins has a few surprises up his sleeve . . .

Surprise

by: Billy Collins

This--
according to the voice on the radio,
the host of a classical music program no less--
this is the birthday of Vivaldi.

He would be 325 years old today--

quite bent over, I would imagine,
and not able to see much through his watery eyes.

Surely, he would be deaf by now,
the clothes flaking off him,
hair pitiably sparse.

But we would throw a party for him anyway,
a surprise party where everyone
would hide behind the furniture to listen

for the tap of his cane on the pavement
and the sound of his dry, persistent cough.

There were no surprises for me today.  My son was feeling much better and went to school.  The only thing that caught me off guard was how easy it was to get him to pose for a first-day-of-school photo.  It helped that he was holding his puppy.

When I picked my son up this afternoon, he was fully back into school mode.  Laughing and joking with his friends.  Jumping in the car and grunting at me when I asked how his first day was.  You know, normal, 15-year-old teenage boy behavior.

I'm also trying to settle into my new routine of school and work.  I really should be used to this shift.  I've been doing it for over 30 years now.  Every three or so months, everything changes--summer into autumn into winter into spring.  

But, no surprises today, aside from the fact that I'm coming down with a really nasty cold.

Saint Marty has a dry, persistent cough right now.

September 3: "Christmas Sparrow," First Day of School, Puking Son

Tonight's post was supposed to be about my son's first day as a high school junior.  I had it all planned out, picture and everything.

Life or God had another plan.  At 5:45 a.m., my son came into my bedroom to tell me he'd just thrown up.  Ten minutes later, he threw up again in the kitchen sink.  Needless to say, he spent his first day of school at home, alternately hugging a pillow and a bucket.  

Billy Collins gets woken up by a sparrow . . . 

Christmas Sparrow

by: Billy Collins

The first thing I heard this morning
was a rapid flapping sound, soft, insistent—

wings against glass as it turned out
downstairs when I saw the small bird
rioting in the frame of a high window,
trying to hurl itself through
the enigma of glass into the spacious light.

Then a noise in the throat of the cat
who was hunkered on the rug
told me how the bird had gotten inside,
carried in the cold night
through the flap of a basement door,
and later released from the soft grip of teeth.

On a chair, I trapped its pulsations
in a shirt and got it to the door,
so weightless it seemed
to have vanished into the nest of cloth.

But outside, when I uncupped my hands,
it burst into its element,
dipping over the dormant garden
in a spasm of wingbeats
then disappeared over a row of tall hemlocks.

For the rest of the day,
I could feel its wild thrumming
against my palms as I wondered about
the hours it must have spent
pent in the shadows of that room,
hidden in the spiky branches
of our decorated tree, breathing there
among the metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,
its eyes open, like mine as I lie in bed tonight
picturing this rare, lucky sparrow
tucked into a holly bush now,
a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.

I've loved this poem for many years.  Collins somehow manages to write about Christmas without any sentimentality or nostalgia.  Yet, there's a sense of peace and wonder at the end of it, that "rare, lucky sparrow" perched in a holly bush as snow tumbles down from the heavens.  I'm almost tempted to say "amen" after reading it.

It's difficult writing about certain topics without becoming syrupy and maudlin.  Christmas.  Love.  Puppies.  Your kids.  How do I write about my son without resorting to hyperboles of parental adoration?  It's easy to pluck cheap heartstring moments.

So, I will tell you that I was frustrated with this morning's little monkey wrench.  Before my son vomited the second time, I was actually thinking he was just trying to get one more day of summer vacation.  That's Bad Parenting 101.  Of course, I love my son, but I felt the ghost of my father taking possession of me at one point, these words sitting on my tongue:  "You know, I never missed school.  I had to be bleeding out of every orifice before your grandmother would let me stay home sick."

I didn't say that.  Instead, I gave him a bucket.  Felt his forehead (it was hot).  Told him to go back to bed.  Before I left for work, I reminded him to drink water during the day to stay hydrated.  I sort of felt like Billy Collins capturing that sparrow in a shirt and releasing it into the waiting hemlocks.

My son is feeling better.  He told me he's going to school tomorrow morning.  I went for a walk with my wife and puppy after dinner tonight.  The sun was a brilliant gold cataract in an orange sky.  It stopped me dead in my tracks for a moment with its beauty.  

Saint Marty needed that reminder:  God's eye is on the sparrow, and the sunset, and a puking 15-year-old boy.

September 2: "Elk River Falls," Labor Day, Waterfall

I'm assuming a lot of you, my faithful disciples, have visited a waterfall at some point in your lives.  You know the sound of crashing water and the touch of mist on your skin.  I've always found the experience of being near a waterfall frightening and a little mystical.

Billy Collins chases waterfalls . . . 

Elk River Falls

by: Billy Collins

is where the Elk River falls

from a rocky and considerable height,
turning pale with trepidation at the lip
(it seemed from where I stood below)
before it unbuckles from itself
and plummets, shredded, through the air
into the shadows of a frigid pool,
so calm around the edges, a place
for water to recover from the shock
of falling apart and coming back together
before it picks up its song again,
goes sliding around some massive rocks
and past some islands overgrown with weeds
then flattens out, slips around a bend,
and continues on its winding course,
according to this camper’s guide,
then joins the Clearwater at its northern fork
which leads it all to the distant sea
where this and every other stream
mistakes the monster for itself,
sings its name one final time
then feels the sudden sting of salt.

I'm not a person who can explain the sources or rivers or streams or lakes, but I do feel the pull of water.  Being a Yooper, I have Lake Superior in my blood.  Perhaps I'm part waterfall, blood crashing through my body at Niagara speeds.  

It was Labor Day in the United States.  Most people get a three-day weekend, culminating on Monday with celebrations of the working class and labor unions.  There are even parades and community picnics in some places.  

Me?  I grilled hotdogs and bratwursts, boiled corn on the cob, and feasted with my wife and kids.  It's really the last hurrah of summer before the work of autumn really begins.  Tomorrow, my son starts his junior year of high school.  My daughter starts her last year in the Upper Peninsula before she heads downstate for medical school.  And the trees commence their annual marathon of oranges and golds and reds.

In a lot of ways, this time of the year reminds me of a waterfall--everything rushing along toward some distant, wintry ocean.  There's no way to slow things down.  Instead, I just seal myself in a barrel, roll myself into the current, and hope there aren't any rocks at the bottom to tear me apart.  

In case you can't tell, Saint Marty is not a fan of pumpkin spice anything.

September 5: First Day of School, John Ashbery, "Last Month"

The first day of school for my kids.  They rose, complaining about the loss of summer.  My son first pulled the pillow over his head, whined about the early hour.

It's true that this last month of summer came and went like a freight cloud.  Fast and full of baggage.  And now, a new month, new season, new way of living.  It seems like a year ago that we were splashing in swimming pools and drinking gin and tonic.

Saint Marty isn't ready for autumn.  Not just yet.  The leaves must stay green, and the black bears must stay awake.

Last Month

by:  John Ashbery

No changes of support—only
Patches of gray, here where sunlight fell.
The house seems heavier
Now that they have gone away.
In fact it emptied in record time.
When the flat table used to result
A match recedes, slowly, into the night.
The academy of the future is
Opening its doors and willing
The fruitless sunlight streams into domes,
The chairs piled high with books and papers.

The sedate one is this month's skittish one
Confirming the property that,
A timeless value, has changed hands.
And you could have a new automobile
Ping pong set and garage, but the thief
Stole everything like a miracle.
In his book there was a picture of treason only
And in the garden, cries and colors.

September 6: Creek Kept Rising, First Day of School, Cookies

All it did was rain.  It rained, and the creek started to rise.  The creek, naturally, rises every time it rains; this didn't seem any different.  But it kept raining, and, that morning of the twenty-first, the creek kept rising.

Dillard is talking about rain around the summer solstice.  The remnants of Hurricane Agnes.  It has been downgraded to a tropical storm, which means a lot of rain and wind, which causes a whole lot of flooding around Tinker Creek.  Buckets of water.  Trees washing away.  Boulders rolling downstream.  Very Old Testament stuff.

Don't they look happy?

It was raining when I woke up this morning.  Thunder.  Lightning.  The whole shebang.  We got the kids up, dressed, fed, and out the door to the bus stop.  By 7:27 a.m., they were on their way to another year of academic advancement.  And by 8:30 a.m., I was back at home, eating some Burger King.  It was a relatively painless transition from summer freedom to autumn drudgery.

And I did the good parent thing, as well.  My wife and I made chocolate chip butterscotch cookies for my son and oatmeal butterscotch cookies for my daughter.  The whole house smells like a Mrs. Fields kiosk at the mall.

I will be at the bus stop when my son gets home in a couple of hours.  My daughter has driver's ed this afternoon., so I will be teaching at the university by the time she returns from her first day of tenth grade.

It's still raining.  The thunder and lightning have pretty much subsided, but I haven't seen any ark floating down the street yet, although the day is still fairly young.  I have an evening of teaching composition ahead of me.  Essays to workshop.  Journal entries to write.  Knowledge to impart.  You know, the whole professor thing.

It has been a good day.  School bus. Cookies.  I even got to go back to bed for a little while this morning after my sausage croissants.  Days are never perfect, but this gets pretty damn close.  I'm sure that my son will come home, watch some inappropriate videos on my iPad, maybe find some inappropriate cartoons or pictures.  Life has a way of getting in the way of perfection.

Saint Marty will just eat some cookies and pretend that he's the best father in the world.  At least for today.

Septmeber 8: Working Late, Trade-Offs, Juidth Minty, "Walking with the Bear," Adventures of Stickman

For years he [Ives] found working late dispiriting, for he lived to see his kids.  On his desk, among the piles of mechanicals, memoranda, purchase orders, magazines, and page proofs, and upon his walls were a number of photographs:  a shot of himself and his father and brother and sister taken years ago in front of their house on Carroll Street; a picture of Robert, ten years of age, shaking hands with Pope John XXIII during a general audience at the Vatican, "the greatest moment of my son's life," Ives used to think; and a third and favorite shot, of himself and Annie and the kids when they were small, about 1956, posed in the park before Grant's Tomb...

Above all, Ives is a family man.  Nothing gives him more pleasure than spending time with his wife and kids.  Working late is something that fuels his melancholic disposition.  It means time away from the people and things that give his life meaning.  Work, for Ives, is simply a way to provide for his family.  Work isn't his passion, although he enjoys it.  It is a necessary distraction.

Today was the first day of school for my daughter (a high school freshman this year) and son (a second grader now).  It was also my first day back at work since my sister's funeral.  After I dropped my kids off at the bus stop, I drove to the medical center.  I must admit that walking into the medical office where I work filled me with more than a little dread.  Not because I don't like the people with whom I work.  I just didn't feel ready to face nine hours of phones and patients.

I survived, but now I'm in my office at the university, waiting to attend a reading being given by visiting writer Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams.  This morning, I was looking forward to hearing her.  Now, sitting in my office, I find myself simply wanting to jump in my car and go home.  Like Ives, as I sit at my desk, I'm thinking about my daughter, who texted me that she was "really tired."  About my son, who, according to my wife, had a great day.  About my wife, who seemed more than a little down for some reason when I spoke with her on the phone.

Any time I take time away from my family, I feel guilty.  Yes, I will enjoy Leslie Jamison this evening, but I should be at home, listening to my daughter tell me about high school and my son rambling about his classmates.  Guilt.  My wife is upset about something, but I will not see her for at least another couple of hours.  More guilt.

Happiness for me is always a matter of trade-offs.  When I met poet Judith Minty once a long time ago, she struck me as a supremely happy, successful woman.  Confident in the choices she had made with her life.  Yet, I knew that she had made sacrifices, for her work, for her art.  She had lived a life of trade-offs, too.

This evening, Saint Marty isn't sure he made the right choice.

Walking with the Bear

by: Judith Minty

New Snow, and I follow
the dim path through woods, sink
into silence.  Meadow vole, squirrel,
snowshoe hare, fox:
my tracks walk next to theirs.
If it still falls tonight, by dawn
none of us have traveled here.

Adventures of STICKMAN

September 3: Belching Lessons, First Day of School, Prayer

While I was walking toward the door, old Phoebe said, "Holden!" and I turned around.

She was sitting way up in bed.  She looked so pretty.  "I'm taking belching lessons from this girl, Phyllis Margulies," she said.  "Listen."

One of Salinger's greatest strengths in Catcher is his ability to really capture young characters.  Holden's sister, Phoebe, reminds me of my kids.  My daughter can burp like a pro.  All she needs is a can of Diet Coke.  My son, on the other hand, can fart with the best of them.  Put both of my kids in the same room, and it will be like watching the sequel to Bridesmaids.

It was the first day of school today.  I was lucky enough to be able to see my kids off at the bus stop this morning.  My son started kindergarten.  Seeing his face in the window of the bus, waving, nearly killed me.  He looked small and more than a little afraid.  That's the hardest part of the job of being a parent.  Letting go.  I've never been great at letting go of anything.  If there were cribs for twelve-year-olds, I'd have one for my daughter.

Both of my childrren came home from school unharmed.  My daughter had no homework.  My son had a form for a magazine subscription.  Yes, we're already being solicited for money on day one.  Tomorrow, I'm expecting a permission slip for a $10,000 class trip to Paris or Poland.

Yes, I'm very thankful for the end of this day.  Oh, and I also had my first full day back to work.

Dear Big Guy in Charge (and I'm not talking abouut Bill Gates),

Thanks for a successful day.  It's been long, but we all survived.  I'm not going to take up a lot of Your time tonight.  You know all the things in my heart right now, anyway.

So, thanks, and could You do it again tomorrow?

Thanks.

Your loving child,

Saint Marty

My son saying "goodbye"