Quarantine dreams, revisited

This week is the first week of the semester at Babson College, and last night I dreamt I had to teach my classes from a hotel room.

In the alternate universe that is dreamtime, there was no pandemic, no masks, and no need for social distancing, but for some reason the college announced I couldn’t teach on-campus or from home. Instead, my “remote” classes were booked in a hotel room where J and I stayed overnight. Because the room had been booked at the last minute, neither one of us had any luggage, and I didn’t have a laptop, so I had to keep checking my phone for emails from students asking where we were supposed to meet.

Although the class was billed as “remote,” it was actually a face-to-face session, so at the scheduled time my students and a guest speaker (writer Walter Mosley, who wrote an essay I assigned last semester) somehow piled into my hotel room, which by then had morphed into a suite containing an odd assortment of furniture, none of which was conducive to an actual class session. Fortunately, Mosley had a laptop and was able to show slides during his talk, and I was reduced to “teaching” from bed, first in a babydoll nightgown, and later in a pair of flannel pajamas.

 

The day turned strange

I’ve had 52 birthdays in my life, and yesterday’s was by far the weirdest.

For many years I’ve had a tradition of going to the Museum of Fine Arts on my birthday, but since the museum is closed due to COVID, J and I reserved timed tickets for the DeCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA. It was a lovely change of pace, a chance to take a stroll on a gray day. I was enchanted by the stone cairns next to Andy Goldsworthy’s Watershed as well as an impromptu collection of wrapped and painted stones (“small hopes”) created by local children and wedged into the stone walls in the now-empty rectangle where Big, With Rift used to stand.

That was the normal part of the day, where J and I celebrated my birthday and relished the morning news that Rev. Raphael Warnock had won his Senate race in Georgia. As we wandered the sculpture park taking pictures, I occasionally glanced at my smartwatch, awaiting word of Jon Ossoff’s projected Senate win.

But then the day turned strange. On the way home from the DeCordova, J and I stopped at the bank to get a document notarized, and while waiting our turn with a teller, I saw a notification on my phone that pro-Trump protestors had breached the Capitol where Congress was certifying the Electoral College results. With the Capitol on lockdown and lawmakers evacuated, the certification was paused, DC was in chaos, and we spent the rest of the day watching the news in dismay.

Nothing I saw on the news yesterday was surprising: Trump has been encouraging rebellion since he lost in November, and it was widely known that right-wing zealots planned to gather in DC on January 6. But what was disheartening was the way security basically stood back and allowed riotous thugs to run roughshod through the Capitol. Apparently it’s easier to storm a joint session of Congress than it is to get through airport security or into a municipal courthouse.

And if the news out of Washington wasn’t bad enough, yesterday afternoon I learned a longtime friend had lost his week’s-long battle with COVID-19: a bright light extinguished on the darkest of days. While my heart already ached for America, it broke again for M’s wife and many friends, and for all the people who have died because some people’s definition of “freedom” ignores the simple responsibility of keeping other people safe.

So, yesterday was a strange day…and an even weirder birthday. By nightfall I was wrung out by a mix of emotions: happiness and small hopes, heartbreak and incredulity. After 52 years on this strange planet, I still don’t understand what possesses people to behave the way they do.

CLICK HERE to view an album of photos from yesterday’s trip to the DeCordova Sculpture Park.

 

The music of a Someday Spring

Yesterday afternoon-into-evening, I had a brief crisis of faith: the kind of quiet questioning that happens frequently after our alarmingly early winter sunsets.

Last night’s crisis occurred first as a simple strain of restlessness, the craving for color that usually sets in much later in the winter, when Winter Drab threatens to crush my spirit. In past years, I’ve amassed a slew of Winter Coping Strategies, like going to a greenhouse to photograph flowers, strolling through an elegant or exotic museum exhibit, going to an aquarium to stare at the soothing serenity and bright hues of tropical fish, or even lingering long in the grocery store produce section, drawn and sustained by the abundance of greens, reds, oranges, and yellows.

But this year, many museums, aquariums, and greenhouses are closed, and I haven’t set foot in a grocery store since March. Going anywhere indoors and lingering to look–or going anywhere with shared air and stopping to take a deep breath–is risky in these pandemic days, and scrolling through online galleries or virtual aquariums doesn’t have the same appeal.

Last night, I pulled out the big guns, relying upon a Winter Coping Strategy I typically reserve for the dismal days of February-into-March, when I’ve given up all hope of Spring every arriving: while slogging through my evening chores, I tuned to a salsa station on Pandora and danced like nobody was watching. The world outside is dark and monochromatic, but if I close my eyes and listen, I can pretend I hear the music of a Someday Spring.

 

Goals on hold

This morning when I replaced my old planner, I paged through some of my entries from the first few months of 2020, when the year was new and we had no idea what the future held.

Last January, friends and I met in Northampton to celebrate my birthday, and last February I met a friend for lunch and a walk at Tower Hill Botanic Garden: two outings I took for granted at the time but seem unimaginably exotic now. Right before my birthday last year, I went to the Zen Center on a Sunday morning then walked to Harvard Square to drink hot chocolate and write in my journal at Burdick’s Cafe, and a few days later, I went to a postcard-writing meetup in Chelmsford: the last two times I set foot in a cafe.

Every year, I make more or less the same goals for the New Year, renewing my intention to write in my journal daily, blog three times a week, and go to the Zen Center and a museum at least once a month. Although I’ve been journaling throughout the pandemic, I haven’t blogged much: with so much of life happening virtually these days, I’ve looked for any excuse to unplug. And with both the Zen Center and many museums closed, those two goals are officially on hold.

Last year started innocently enough then turned weird in March. I’m hoping that as more people have access to one of several COVID-19 vaccines, life will return to some semblance of normal-ish by the end of this year: not life as it was, but a life that allows outings and gatherings and other planner-worthy activities.

 

The weight of worry

I submitted the last of my Fall semester grades yesterday afternoon, then I immediately took a nap, overwhelmed by the cumulative exhaustion of the past four months.

This has been a remarkable semester, for sure, and only now in retrospect can I appreciate how utterly exhausting it’s been. Teaching in-person college classes during a pandemic means you’re always on alert, running down a mental checklist of COVID protocols, and that’s not even counting the teaching tasks of a normal semester, when “all” you have to do is prepare classes, give lectures, lead discussions, answer questions, respond to emails, participate in meetings, and grade papers.

During this crazy COVID semester, I regularly monitored my health, taught in multiple modalities (often simultaneously), and prepared myself to switch pedagogical approaches suddenly if conditions changed (as of course they did). I learned how tiring it is to lecture in a mask, asking myself at the end of every on-campus teaching day “Is my throat sore because I have COVID or because I spent the day shouting?” When you teach in-person classes during a pandemic, part of your attention is always attuned to your surroundings: are your in-person students wearing their masks and keeping proper distance? Are any windows that can be opened actually open? Are your hands clean, and what have you recently touched that might not be clean?

Teaching in-person during a pandemic is nerve-wracking enough, but teaching a hybrid class offers additional challenges. Can my online students hear me, and can I hear them? Did I remember to start, pause, and re-start the class recording at all the proper times so absent students can watch the class later? Has anyone posted a question in the chat, or raised a virtual hand, or waved their actual hand in front of the camera (assuming it is on) to get my attention? If I put my remote students into breakout rooms while working with my in-person students, can I simultaneously attend to conversations in the room and the clock counting down to my remote students’ return?

Now that the semester is over, I realize the weight of worry I’ve been carrying the past four months. Are my students okay? How are they doing emotionally, physically, and (yes) academically? Are they safe, healthy, and physically able to come to class in-person or online? Can they find the classroom, the Zoom link, the weekly online module, the relevant discussion forum? Can they find and figure out how to submit this week’s assignment?

At the end of this COVID semester, I wonder whether I answered students’ questions, calmed their fears, or even taught them anything about the subject of the class. Did all the carefully crafted assignments, checklists, modules, and videos actually work, or were they a monumental waste of both time and bandwidth? However this semester went, the crazy fact remains: after a few days off to clear my head, I’ll begin preparing for January, when we’ll do it all over again.

 

Endless

Today is one of those Mother Hubbard days: I want to write, but the cupboard is bare. Yesterday I conferenced with my students at Babson College, graded some papers, then came home, exhausted. I took a nap, read, and felt infinitely better for both.

Today I’m teaching at Framingham State, where I have a long break between my morning and afternoon classes. After teaching my morning class, I held office hours, prepped my afternoon classes, checked discussion forums, and graded (and am grading) yet more papers. At this point of the semester, my paper-piles are endless.

My office here at Framingham State overlooks the main street through campus, and I have my window ajar to let in fresh air. Along with the air wafts the incessant sound of leaf blowers. At this point of the season, the work of leaf-clearing is endless.

 

Unseasonal

It’s been a weird autumn. Right before Halloween, we had a storm that dumped five inches of snow, and this week, we’ve had a string of 70-degree days. The Japanese maple in our front yard went straight from reddish to brown: we won’t have a red-letter day this year when one corner of our yard ignites in fiery red glory. And today, the trees in our backyard cast off their leaves en masse: just like that, there is a crunchy, ankle-deep blanket of oak, cherry, and Norway maple leaves underfoot, many of the latter still partly green.

 

Sunday stroll

Warm November Sundays are especially sweet when you know the dark days of winter aren’t far behind.

 

Respite

After another whirlwind week, it’s a relief to reach the respite that is Friday. I teach in-person (and thus wake up early) on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so on Fridays I sleep in and look forward to simple domestic pleasures: the morning dog-walk, a cup of tea at my desk, a half hour spent reading before I turn on my laptop to face another day of email, virtual meetings, and the mundane juggling act that is my work-from-home life.

 

Pandemic days

One of the (many) strange things about teaching a hybrid class during a pandemic is the ghost-town vibe on campus, with few students and even fewer professors, closed meeting rooms and shuttered offices, and plenty of parking.