March 18

1986: the year I finally grew up.

1965

I talked to V again this afternoon - for almost 1/2 an hour! He's very nice. At least he's not a disappointment like most boys are. We have a lot in common - "disharmony" in the home, no more than 3 years in one school, our dislike for this hick town. Maybe it will work yet! Ojalá que sí. Tengo que acostarme hora. Son las once y estoy muy cansada. Buenos noches.

1979

A warm and delightful day. Somehow my various projects are starting to flow together. They are banding together under the idea of 19th-century fashion changes as evidence of some more basic changes underneath. I think I can manage to work parts of it and each and every course I have to take the semester.

TXCE 610: Innovators and how they approach novelties.

AMST:  American middle-class women 1875 - 1885. How can dress illuminate the picture?

Dissertation: cartoon humor about fashion and what it can teach us about culture change and sex role changes. Hot dog!

Enough thinking! Time for some lunch. 

1980

I still worry about the search committee and my chances to get the job. Mostly it manifests itself in an inability to concentrate. (She drifts off, absent-mindedly picking her left nostril.) I should pick up the pieces and get to work, but I am a bit tired and distracted. There's something about being unemployed that I find appealing… a chance to write, maybe my chance to have a child. In the middle of a recession with no money.

My paranoia is bugging me. I overreact to the slightest negative or seemingly negative remark. I am doing important work. And I am going to do a good job. Spring is here there is work ahead and I must do it. Yada yada yada!

1986

The semester is going very slowly – – – in a nice way, really. No complaints here. I may even get everything done on my list if it keeps rolling at this pace.

1997

I know Sarah is right about “pricking my finger” on something and shutting down. But what was  it? When was it? I can trace it back to my sabbatical, my mother’s breakdown…but why, why, why? Something happened between 1986 and 1987, and I still don’t understand it. I am not even sure if it would help to understand it. But I will take a look at my vita and try to sort it out.

Comment 2023

No, it doesn’t help to understand it. What happened in that academic year is that I had a glimpse of the future that scared the bejesus out of me. My mother experienced her first major depression since I was in eighth grade. In 1962, she was hospitalized for several weeks after a suicide attempt. Twenty-four years later, she called me up one day and said she was going into a depression and needed to see a doctor. I was seven months pregnant and it was just a few weeks into the fall semester. My daughter was four. Mom stayed with us for several days, until she started talking about taking her own life. Consulting with her doctor, I checked her into the psych unit at a local hospital, where she stayed until her insurance ran out. Then she stayed with us another week, still no better. At my eight-month check-up, I found that I had lost five pounds. My doctor said, in so many words “It’s your mother or this baby”. So I drove my mother back to the psych unit, knowing that she would be transferred to only place that would take her - the state mental hospital. I told her we were going to the movies to get her into the car, and set the child locks so she couldn’t jump out. At the hospital, she pleaded to go to the movies as they took her away. I cried all the way home. By the time my son was born, she was well enough to visit for Thanksgiving. Two weeks later she was discharged, finally whole again.

Yes, something happened that derailed me and left a gap in my CV. I managed to take care of my family, though, and that wasn’t nothing. 1986: the year I finally grew up.

2019

Healing

Here’s a question:
Is healing ever really complete?
Pain can fade away
But 
Isn’t there always something different
Afterwards?

Comment 2024

Not only did I write two poems about “healing” in two separate years (2019 and 2021 or 2022), but I forgot both of them until I found them in my Facebook memories.