June 11: "The Student," Summer Vacation, "Poetry Gardening"

Billy Collins writes about . . . 

The Student

by: Billy Collins

She made asterisks

next to passages she liked,

little stars that kept shining

after she closed the book.

Today was the last day of school for my student son.  Summer vacation has officially begun, so he won't be annotating any books for the next three or so months.

Me?  I worked on my poetry manuscript again, among all my other tasks.  Today, I organized poems, created sections, and proofread.  It was a little anxiety-inducing to say the least.  (Reminder:  I have been living with this book for over 20 years.  That's almost as long as my daughter has been alive and five years longer than my son has been on this planet.)  The floor of my office was a minefield of poetry for a good portion of the afternoon.

However, I'm happy with the results.  Maybe "happy" is too strong a word.  It's more like I'm satisfied with my work.  It holds together.  Makes sense.  Feels done.  However, I have been at this point before and then worked another half a decade on various poems.  (One poem in particular took me ten years to complete.)

Saint Marty is cautiously optimistic, which is not an emotion he experiences often.

Poetry Gardening

by: Martin Achatz

Poems spread across the floor, 

sprouts and dandelions

waiting for me to start 

weeding.

July 26: Life in Turmoil, Control Issues, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Very warm day.  Close to 90 degrees.  The kind of day that should come with heat warnings for small children, pets, and old people.  Of course, faced with these temperatures, I decided to go for a run around noon.  Two miles.  I didn't run the whole way.  In fact, I walked a lot.  By the time I got home, it looked as though I'd gotten caught in a rainstorm.

It's that time of year, after July 4 and before Labor Day, when the summer already seems over, even though there's still a whole month left.  I have to start thinking about teaching in the fall.  Order my books.  Put together my syllabi.  The fact that so much seems up in the air right now isn't helping.  My sister at the University of Michigan hospital will be undergoing treatments down there for the next six months.  My sister from Washington has extended her stay in the Upper Peninsula to "help out."  She and her kids are now staying until the beginning of January.  My daughter is starting high school, and I'm going to apply for promotion at the college when the semester starts.

If you are a new reader to this blog, I need to explain something:  I don't do well with life in turmoil.  I prefer my days to be predictable:  same meal times, same work hours, same teaching hours, same bedtime.  My life is not going to be like that, at least until January 2.  If you're thinking I have control issues, you would be correct.

In a week's time, I will have my summer vacation.  No work.  No teaching.  For the past couple of years, we've gone to a resort downstate.  Too expensive this year.  Times are tight.  So, we're scaling back.  A night in a hotel with a pool and water slide.  Dinner at a nice restaurant.  Perhaps a boat cruise.  That's it.  I would prefer something a little more...distant.  Removed.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired three years ago, when things were very different in my life.  My sister was healthy.  My brother was still alive.  My daughter wasn't a teenager.  I was still working at my old job.  And I wasn't teaching freshman composition in the fall.  Ah, the good old days.

July 26,  2012:  The Clock, an Icicle, Dislocation of Time

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped.  Twelve!  It was past two when he went to bed.  The clock was wrong.  An icicle must have got into the works.  Twelve!

This little paragraph highlights something that has always fascinated me about A Christmas Carol.  There seems to be some sort of dislocation of time that happens throughout the course of the novel.  When Jacob Marley predicts the arrival of the three Ghosts of Christmas to Scrooge, Marley says that the phantoms will appear on three consecutive nights.  The first at one o'clock in the morning on the following night, the second on the next night at one o'clock again, and the third at midnight on the third night.  When Scrooge wakes up for the Ghost of Christmas Past, he becomes completely disoriented with time because it appears he has slept through an entire day into the night.

This time warp never gets that much attention from anybody.  Readers prefer to focus on the more ghostly elements of the story.  Time warps are the thing of science fiction and fantasy.  Scrooge is not Luke Skywalker or James T. Kirk.  He's a Victorian businessman who happens to have fallen into some kind of wormhole of the space/time continuum, past and present and future coexisting in one place.  Even the twelve nights of Christmas are compressed into a single evening by the Ghost of Christmas Present.

This time dislocation happens to most of us.  I have reached that point in the summer where I look at the calendar and say, "Where the hell has the summer gone?"  Time seems to fly by like a hungry bat chasing a mosquito.  Fall is looming, and I haven't even had my summer vacation yet.  I'm not ready for the leaves to start changing color, but in a few weeks, the green maples will start transitioning to yellow.  Time is passing.  Pretty soon, the Christmas holidays will be upon us again.

I'm particularly aware of the passage of time this summer because of my eleven-year-old daughter who seems to have blossomed into this young lady overnight.  She's still goofy.  She still watches cartoons and the Disney Channel, but in the last few months, she has become willowy and beautiful.  She doesn't sit in a chair anymore.  She lounges.  And she has a friend, who's a boy, who follows her around like Lassie followed Timmy.

I'm experiencing a dislocation of time.  I'm still in May, and it's almost the end of July.  In my mind, my daughter is still three-years-old, sitting in my lap while I read Charlotte's Web to her.  She's actually eleven-going-on-twenty and is starting middle school this fall.  I'm still in the 1980s, when I thought Cyndi Lauper was cooler than Madonna and mullets were never going out of style.  That's how behind-the-times I am.

Saint Marty needs to join the present. or he's never going to make it to the future.  Ahead warp factor five, Mr. Sulu.

Not too fast, Mr. Sulu

Confessions of Saint Marty

July 19: My Daughter at Bible Camp, Feeling Unneeded, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Just got back from dropping off my 14-year-old daughter at Bible camp.  She will be there for a full week, slapping bugs, swimming, making friends, and, hopefully, learning a few things about God along the way.

She's been going to this camp for almost six years now.  It's always one of the highlights of the summer for her.  Yet, I always get a little melancholy when I drop her off.  I think it has something to do with letting go.  I'm not great at letting go of anything.  Books.  Shirts that haven't fit me for five years.  Past copies of Entertainment Weekly (I recently cleared out the magazine holder in the bathroom and found almost a year's worth of back issues).

I'm proud that my daughter is so independent.  She can make friends with anyone, and, when I pick her up next Saturday, I'm sure every person in the camp is going to be hugging her, entering her contact information in their phones, and taking selfies with her.  That's just the kind of kid she is.

However, driving home this afternoon, I started thinking about things I will never experience again, like picking out cute little dresses for her or braiding her hair after a bath or those hugs and kisses she used to give me so freely.  My daughter is officially a teenager.  No longer my little princess, wearing tiaras and letting me read her Charlotte's Web or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  My days of experiencing those little daughter things are gone.

Of course, my son in only six, so I have a lot of little boy things to look forward to.  In a couple of years, I'll be dropping him off at the same place for elementary Bible camp.  And I will probably have just as difficult a time letting go of him.  Pretty soon, he's going to be asking to borrow my car.

I'm feeling incredibly old and, in some ways, unneeded.  I have raised my daughter well, I think.  Given her everything she needs to succeed.  She knows that she is smart, kind, and important (yes, I stole that from The Help).  Now that she is spreading her wings, I want to tether her to the ground for a little while longer.  Being a parent is a strange occupation.  Just when you think you've figured out how to do the job well, you're out of a job.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty, from three years ago, focuses on another perennial parental concern:  summer vacation.

July 19, 2012:  Tremendous Family to Provide For, Tight Times, Cheapness

"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.

"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.

"Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?" pursued the Phantom.

"I don't think I have," said Scrooge.  "I am afraid I have not.  Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"

"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.

"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.

This little exchange between Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present seems pretty trivial, an offhand joke to lighten up the proceedings.  After all, the previous stave had ended on a pretty serious note with Scrooge basically smothering the Ghost of Christmas Past.  The current Phantom is decidedly more jovial, resembling the Victorian version of Santa Claus.  Yet, this Ghost also touches upon one of the weightier themes of the novel:  the plight of the poor and working class.  Bob Cratchit has a tremendous family to provide for, and he does it on the measly salary Scrooge pays him.

In election years, I get a little annoyed with all the rhetoric that's thrown around.  For instance, this year, one of the hot button issues in the United States is unemployment.  The tactic that annoys me the most is blaming the unemployed for being unemployed.  For the most part, people who are unemployed aren't lazy freeloaders, looking to live off welfare and unemployment checks and federal assistance.  No, most unemployed people want to work to provide for their tremendous families (as Bob Cratchit does).

You may be wondering where I'm going with this discussion.  Times are pretty tight for my family right now.  I don't teach during the summer at the university, and I depend on a lot of overtime at my other job to make it through June, July, and August.  My wife isn't employed at the moment (not from lack of trying to find a job), so these twelve-hour work days are making me really cranky.

The hardest part, for me, about not having money is disappointing my wife and kids.  I have a vacation coming up the first week of August.  We're not going anywhere.  We're not doing anything.  My daughter thinks I'm cheap.  She doesn't get that it has nothing to do with cheapness and everything to do with her mother's unemployment checks running out.  And no checks coming from the university.  And the checks from my other job barely paying the summer bills.

I don't need a millionaire President of the United States telling me how he's going to make my life better.  I don't need millionaire senators and representatives telling me how they're going to provides jobs for everyone.  I don't need a millionaire governor telling me how he's going to control state labor unions.  I don't care about any of that shit.

Here's what I need:  a job, one job, that pays my bills.  That pays for my daughter's dance lessons.  That maybe buys me a good book every once in a while.  That allows me to spend time with my family--good, quality time.  That lets me write without feeling like I should be doing something else, something more productive.  That allows me to sleep in past 4 a.m. every once in a while.  That makes me feel good about myself.

That helps Saint Marty provide for his tremendous family.

Does anybody out in blog world really care?

Confessions of Saint Marty

August 6: A Blanket, Mountain Grand Lodge, Tired Kids

"That's just what we need," said Avery.  "A blanket."

"Of course it is," replied Lurvy.  And he spread the blanket across the sideboards of the truck so that it was like a little tent.  The children sat in the shade, under the blanket, and felt better.

After lunch, they stretched out and fell asleep.

Yes, kids get wrapped up in new experiences.  Avery and Fern are exhausted from their morning at the Fair.  Riding the rides.  Eating the food.  Ferris wheel.  Corn dogs and popcorn and cotton candy.  After so much excitement, they do what all kids do.  They fall asleep.

I am blogging tonight from the Grand Mountain Lodge in downstate Michigan.  It's a beautiful place.  A ski resort in the winter.  In the summer, there's a Tirolean themed water park with mock chalets and an avalanche of water called the Splatterhorn (or something like that).

It took us most of the day to get to the resort.  It was a pleasant drive with lots of sun and no wrong turns.   That's right.  We didn't have to pull over to the side of the road and dissolve into tears because we were lost for the fifth time.  In fact, we actually arrived ahead of schedule.

The kids, of course, immediately changed into their swimsuits.  After three hours of water slides, I was ready to head back to the room.  I was sore in places where I haven't been sore since the senior prom.  My son, daughter, and nephew complained all the way back to the room, saying they weren't tired and wanted to stay longer.

After showers and pizza, my daughter soon looked like this:

Yes, it was like she spent the whole day at the Fair with Henry Fussy.  She hasn't made a sound for the last two hours.

In his childhood summers. E. B. White used to go to a cabin on a lake.  He would take long nature walks, swim, and write.  Even as a kid, White had an idea of what he wanted to be when he grew up.  I'm sure, on quiet evenings, when the crickets started their nightly serenade, White would climb into bed and listen while the moon and stars promenaded across the heavens.

Saint Marty loves summer vacation.

June 19: Vacation, New Cartoon, First Communion

Yesterday, I obviously took a break from the computer.  Actually, I didn't have much of a choice.  My wife had a baby shower to attend, my daughter went fishing, and I took a nap with my son.  That was my morning and afternoon.  Then I had to go to my niece's first communion at church.  After that, it was a first communion party for my niece and a graduation party for my nephew.  I had no time at all to even think about blogging.  Well, actually, I thought about it, but sitting down at a computer was out of the realm of possibility.

I did, however, have a chance to draw a new installment of The Confessions of Saint Marty, which you will see at the end of this post.  The cartoon was the only creative thing I managed to do yesterday.  However, it was a nice little vacation.  But, to make up for my absence, I have two posts for today, both cartoons.  I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoy drawing them.  I don't often have a reason for sitting down with my drawing notebook.  My comic strip gives me a reason.

Saint Marty contemplates communion.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 3: Rambling, Phone Call, Last Day of School

Today is the last day of school for my daughter, who is in the fourth grade.  In previous years, I've always experienced a pang of loss on this day.  My daughter has always had great teachers.  This year has been a little different, and, to make a long story short, I'm actually relieved the school year is coming to an end.  My daughter, who usually cries when she leaves a teacher, said to me last night, "I can hardly wait for school to be over."

I'm friends with the assistant principal at my daughter's school, so I left a voice mail for him to give me a call yesterday.  He just called, and I expressed my concerns about my daughter's teacher.  Now, before you start thinking that I'm one of those parents who thinks his kid can do no wrong, let me set you straight.  I'm NOT.  I also think elementary school teachers are some of the hardest-working, least-appreciated people in the world.  I have nothing but respect for anyone who volunteers to be locked up with a room-full of elementary-school-age kids for eight or nine hours a day.  It takes a special breed of person, and I am not of that breed.

The upshot of my conversation with my friend was that he was not surprised.  I received the impression that several people were aware of this teacher's erratic behavior, and it is being dealt with.  I'm greatly relieved.  I don't want another class of children to have to deal with the situation.

Now, anyone reading this post probably doesn't give a shit about what I just wrote.  You're thinking to yourself, "This man is a complete egomaniac if he thinks I care about any of this.  He's just rambling because he hasn't written a new poem and doesn't have anything of substance to discuss."  That would be an accurate assessment of the situation.  I don't have a lot on my mind today.  Therefore, I'm talking about my daughter's last day of school.  Deal with it.

SH is coming in two days.  My daughter is on summer vacation.  And I have nothing entertaining to say. 

Saint Marty's world.  Welcome to it.

To make up for this post, here's a great summer vacation video from the Go-Gos:

May 29: Blessed Richard Thirkeld

It's Saturday night, and I'm sitting on my mother's back porch watching my 20-month-old son push his trucks around. My son is very blond. As the weather has warmed and he has spent more time in the sun, his hair has lightened even more. He hasn't gotten his first haircut yet, so the back of his head is a nest of baby curls. It's so long now that he's often mistaken for a girl when we take him to the store or a restaurant. I'm OK with that, but other of my family members tend to get upset by such gender confusion.

It's a lazy night. Aside from church tomorrow morning, we really have no other obligation s this weekend. I like this languid time, when I don't have anything to do or any place to go. It gives me a chance to watch my son and be amazed at the power of his tiny legs, the dimples of his elbows, the embers of his cheeks (he's cutting a tooth). It's nearly June, and in just four months, he's going to be two-years-old. It's true what they say about the passage of time. When you're young, time seems to crawl by at about the pace of an ice age. As you get older, time goes faster and faster. I can't believe my son has been a part of my life for almost two years already. I can't believe my daughter is moving into the double digits this year.

Watching my son and daughter just be themselves makes me want to live forever. I want to be there to see them graduate from high school and college. I want to be there when their hearts get broken for the first time. I want to be there when they fall in love. I want to be there when they become parents. I want to be there to put bandages on all their scraped knees. I want to be there to fix everything that gets ripped, torn, bruised, or broken in their lives.

That's the dream of every parent, isn't it? Every parent wants his/her son(s) and/or daughter(s) to grow up completely unscathed by life's twists and turnarounds, by the brutality of the world. No matter how hard I try to shield my children, however, I know cruelty and disappointment will somehow slither into their lives. There's going to be bullies at school. There's going to be failed exams. There's going to be prom dramas and car accidents. If I'm lucky, that's all there's going to be. There are other specters that lurk in my parenting nightmares: drugs, teenage pregnancy, school shootings, STDs, sexual violence. Don't even get me started on mental illness.

That is why, for me, the prospect of my not being around to pick up the pieces and put Humpty back together again for my kids is terrifying. On nights like this, when time seems frozen in a moment of absolute summer ease, the heat sitting on my skin like a winter coat and my children happy being children, I want the world to stop. I want it to last forever.

Richard Thirkeld, the patron of the day, stands out in my mind for one thing and one thing only. My book says, from the time he became a priest in 1579, he "prayed constantly for the privilege of suffering martyrdom for the Faith." He prayed for death. Now, aside from a couple of bad nights that involved a little too much tequila, I can say, without reservation, that I have never asked God to kill me. Richard eventually received a death sentence with "evangelical joy." He was hanged and drawn and quartered. Not something I'd volunteer for. But he took it like a third grader takes the final bell signalling the start of summer vacation.

I can't stop my children from growing up. Eventually, my son will have his baby curls lopped off. Probably sooner than later. Eventually, some boy will want to take my daughter to a movie or dance. More later than sooner if I have anything to say about it. Time moves forward, usually at a gallop. But, sometimes, time slows to the speed of a Popsicle melting on a hot, summer night. I can't embrace the eventuality of death, the way Richard Thirkeld did. It's not in me right now.

I can embrace my son crawling into my lap, exhausted by heat and play. He leans his head against my chest, twirls his blond hair with his fingers. He stares out at nothing, blissed with the comfort of my breaths, the proximity of daddy. For him, this is eternity. It will last forever, like June, July, and August for a third grader.

I hold him, feel the slow, even beats of his heart against my fingertips. For this one, perfect moment, we are all happy, safe, together.