Month: September 2011

Meander: to move aimlessly

/ jelizabeth / 3 Comments

I worked at home today, and I really did. All morning the window in the kitchen, where my papers were spread out, was open, and I could hear the early grackles outside and the neighbor’s mower and little grandson. By mid-day, all of them seemed to be calling, Come out, come out, come out!

I put some money, keys, juice, phone, and, of course, my glucometer in an old backpack from my mother and sneakers on my feet, and I went. No exercise agenda, no time limit.

At the corner of Bellingham and Grove, I saw the iron cover for a town water or sewer pipe (it looks like a test tube stopper, about 8″ diameter) still popped off the pipe. It’s been like that for three weeks, and I have been thinking that one of the Bellingham people would notice and call. It seemed no one has. So I stood on the corner, searched for the Brookline DPW on my phone, and I called them. “We’ll report it,” said the lady who answered.

Past the cemetery entrance. I saw a Mercedes drive in and some town workers clustered around a dump truck. The cemetery is one of the nicest kept public spaces in our town.

Down Allandale, with the road quiet enough that I could hear my feet on the sidewalk and birds in the trees. I looked at the site where they are building three new houses where there used to be one old pink one. Next door, there is still an old house with newer garden steps and an old weathered garden elf whose feet are caught in concrete.

At the farm, I went in all the greenhouses, empty of annuals. One was filled with bamboo plants and another with trays of clover.

There were sparrows enjoying dust baths on the ground around a tractor. Some sparrows were even wriggling in the sand caught in the tractor’s big wheel treads. One sparrow wriggled in a puddle and didn’t fly away, like the others, when I walked closer.

Everywhere, boxes of gourds. In the shed behind the main store, where they dole out the weekly farm shares, there was a table laden with vases filled with sunflowers. A young woman, busty and with red-gold hair dressed in a black short-sleeve tee and knee-length black shorts, danced behind the table, in the style of Natalie Merchant, and showed off, I gathered, for the guys who work with her on the farm.

I wanted to take her picture, but I’m not a photographer and don’t know how to intrude like that. Later, I regretted not asking her. Inside the store, there were — amazingly — fresh strawberries and blueberries for sale. From Quebec, $8 each. The picture will have to do; the price was too dear.

Through the neighborhood and down to the West Roxbury Parkway and then the VFW Parkway. So many chipmunks, not afraid of cars whizzing by but afraid of me walking.

On a bench, I sat to eat the nuts I bought at Allandale and drink water. White spray-painted graffiti, one word: WRECK. On the edge of the bench, acorns, lichen, and a baby pinecone. Across the parkway, women with babies at the park, men playing basketball.

At CVS, a birthday card for Eli. On the sidewalk outside Bertucci’s, a woman with a face lift and in a denim jacket too young for her. This thought: your hands are still old.

Back up Independence. A leaf on the sidewalk like tiger stripes painted on. Just one leaf. Me, like a giant. The ruler of the sidewalk world.

A block later, a hole in a neighbor’s fence. Ah, a secret garden! I hoped. I looked in: only driveway and car. Disappointment.

As I walked, it seemed to me that everything in the world may be happening when I’m at work and not noticing. That birds wriggle in sand and pumpkins warm in the sun and the dwarf keeps guard and farm girls dance and houses get built and cemeteries are maintained — this is the action.

And usually I miss it.

How to cheat on college reading

/ jelizabeth / 4 Comments

I stood at the reserves desk in the library where I could check out the assigned reading. This was in the fall of 1985; I was a junior in college; and this was before the age when text could be digitized and placed on the web. When professors assigned readings, students had to buy or borrow a physical copy of the text to read it.

Kathleen M., a senior who was passing through, saw me and walked over. She was funny, and I liked her. “What are you doing?” she asked me.

“Obviously, I am getting ready to do my reserve reading.”

“No one does the reserve reading,” she remarked. She smiled.

“What?” Wait a minute, I was thinking. She’s a brilliant student. (Kathleen went on to a top-tier law school.) Don’t all good students do all the reading? I did all the reading. It was killing me.

“Only read what you need to, is what I mean,” she said.

To me, reading meant starting at the cover, turning to the first page, reading the first word, and reading every word until I got to the last page — all the while taking notes — and doing this for every item on the professor’s list. Kathleen explained that I should look at the syllabus, see what was coming up next in class or exams or papers, and skim what seemed most relevant to what the professor was covering. “You can kinda tell from the syllabus,” she added.

The librarian returned, and I took the folders full of photocopied book chapters back to my table. I got out the syllabus and looked at lecture topics and exam and paper descriptions. Indeed, it was all right there, a set of clues as to what to read (and what to skim or even skip) embedded in the class schedule.

I didn’t read all the assigned reading word-for-word, that night or ever again. I figured out how to read what I needed to. This was a paradigm shift for someone who (a) loved (and still loves) to read and (b) took some pride in her academic duties.

Interestingly, I became a better student at that moment because it prompted me to start managing my work, as opposed to simply doing it, and I also believe I learned more. I also started talking more in class, which helped me learn more and become more visible.


What would my professors have thought, if they knew I was suddenly reading less and sometimes skipping reading assignments altogether? As a college teacher now, I know that my colleagues and I put together our syllabi with great care and think and talk about what readings are fundamental to the course. When I taught at Simmons College, I recall one long lunch date with a political science prof during which she spoke agonizingly about her students’ failure to do the reading. “You’re a writing teacher. You must have them read stuff,” she said. “How do I get my students to read?” Continue reading →

Speak, Memory, about a dress

/ jelizabeth / 5 Comments

On the road from World’s End to the harbor, we drove through Hingham center slowly enough that I could look at store windows as we passed. In one, I saw a dress that turned my head. The image of it hovered in my imagination as we walked through the farmer’s market, bought homemade cider donuts, and sat on the strip of sand, ate donuts, and looked out at the boats and one swimmer.

I wanted the dress that I was remembering.

In my mind, I saw dark wool knit more charcoal than black, trumpet sleeves wrist length, and the only ornament a double row of appliquéd rings the color of coffee ice cream on the bell of each sleeve.

my dress, from memory

I told Grace and Jimmy about the dress and said I wanted to stop and look at it again on our way back to the highway.

It’s funny how memory works: when we got back to the store and I was standing on the sidewalk and taking pictures of the dress, I could see how my version of the dress was both like and unlike the original. Already, my imagination had refashioned the dress into what I wanted it to be. Continue reading →