April 23: End of the School Year, "Pointe," Classic Saint Marty

I am tired.  I've been working all day, but, as usual, it feels as if I haven't accomplished anything at all.  Grading, planning, grading again.  It's almost the end of the school year, and I--a contingent professor working two full-time jobs--am entering the most difficult two weeks of the semester.  It's a tough time for full-timers.  It's doubly difficult for part-timers.

I'm not complaining.  I am simply tired.  That's all.  In two weeks' time, I will be at the point of near exhaustion, but I will be done and ready to go into summer hibernation.  Maybe do some poetry readings.  Work on some new poems.

Speaking of poems:



Pointe

by:  Martin Achatz

They're wrecked after a year,
each second my daughter spent
on her toes creased
into the wood box
with sweat and blister,
her first steps, panicked
lurches across the dance floor,
as if she were on the deck
of the Titanic as it listed,
snapped, sent her skidding
to the black Atlantic.
I wanted to save her
from gravity, have her grip
my fingers the way she did
as a baby, tethered to me
like a lifeboat, each move
an exercise in balance,
the ground beneath her feet
as unstable as lake ice
in May.  I still have her
first shoes, small, white
as bleached driftwood.
They're reminders of how
she once depended on me
to rescue her from each
drowning stumble.  The pink
slippers sit on her dresser now
along with stones she found
on the shores of Superior,
a wrist band for treading water
ten minutes longer than anyone
else at Bible camp last summer,
and medals, ribbons for ballet.
If I close my eyes, I see her,
mid-air or mid-water,
clumsy one-year-old,
graceful almost teen,
her limbs stretched
toward me or away,
wanting to be scooped up, saved,
or wanting to strike out
for swifter currents,
higher leaps,
deeper, bluer waters.



A couple years ago, I was closing in on the end of the school year, as well.  My sister was in a nursing home, and I was recovering from a low blood sugar:

April 13, 2015:  Visiting My Sister, Low Blood Sugar, "Ives" Dip

You'll pardon me if my thoughts seem a little disjointed or non-jointed this evening.  I just got my son to bed, and my blood sugar is hovering around 45 at the moment.  For those readers who are not diabetic or are unfamiliar with normal blood glucose levels, most non-diabetics have blood sugars between 70 and 110.  Hence, my slightly incoherent coherence right now.

I went to visit my sister in the nursing home this evening.  She was in good spirits, or she was faking it really well.  The latest news on her health front is that she will be going to Mayo Clinic for her parathyroid surgery.  The social worker at the nursing home is working on transportation (an ambulance) and insurance issues.

Frankly, I don't know how my sister can stand being in that place, not that she has a choice.  There are people in wheelchairs roaming the hallways, moaning and screaming.  My sister keeps her room door closed to discourage unwanted visitors.  The walls are painted cinder block, and the air is perfumed with the scents of urine and feces at times.

Which brings me to my Ives dip question:

Will my sister ever come home from the nursing home?

And the answer is:

". . . Just remember, if you don't take care of business, no one else will.  Do you really think God gives a shit?"

As a matter of fact, I DO think God gives a shit.  I have to.  I know that my sister isn't walking out of that place without some serious medical intervention, but I believe God IS watching out for her.  If He wasn't, she would already be dead.


Saint Marty's blood sugar is coming up.  He can actually focus on the computer screen now.

Good advice this evening...

April 24: Rainy Sunday, Laptops, Classic Saint Marty

Rainy Sunday.

I just got done with church a little while ago, and now I'm settling down to a day's work of grading and reading.  Lots and lots of grading and reading.  If that was all I had to do this week, I'd be in good shape.  However, because I'm a contingent professor (a temporary, 23-year employee of the university), I also have a full-time job to worry about.  I've said it before:  if I were a tenured full-timer, I don't know what I'd do with all of the extra time I'd have.

My 15-year-old daughter is currently breathing down my neck because I am using my laptop.  It is the only computer in our household, and she wants to play Minecraft with her friends.  I can feel her stare drilling into the back of my head as I sit typing this post.  She is also sighing a lot.

The sad thing is that my day isn't going to get much better after I'm done blogging.  I will be moving from one pile of papers/exams to another.  For the next week, that will be my life.  I'm not complaining.  I love teaching, and I love my daughter.  They both drive me a little crazy sometimes.  That's all.

Three years ago, I was preoccupied with my daughter, as well:

April 25, 2013:  Your Prayers, My Daughter, Last Night

"Well.  Go to sleep.  Give Mother a kiss.  Did you say your prayers?"

Holden's mother appears for a very short time at the end of The Catcher in the Rye.  She's tucking Holden's little sister, Phoebe, in for the night.  Even though, earlier in the novel, Holden says his parents aren't religious at all, Holden's mother asks Phoebe, "Did you say your prayers?"  It's a casual question, like "Did you do your homework?" or "Did you brush your teeth?"  Yet, it highlights a spirituality in the Caulfield home that Holden denies earlier.


Last night, I was pretty tired.  Alright, I was friggin' exhausted.  I was trying to make it through American Idol, and I simply couldn't do it.  I surrendered to sleep at around 9:30 p.m.  Some time later, my twelve-year-old daughter came bouncing into my bedroom and jumped into bed beside me, snuggling into my armpit.

"Daddy?" she said.

I jumped and, without opening my eyes, said, "What, sweetie?"

"Are you going to say prayers with me?"

I sort of grunted.  I sleep with a mask on to blot out light.  I could smell her hair, which was still wet from her shower.  She uses a cherry blossom shampoo.

"Please, Daddy," she said.  "You can say short prayers."

I've prayed with my daughter or for my daughter or over my daughter every day since her birth.  We have developed a fairly complicated prayer routine, praying for family and friends, sick people, cousins, and teachers.  We even pray for her pediatrician.  Then we sing "Hush, Little Baby" three times to her.  We finish it off with the "be-attitudes," starting "Be a good girl for Jesus, Mary, Joseph, you guardian angel, the king and queen angels, the duke and duchess angels, knight angels and worker angels..."  The angel list goes on, developed in detail since my daughter was a toddler.  It takes a good five to seven minutes if the prayer routine is performed in full.

I didn't have the energy for all the prayers last night, so I said short prayers, which is a truncated version of the standard prayers.  General blessings for everybody.  "Hush, Little Baby" once.  And then the be-attitudes, skipping some of the lesser angels.

This morning, I read that little snippet of dialogue from Holden's mother, and I realized how blessed I am to have a daughter who wants to pray with me.  My daughter can't go to sleep until we've gone through some ritual of blessing for the people in her life.  She reminds me how important daily prayer is.  It's not like brushing teeth for her.  It's a completion thing.  Her day isn't over until she has a few words with God.

This post may seem sentimental.  I don't care.  I'm proud of the fact that I have a prayerful, caring daughter.

It's one of Saint Marty's greatest blessings.

I didn't say my daughter was perfect...

March 28: Another Fellow, Retire to Bedlam, Union Talks

"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who overheard him:  "my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas.  I'll retire to Bedlam."

Scrooge on Bob Cratchit, his eternally abused employee.  Scrooge can't fathom how Bob, on the paltry salary Scrooge pays him, can even contemplate celebrating Christmas.  Considering the size of Bob's family and Bob's wages, Scrooge is justified in questioning Bob's sanity.  Of course, Scrooge is a major factor in the Cratchit family's squalor.

When I sat down to clear out my university e-mail inbox this morning, I looked at some communiques from the person sitting in on the contract negotiations for the adjuncts at the school.  We adjuncts are new members of the professors' union.  (When I say new, I mean new.  After an almost four or five year process, the adjuncts finally voted to join the local chapter of AAUP last semester.)  Now, perhaps I was being naive.  I thought the university administrators would recognize how underpaid and under-compensated the adjuncts truly are and would have no problem with a few concessions (salary bump, family tuition wavers--basically stuff that all other employees of the university receive on a consistent basis).

Well, the e-mails were quite an education.  The administration is not interested in salary increases.  In fact, it left the adjuncts completely out of the salary-side of the negotiations, which could mean a pay cut for us.  The "benefits" the administration offered were basically the benefits the adjuncts already had before we joined the union (even taking away a few of our current perks).  So, at this point, the adjuncts stand to gain absolutely nothing from the contract negotiations.

I think I might be a little too much like Bob Cratchit, who accepts his employer's abuse as a matter of course.  In some crazy way, Bob is even grateful to Scrooge.  That's messed up.  However, I'm beginning to feel a little like Bob in relation to the university.  I don't even get a Christmas goose from the school.

If you can't tell, I'm a little pissed this morning.  I'm not even sure the professors will support the adjuncts' cause that much.  The vote to include us sparked some pretty intense debate among the full-timers.  They were worried about losing their piece of the pie, if you get my meaning.  Most of them weren't willing to share their side of the sandbox.  OK, enough bad metaphors.  You get the idea.

Therefore, I'm much less optimistic about the whole future of the adjuncts at the university.  I'm beginning to believe the only thing we gained by joining the professors' union is the obligation to walk a picket line if the professors don't get what they want.

Saint Marty'll retire to Bedlam.

Ready to join the picket line?