Release the penguins! A score for the start of classes

I am in my last year as chair of the chemistry department, I'm also chairing a major committee for the college. The last three weeks have been...packed? I ran across this music meme again last week and realized it's the perfect score to accompany the start of the semester for a department chair (or faculty member, or support staff, or student, or parent...the slope of the ramp from summer to fall is steep for us all!).

When the day gets chaotic (and they all have), I visualize the score, and find my spot on it. Before school began its advice to "keep both feet together" and to "cool the timpani with a small fan" reminded me to plant my feet, stand my ground and attend to self-care and care for my students and faculty. Of course, nothing goes as planned, as the "light explosives now....and.....now" portended.  But now the saxes have moved downstage (where hopefully they will calm down. Honestly, I didn't mean to double book their rehearsal room and I'm so sorry the piccolos drove them out with that shrill arpeggio. If your hearing doesn't return soon, do let me know.)

"Play ball!" and the first day of classes was upon us, even though I still needed a relief pitcher for Thursday afternoon organic lab, and yes, a tempo of 788 beats per minutes seems about how we usually play this section, why do you ask?  Of course, two measures later you can certainly understand why I've "gradually become agitated"given that metronome setting.

But here we are, at the end of the second week, and I'm relieved to say I've reached the measure where I'm instructed to "release the penguins." Watch out, they've gotten quite grumpy cooped up in my office these last two weeks, but once on the loose, not my problem any more.

A page from the Book of Imaginary Beings

Not a chronophage, but a beetle of unknown

provenance. Still, this is how I imagine them.

My office is infested with chronophages. Creatures that gnaw at my calendar, leaving it, and me, a shell.  It's rather like the mouse that found the remains of the Halloween candy I had stored on the shelf in my office, and ate the one remaining Milky Way bar, leaving behind (a) all the Skittles and (b) a nearly intact wrapper.  I hadn't even realized it was empty until I picked it up. (And what does this tell me about Skittles, if even the mouse eschews them?)

The surest sign of this infestation is that while my to-do list and appointments list grow exponentially longer, time remains unrelentingly inelastic.

I'm quite sure the phages got in through my email. Every time I opened it up, there were more requests for my time. Which will take me some time to find some time for, eating time long before they land on the calendar.  They slip between pages of papers on my desk.  I'm sure I saw one fall out when I picked up that folder of problem sets to grade. Once loose in my office, they rapidly spread to the phone, laying eggs in my voice mail.  A few lurk just outside my door, hitching a ride on my teaching bag should I be so careless as to set it down.

I fear that I might have transported them home, as I scoured the calendar for a 2-hour block to go grocery shopping for the impending holiday.  Not here, dishwasher being delivered — maybe. Not there, evening event.

The plague of chronophages is insidious. None of the requests in my email, or knocks at my door are unreasonable, nor is anyone asking who I would not wish to accommodate.  As they say about traffic on the radio, the problem is volume. Sheer volume.

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I've been reading Caspar Hendersen's "The Book of Barely Imagined Beings" -- a modern bestiary, which lends itself to dipping in and out, and will wait patiently until I can return to its pages. Which led to my seeing these barely there imaginary beings in the corners of my office. For the in-class writing exercise last Thursday, I asked my students to describe one of their internal writing companions: the Editor, the Distractor, the Coach, the Cheerleader and the Taskbeing. It makes me wonder who I should queue up to deal with the phages?  Could I send the Distractor? Would it be like matter and antimatter?

A flood of memories

The flood of 2018. Park Science Center. The lowest point in the 

chemistry wing was under 8" of water.

I have taught at least one class in this room almost every year for the last 32 years.  I gave my job interview talk in this space, albeit in a less modern incarnation.

I stood at a standard demonstration table, complete with sink and running water. I used an overhead projector much like the one on the cart in the corner, putting my used transparencies to the side as I worked through my talk (what work did I talk about?  no idea!).

Midway through my talk I heard the sound of water running into the sink.  I looked over to see that I had knocked over the cup of hot chocolate I was drinking in the hopes of defrosting after a walk across campus in a sudden snowstorm for which I was woefully unprepared. All over my stacked of completed transparencies.

I thought at that moment I might have lost any chance at the job.  I'd spent all day reassuring experimentalists that the reason I was a theorist was not "bad hands" — in other words that I wasn't clumsy in the lab. Thankfully everything was draining in the sink and that no one asked to see any of the wet, sticky sheets that had been my carefully prepared talk.

The water has receded, but not the flood of memories it unleashed.

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Well before the flood, I wrote a piece for Nature Chemistry which features a brief tale of this classroom: "Talking to Pauling's Ghost"

Transition states

In chemistry, transition states are high energy states, corresponding to the structure at the high point between reactants and products. These structures are stretched and bent beyond the normal bounds of molecular structures.

It's been a week of transitions here, and it's been high energy as a result.  As of Monday morning I took over being chair of the chemistry department.  (Think service — she who does the paperwork — not power here.) I'm already two meetings and three crises deep.

The Egg's show closed, sending him cartwheeling into a couple of weeks of summer vacation.  He started work less than 24 hours after he finished his European choir tour.

Crash graduated from Wonderful Jesuit University in May, a month so busy I didn't get a chance to write about it, or maybe I'm just in denial, as honestly it seemed as if we'd just dropped him off a month or two before.

Yesterday, he packed up the tiny red car, a task which required stretching normal space I suspect, and left for Kentucky with The Egg at the wheel.  (He has a nine month long (paid!!) stint with Actors Theatre of Louisville's professional training company.)  Six hundred some-odd miles and eleven hours later he arrived in Louisville.  He has rented an apartment, he starts work tomorrow.

When I asked him yesterday how he was doing, he commented that the transitions are always the hard part for him.  If molecules could talk, they'd say the same thing.

Like, we're on an airplane

The Egg and I are indeed on an airplane, he’s headed back to Small California College, I’m off to see family and a friend I’ve known for almost forever.  In the row behind us are three college aged persons, two women, one man.  They are total strangers, they first met today when they sat down. OMG. 

The Egg and I are working a crossword together (if you can help with 26 down, shot that misses badly, six letters, starts with M, we would be forever in your debt), but the rapid fire conversation between the two young women behind us is, like, soooo distracting.  They’ve covered roommates, RAs, drinking, final exams, how to dress for lecture, moms, and the super smart, hot guys on the hockey team. Oh, and which girls looked like they’ve had plastic surgery.

58 down:  Vodka in a blue bottle.  I suggest we ask the trio behind us, I’m pretty sure they know.  The Egg snorts (and he knows the answer anyway).

As far as I can tell, they aren’t breathing between sentences.  I start writing notes in the margins of the crossword. The Egg is amused, there are moments when the tears are just streaming down my face.

“I am awful at physics, why do we do this physics stuff?”  They do like genes, but not jeans (or shorts).

“The RA like knows we are drinking.”  “And that third warning they call your parents, and like what are they going to say?  You got caught drinking?”

“I just study so hard I give myself a migraine.”  I wonder if it’s not a hangover.

Now the Egg isn’t sure if they are talking about fake IDs or fake people.  “Good thing I worked retail, because I understand accents.”  Diversity?

“….chill….literally…Oh my God…I don’t even.”  Me either.

The Egg’s eyebrows go up. Someone used a word with five syllables.

Dear Lord, we are on to discussing our preferred undergarments.  OMG, TMI. 

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The Egg thinks we could do a great performance art piece based on this.

How to spoil a snow storm

The snow began while I was teaching this morning, a delicate lace sheet rippling over the back parking lot.  After I finished the lecture, as I was packing up my tech gear, a student from warmer climes excitedly told me on the way out the door that this was the first time she had seen snow.  Voices of a couple more bubbled in from the hallway, wondering if there would be enough to play in.

"Think about the phase diagram of water," I called out encouragingly.  I turned back to see two of my East coast students looking at me in dismay.  "How to spoil a perfectly good snow storm..."   

Ghosts of losses past

For a pair of though-provoking and prayerful reflections by a parent the transition to college, read Letting Go 1 and 2 at People for Others.

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We were threading our way through the hordes of parents and students in WJU's¹ campus center, on a mission to get Crash his academic robe (to be donned at convocation the next day) when we ran into the delightful Protestant chaplain Math Man and I had met on our tour of sacred spaces earlier in the day.² He stopped to say hello and ask if we'd found the tour useful (short answer, absolutely).

I turned to introduce him to Crash, "And this is my son, Thomas...uh, sorry, my son [insert Crash's real name here - which is not Thomas]" Where on earth did that come from?

Thomas is my first husband's name, and while our 31st wedding anniversary would have been last week, in all the hubbub of Crash's move to college, Tom's death is not at the top of my mind. Clearly it isn't buried all that deeply, either. I first met Tom when he was just a couple of years old than Crash is now, something hard to imagine even as I roll my mental film back all those years to see him as he was in college.

The shift in family structure set in motion by Crash's transition is nowise as cataclysmic as the one that opened a chasm in my life 25 years ago, but it seems that are are new cracks that I'll need to learn to step around, build bridges over, or sit at the edge of and contemplate. But I liked Patient Spiritual Director's reading of my parapraxis as a gentle sign of the communion of saints. Tom is there, watching over Crash.

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1. Wonderful Jesuit University
2. Where we learned that the altar used in the chapel given over to the use of the Protestant community has a movable altar, which once held a relic of St. William. When the altar was moved to use in a large Mass elsewhere on campus, the reliquary fell out, and in all the ado, was somehow misplaced. I'm not sure what it says about me that the first thought to pop into my mind was, "How long before there is Twitter meme about St. William, a la the Brookyn Zoo's cobra's feed of last year?"

Contemplative parenting: watching my inner control freak

The Washington Post posted an op-ed Friday by Barry Glassner and Morton Schapiro on ways to rein in helicopter parents on college campuses. Rather than tell the parents to step back and give their children some space, they suggest channeling parental energies into efforts more consonant with the college's mission and coaching parents on how to tell their children, "Good luck with that!" when the child seems to leans too heavily on parental resources for problem solving.

The message is don't be (as Crash would say) "that parent" or as Glassner and Schapiro even more bluntly put it: a "counterproductive, infantilizing, control freak." Crash (and The Boy) have had little need of parental hovercrafts for a long time now. They learned to do their own laundry while I was on my 30-day retreat, and have managed their own academic schedules (and study habits) for years. Math Man and I can and should take some credit for setting up the conditions that led to their growth, but in part we have been blessed with kids who have had few problems that they couldn't manage to untangle on their own — and for this I'm grateful.

Crash managed to apply for college, select one, and organize himself to go pretty much on his own (well, we wrote a lot of checks and read drafts of some, though not all, of the various essays he wrote along the way, but "we" did not apply to college). So why on earth did I find myself within 5 minutes of arriving at Wonderful Jesuit University (henceforth WJU) biting my tongue to keep from offering advice on which side of the street to walk on from parking garage to dorm?

The notion that contemplation is something that happens quietly sitting on a cushion in a zendo (or in my case, a seiza bench in my orationis angulus) is a fine one, but for me, at least, contemplation doesn't end when I stand up. It is in part the challenge of being able to stand in the moment, noticing the feelings, but not letting them take over. It's emotional weather watching.

I spent much of the weekend at WJU contemplatively practicing. There was a lot of weather to practice with.

Noli me tangere: college edition

I took a course some years back on images of Mary Magdalene. We looked at many examples of "Noli me tangere" figures -- this Caravaggio among them. Though the Latin translation reads "Don't touch me!" the original Greek (Μή μου ἅπτου) is better translated as "don't keep on clinging to me."

I thought of this Gospel today when we left Crash at Wonderful Jesuit University. I wanted to cling to him, to freeze this frame here and now. Instead I hugged him hard, kissed him and blessed him as I have done almost every night of his life, making the sign of the cross on his forehead and saying, "May God and all his angels watch over you." Then watched as he ducked through a doorway and into the next phase of his life.

We went to Mass together this morning, and listening to his voice, firmly reciting the Creed next to me, left me in tears. My tears were not for the imminent parting, but in awed and sudden recognition of what had happened. Crash, now professing what I promised for him at his baptism, is an adult.

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Image is from Wikimedia.

Consult not your fears

Crash started blogging the first week of his freshman year in high school, and kept at all the way through, posting on average once a week. He's written nearly 200 posts, a mix of poetry and prose, fact and fiction, humor and introspection. I've enjoyed listening to his voice grow more sure, his use of language more deft. I write about Crash and his brother frequently (I do ask their permission before posting their exploits), but it's a bit odd to find the shoe on the other foot and hear what he has to say about me!

He's been writing a series of posts about getting ready to start college, about roommate selection, negotiating the enormous catalog of courses — and now (in at least partial revenge for this post, I suspect), about dealing with your parents. I'm grateful he doesn't detail the "friction" we've had as we negotiated (and re-negotiated) boundaries!

Pope John XXIII has good advice, not only for Crash, but for me:

"Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do. " — Pope John XXIII (quoted by Crash here)

More blessings

This morning I asked an Augustinian friend if he would bless Crash after Mass today (it was Crash's last outing as an altar server before he leaves for Wonderful Jesuit University). "Sure, we'll meet afterward."

The readings were certainly apt for sending off students, Wisdom setting an inviting table for those who would learn, Paul advising the Ephesians to be discerning. Wisps of memories kept drifting through. Standing with Crash at the doors to the Church, asking of the Church that he be baptized. The time he bent over after the second reading (from St. Paul to the Romans) and at age 5 whispered wonderingly in my ear, "Rome, I've been to Rome." Watching him grow taller and his shoulders broader over the decade he has been an altar server, now effortlessly balancing the Missal for the presider. I cried unabashedly as he came up the aisle today, holding up the cross to which I had bound him so many years ago.

Communion ended and the presider came down to the front of the altar, rather than stand at the presider's chair, to offer the Communion prayer and final blessing, and winked at Math Man and me as he did so. He gestured to Crash to bring the Missal to him, and said the prayer after Communion. He turned around to set the Missal back on the altar and as Crash went to move back to his place, he said, "Stay for a moment."

The presider asked if there were any other people headed off to college, and then went on to say that while his parents had asked for a blessing for Crash after Mass, it seemed to him that the whole community should be part and parcel of the blessing for all the young people we were sending on, so he'd decided to do it now. He noted that Crash was a "child of the parish" — baptized here, at a Mass 18 years ago, where the parish promised, aloud, to support us in our work. He then quoted from the second reading, "And do not get drunk on wine, in which lies debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit..." and said that may be the blessing college students need most, which made us all laugh.

He then grew serious as we asked God to grant that Crash and his compatriots be happy, successful, and filled with peace. That they might have wisdom. Grace flowed from the mystery we had just celebrated, in rivers. And then Crash picked up the cross again, and holding it high above our heads, led the way out.

Chippies and Paste: Letter to Crash's college roommate

While looking for something on my computer the other day, I found an old set of instructions for babysitters, written when Crash and The Boy were 3 and 1, respectively. The instructions covered food, entertainment, comfort and bedtime routines. There was a brief lexicon included, which noted (among other things) that a request for "chippies and paste" was not the cue to start an art project (mosaic?) but Crash's way of asking for tortilla chips and salsa (the salsa came in the same shape jar as the paste at pre-school).

Reading it with the boys, I joked that I should write a similar note to Crash's roommate to-be at college.

Food: Crash does not drink coffee or tea, but prefers his caffeine cold, carbonated and carb-free (e.g. Diet Pepsi). He like hot chocolate, chips and salsa [Ed: some things never change], chicken, rice and chocolate. If he seems to be lagging, feed him solid milk chocolate and he will perk up in 30 minutes or so. We will be sure he has an adequate supply when we drop him off.

Comfort: See hot chocolate, above.

Entertainment: Building large stage sets, taking apart large stage sets. He has been sent with a variety pack of band-aids, please let us know if he starts using duct tape to patch the wounds and we will send more.

Bedtime routine: See description of mad skill with Nerf darts and light switches here.

_____

UPDATE: My sources insist that the use of the term "mad skill" is no longer appropriate. See change above.

Phaith: Become what you receive - Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi is celebrated this week (the date depends on your local diocese, the traditional Thursday or translated to Sunday). My column in this month's Phaith, on how meals shape our communities, large and small. Full disclosure: The table at my house rarely rises to the level in the (stock)photo that is shown with the article. Trust me on this one. And the conversation is not always, shall we say, elevated in tone. But there is much laughter and love....

"Dinner was almost cleaned up, the last dishes were stuffed into the dishwasher, and Chris was at the kitchen table neatly packing the leftovers while chatting up our guest. A cherry red apron over his jeans, Mike was sifting powdered sugar over the top of a chocolate cake. Kaitlyn bet him a cake that he'd get into Georgetown, and acceptance letter in hand, he's making good on the wager.

As he presents his creation with a flourish to Kaitlyn, wrapped and ready for her to take home, I notice that he's put it on my best cake plate, a wedding gift from a good friend. "Nice choice," I tell him. He grins.

The china cabinet isn't off limits to the kids at my house, so I'm neither surprised nor bothered that Mike has gone rummaging in it for just the right platter. He knows, too, that I believe in using the good dishes not only for big holidays, but also to mark somewhat less momentous occasions -- such as the end of semester breakfast with my students, where guests are perched on chairs, and parked on the carpet.

My kids have learned that meals are about more than refueling. It's a time set aside for us to be together, to hear how the day has gone, to laugh together."

Read the rest in Phaith.

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Photo is of Mission San Miguel's sanctuary. My parent's parish.

Crash Kid crashes

My oldest, known on the blog as Crash Kid, or more recently as just Crash, earned his blog name in an incident seven years ago where he collided (on his bike) with my Mini Cooper and broke the tail light, but somehow not his collarbone.  (All that milk he drank.)

Last night, as I sprawled on a bed in my hotel in Roanoke, trying to get the notes for my slides to show up on the screen of my iPad in a type size I could read (I was ultimately unsuccessful, but that is an entirely other story), my phone buzzed with a text message.  It was Crash, who had crashed in the Cooper.

Once my first worries had been assuaged, i.e. everyone was fine, I wanted to know the damages.  A dent in the back bumper and...a cracked tail light.  The other one this time.

The real irony in this story is that the collision occurred at 1 minute past 11, the driving curfew for those with junior licenses in Pennsylvania.  Since Crash turned 18 yesterday, and now has a senior license, this was the very first moment he was legal to drive past curfew.

I was starting to wonder if Crash needed a new blog name, now that he's about to go off to college (Georgetown!).  Somehow, I think Crash still suits.

Crash course: buttons and books

Crash added two skills to his growing repertoire this weekend. He can now sew a button back on, which meant learning how to thread a needle and how to tie off the thread at start and finish. He even took the advanced course, learning to sew on a coat button (you need to wrap the thread under the button to create enough space between the button and coat to fit the other flap).

He also learned how to bind a simple folio - a skill that any historian should have, no? He was fascinated to see how a book went together (he and a group of friends created a medieval bestiary as part of a project for their humanities class), from sewing the folio (more practice in threading needles), to creating the covers, the flyleaves and the spine. He wondered about how you make a large book, so we looked at the techniques for sewing together multiple folios.

I wonder what other practical skills I need to teach him before he heads off to college?
He can cook a respectable number of things from scratch, though he laments being in a family of cooks, where the ability to make a cake from scratch is considered "basic" not "advanced."