The final slog

I can't believe it is early May already. Flowers and trees are profusely blooming. We are still celebrating Easter. But lately it is hard to get out of bed, hard to focus on what people are saying, hard to start or finish things on the to do list, and hard to respond to the needs of the people I love.

Part of my difficulty with these tasks and others is just plain exhaustion. I've been burning the proverbial candle at both ends for too many weeks - late nights, early mornings, long, busy days. And then when I snap at the kids or forget an appointment or realize I have not communicated clearly enough to students, I taunt myself with a wavering vision of what should have been, a dream version of life that serves only to drive home a sense of failure in the immediate, disappointing reality.

And the other night I committed the folly of self-sabotage by staying up late to finish a novel. Because it was good and because I haven't read a novel in too many weeks and because reading is my painkiller of choice. It was Leif Enger's Virgil Wander, which was absorbing, although not a "you've got to read this" type of book (even though I wasn't able to put it down for three hours last night). It's the story of a man who accidentally drives into a lake in frozen Minnesota - an inland lake or Lake Superior? - and survives. The book starts with him leaving the hospital. He has minor brain damage which causes him to forget adjectives and experience other short-term memory lapses. The accident also causes him to rethink the way he lives. A shortcoming of the book might be that the reader never really has a clear grasp of what Virgil was like before the crash, just that he is different in some slight way. He owns a small, independent village movie theater in a down and out former mining town, in addition to working as a town clerk. The novel follows his recovery and his interactions with his neighbors and some newcomers, including the Swedish father of an old friend who disappeared in a flying accident. The book begins slowly, but picks up steam as you begin to care about the characters and their relationships develop. Enger is a good writer, and the characters are mostly appealing, except for the antagonist, a slimy guy who may or may not be the source of the town's bad luck. All is not woe, however; many relationships are begun or strengthened over the course of the year as Virgil gains new perspective on life. A few characters might be just a bit unbelievable in their eccentricities (the sheriff and his fat cat, for instance, which can lower car windows) but most are likable and find themselves climbing out of difficulty rather than into it. So although the town is covered by a dark storm cloud for much of the action, the novel ends on a light note.  What I liked most about it was the way the characters love their home - a sense of community that often seems missing, even though my feelings of exile and homesickness are primarily self-imposed because I refuse to love this place. Or does it refuse to be loved?  In fact, in many ways, the "village" where we live (as it calls itself) is the inverse of Virgil's hometown. We have a small, thriving movie theater, a well-paid, under-worked police force, and perpetual sunshine that hides a dark side.

Reading Enger's book was a bit of bibliotherapy - but also contributed to the problem of avoiding work that needs to be done. It is easy to diagnose errors. I am doing too much and therefore doing nothing well. I have no patience with my middle school track team, whose members have been bonkers lately. They don't want to RUN.  This is TRACK.  Their parents are basically paying for glorified babysitting. I don't know if they expect their children to be better runners by the end of the season - in two blessed weeks - but it is not going to happen. Last year was a better year because we had some older students who actually were motivated to improve and win some races and, more importantly, set a good example of following directions without whining. And we do still have a couple of naturally good runners, but they do other sports and show up to practice only occasionally. It has been a challenge, for sure.

I am also somewhat disappointed with the final essays turned in my college students and am feeling disillusioned. Here I have a difficult time diagnosing whether the failure is mine or theirs. Some of the papers I have been grading are so badly written that I feel no culpability because these reveal a need for remedial writing help.  But other papers are so vague and general in their analysis of an essay, poem, or book not assigned in class that I wonder if I have failed to equip students with the vocabulary they need to talk about nature writing. Do I blather on so much in class that they don't know how to read closely and look for details that support ideas?  On the bright side, many students were gracious and thankful when they turned in their final exams. Maybe they just haven't had enough practice in literary analysis, and my expectations are too high. I have to remind myself this is a general education course, and most of the students are not literature majors. On the bright side, the students who chose to do a creative project instead of analyzing an unassigned text turned in creative, introspective poems and essays that showed thoughtfulness and insight. They had to write an explication of their own work, if they chose to write a creative piece, and these short essays often showed a deeper understanding of the genre. They also were more honest and engaged with ideas and the places described.

As I finish grading, I am rethinking course design for the fall term. I won't completely start from scratch, but I've ordered a new text from Library of America, instead of using the Norton Anthology of Nature Writing, which I liked, but it is expensive, and it is available online, so students always had their laptops up with the excuse of looking at their texts, but I suspect this isn't often the case. I read a lot of essays full of cliches like "This author thinks we need to be one with nature" or generalizations like "This author thinks we should have a relationship with nature." I think I need to spend a class period practicing marking up a text, so that we practice in class finding a passage that answers a question, instead of asking questions and hoping for someone to respond without really teaching them to go to the text for the answer. I also need to be more systematic in the way we discuss what these authors convey about nature and place and focus on whys and hows.

Writing this down has helped me think more hopefully.  Or maybe taking a break to read a book was just what I needed to refocus.  The end of the busy season is nearly here, and soon we will be welcoming the college kids home. Spring may be a little late arriving in my heart, but I feel a little less frozen.