Words Are Immortal

 For Gretchen White (1958 – 1981)

Teaching was the second-to-last thing I ever wanted to do, so I stumbled into it sideways as the only way I could afford grad school.  I was that desperate to continue studying what I loved:  beautiful words.  Arizona State University used TAs as so many universities do:  we were full-charge instructors in the freshman composition program.  In lieu of training, we were handed class rosters, a textbook, and a class schedule. Sink or swim.

I kept my head above water until Spring semester.  On Friday just after Spring Break, I fished a phone message from a Tempe Police detective out of my mailbox.  What fresh hell?  The detective sounded polite and kind as she asked when I had last seen my ENG102 student Gretchen White.  That was easy—Gretchen had been noticeably absent from class that day.  I’m not sure she’d ever missed class before.  As a 23-year-old graduating senior who’d put off research writing until her last semester because ew, she was a model student.  Always where she was supposed to be and always prepared for anything.

People took notice of Gretchen wherever she went because of her physical beauty.  She was gorgeous:  long, softly curling blonde hair, sky blue eyes, sweet and easy smile, and an impeccable sense of style she’d learned in her fashion design program.  She was supremely quiet and self-possessed, apparently unaware of the admiration or envy she sparked in others.  She didn’t seek attention—she simply couldn’t avoid it.  Her younger classmates were in awe of her.

I asked the detective why she was questioning me.  I couldn’t imagine Gretchen getting into trouble with the police. “I can’t disclose that,” she said sympathetically.  “All I can say is that we’re investigating a crime she might have been a victim of.”  Then she asked for my home number and ended the call.

My mind raced with possibilities.  College students do crazy things and lead unpredictable lives.  They take off on road trips without telling their roommates, who then report them missing.  They forget to show up for work.  Once in a while, there’s a drunken escapade.  But not with Gretchen.

I had a special rapport with her because we were the same age.  Among the 18- and 19-year-old freshmen, we felt wise with our hard-won knowledge of college life and our reams of real-world experience.  She rarely spoke in class but was always ready with a smile when I made a snarky joke about Greek life or registration nightmares.  I thrived on her quiet energy.

Another detective called me at home on Sunday with news that Gretchen had been murdered and instructions on how to inform the class (“Just say she died—do not use the words killed or murdered”).  He told me I must immediately excuse class and return to my office, making sure to have someone with me because “the killer might be one of your other students.”  Words I’ll never forget.

From the evening news, I learned Gretchen had been taken from her apartment in the middle of Thursday night, raped, strangled, and run over with her own car in the parking lot of Corona del Sol High School in south Tempe.  Maintenance staff had found her on Friday morning, but it took some time to identify her because of the condition of her body.  It would take longer—35 years—to identify her killer.

In my office I sat at my desk staring at the last piece of writing Gretchen had done in my class the day before she died.  It was freewriting and I can’t recall the prompt, but she’d written of her love and gratitude to her parents for trusting her enough to let her come all the way across the country from Michigan to go to ASU.  Perhaps her parents were on her mind because her mother had come out to spend Spring Break with her just the week before, and they’d had a fabulous time shopping, eating out, and sightseeing.  Gretchen was eager to graduate in May and head back to Michigan to launch her grown-up life.

She’d left me with a love letter to her parents.  It felt electric in my hands.  I’ve wished a thousand times since then I could read it again, but I didn’t keep a copy.  It was not mine.  I sent it to her parents with a letter full of sympathy and memories of my half-semester with Gretchen.

So when they came to Arizona a month later to pack up her apartment, they asked to meet with me.  It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in a long career.  Her mother barely spoke (like Gretchen, I thought!).  Her father told me what she’d been like as a child and asked me to remember everything, anything she said or did in class.

And then through tears, he said, “As much as we’re hurting, I can’t help thinking of the parents of whoever did this to her.”

I’ve kept this story close because it transformed me into a teacher.  More than any other student I’ve worked with, Gretchen taught me the power of words to reach out to others, to name our experiences, to tell our loves, and to heal broken hearts.  I understood the commitment I had to make to teaching:  everything I ask of my students must be worthy of their fragile time and must make space for the stories and ideas that bring meaning to their lives.  Gretchen’s spirit infuses and inspires every day of my teaching career.

Today almost 40 years later, I learned the name of Gretchen’s killer.  I can finally let go of the mystery but not the lesson:  words are immortal.

Two Rooms of My Own

During World War II, my friend’s mother was studying history at a small Lutheran college in Columbus, Ohio.  She was summoned to an advisor’s office when the war ended and told she must change her major.  The men were coming home soon, and they’d be needing those history teaching jobs so they could coach high school sports.  Rather than study something else that didn’t interest her, she dropped out of college and got married.  Not until her youngest child—my friend—went to college 30 years later did she return and finish her degree.

The end of the men’s war heralded the start of a women’s war.

When my two sisters enrolled in that same college in the mid-1960s, they were offered a choice of two majors:  education or nursing.  They chose education.  One of my sisters taught elementary school until she retired; the other wandered off into other fields for which she was probably always better suited.

My sisters are only nine and ten years older than I am, but we might as well have come from different generations.  A seismic shift between their coming-of-age and mine changed almost everything about our lives.  Though it had a long incubation—50 years from gaining the vote to gaining traction in our daily lives—the Women’s Movement seemed to spring suddenly out of nowhere, erasing old borders and planting new flags of possibility everywhere.

For us who were girls then, it was like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the black-and-white screen transforms into dizzying technicolor.  Our world would never look the same again.  This was both exciting and terrifying.  If we could not walk where our mothers and sisters had, where was the path?  Where paths did not exist, how were we to blaze them? 

It felt like unprecedented emancipation that created a sense of obligation never to follow in anyone else’s footsteps.  When I went to college, the only two majors I refused to consider were teaching or nursing.  With those off the table, I was free to pursue my own interests and goals—the sky was the limit!--but to do anything traditional seemed a betrayal of the Movement’s great promise. 

We knew what we were not supposed to be or do, but were less sure what we should strive for.  Much had been given to us, but much was also taken away.  We had no role models and no safety nets.  Our confusion wasn’t limited to college majors or future professions.  It seeped into every facet of our lives:  We were encouraged to be free-spirited, risk-taking, self-directed, sexually liberated bon vivants.  We were destined to have—as Virginia Woolf had prescribed decades earlier—money and rooms of our own to which no one else held a key. 

But what about all the other rooms in our lives, the rooms we share with others?  Every relationship, every act seemed to require negotiation with partners who were just as unsettled by the sudden change of rules.  Who would make dinner, who would be served, who would wash the dishes after?  Was it now counter-revolutionary to stitch a quilt or knit a sweater or adopt a man’s last name or give birth?  For many of us, it’s been a long process of coming home to the traditions we enjoy--those that feed our souls--and resisting judgments that may well have been figments of our imagination all along.

In my house there are two rooms where I appear domesticated:  my kitchen and my sewing room.  I say “my kitchen” not because I am the only one who cooks in it (I’m not) but because I designed it to reflect my taste and my sense of utility and purpose.  It is both beautiful and practical, and there I create dishes that are delicious to the eye, the nose, and the tongue--food that nourishes the bodies and souls of people I love.  It is the same in my sewing room.  I know where my tools are, I am surrounded by colors and textures, I lose all sense of time in the process of creating warmth and comfort for other people.   These are the rooms in which I play.

In all the other rooms and in the world at large, I am a force to be reckoned with, a voice for change, a loyal member of the sisterhood, a way-maker—to the greatest extent possible—for the next wave of young feminists.  My daughters live a completely different story.  Like people born into a religious sect, my daughters were born into feminism.  They never considered any path closed to them or believed their destiny was tied to their anatomy.  Whatever they chose to do was, by definition, something girls do.  They were surrounded by role models for any future they could envision.

Recently a friend’s little girl needed to see a doctor, but her regular pediatrician was away.  When a male doctor walked into the exam room, the child burst into surprised laughter.  “OMG!” she said, “A boy doctor!”  She had never imagined that possibility.

Proof that Virginia Woolf was right all along: “Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.”

Dear John Prine . . .

 “So listen up, buster, and listen up good.

Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood.”

~John Prine, “Dear Abby,” 1971

I’ve been with John Prine longer than I’ve been with my husband:  40 years and going strong, no end in sight.  In spite of all the water under all the bridges, I clearly remember being introduced to his music by my grad school neighbor and friend, Bob G.  Bob’s apartment was right inside the courtyard gate.  Often I’d come home soul-drained from a day of teaching, writing my thesis, studying for comps, and dodging departmental politics.  If Bob’s curtains were open, I knew I’d be waylaid for conversation.  If I heard him chanting “nam yo horen gekyo,” he was distracted and I had safe passage to my own door.

Bob eventually introduced me to all sorts of interesting things like duck l’orange, American Buddhist missionaries, and the appeal of friends with benefits.  But the best and most enduring gift he gave me was an introduction to John Prine by way of Dear Abby from the 1971 debut album, which by then was already 11 years old and still mostly obscure. 

Carefully Bob set the needle down in the groove before the song, and I listened.  I was a country music fan then, and there was something sort of country about this song.  But then again, no.  It was something else:  A little Mark Twain in the humor, a little Bob Dylan in that nasal twang and the sheer perfection of the poetry, a little Voltaire in the philosophy, a little Woody Guthrie in the ethos.  When the song ended and Bob moved to lift the needle, I stopped him.  We listened to the whole, perfect album:  Sam Stone, Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore, Donald and Lydia, Hello in There, Spanish Pipedream, and—be still, my heart—Angel from Montgomery.  It was vinyl paradise.

I shut my eyes to listen, but I could feel Bob watching me closely.  Every time I caught him at it, he’d flash me another illegal smile. Something changed between us that afternoon.  He’d given me both a gift and a test.

That’s the paradox of John Prine fans:  We feel like a chosen group of people specially enlightened to the joys and jinxes of our common humanity.  There’s nothing elite about his music, but knowing and loving John Prine becomes a kind of litmus test for our most important relationships.  It’s a way of asking, “How human are you at your core?” 

I’ve done this myself time after time.  I meet someone, begin to get to know and enjoy them, and before long it’s time to slip them a John Prine song to plumb the depths of their soul:  how real, how accessible, how funny, how scarred and vulnerable are you?  In my experience, it’s proven true every time.  I tested my husband before I married him, and we raised our kids on John Prine.  Odds are if you’re in my inner circle, you’ve passed the John Prine muster.

Prine’s fans are legion and likely to multiply with news of his death, so it’s odd that we regard ourselves as an exclusive group.  We come from every possible demographic a sociologist could identify, but we form a tribe of our own.

The first time I saw John Prine in concert was in 2007 at the gorgeously refurbished Orpheum Theatre in downtown Phoenix.  Milling around the lobby before the show was a perfect microcosm of society:  bejeweled women in evening gowns with men in tuxes, Hell’s Angels, hippies old and young, shit-kickers, queers, professional types, anarchists, working class types . . .  and everyone infused with the egalitarian spirit of the night as if we had everything in the world in common.  For those few hours, we did.

The second time was in 2009 at the theatre-formerly-known-as-the-Dodge.  That crowd was much less diverse, more evenly divided between country music fans and aging hippies.  We had perfect seats, once the drunk guy ahead of us who kept offering to fight everyone around him was removed.  Then the warm-up act from Hell took the stage.  They were called the Grascals, they were sponsored by Mobil Oil, and their most memorable song was (I swear I’m not making this up) “Satan Knew My Grandma Well.”  Margaret Atwood coined a perfect term for people like this:  petrobaptists.

I sat there wondering how even John Prine would be able to redeem this.  When he came out, he was careful to thank the Grascals, noting that unforeseen circumstances had prevented his regular warm-up act from arriving in Phoenix in time to perform.  It felt like a wink and a nudge to all of us who’d been sitting there wondering what in the actual Hell just happened.  Then he took up his guitar and immediately reclaimed the night with everything we wanted to hear.

There is a spirit in John Prine’s music that transcends religion because it reminds us how absurdly wonderful it is to be a human being.  We are strong and helpless and wise and stupid, stingy and giving, fiery and frozen, lonely and reaching, remote and traumatized, lost and found.  We are all of that, and John Prine loved us enough to tell our stories.  His worst insult—reserved for George Bush—was to observe that “some humans ain’t human,” and even then he seemed to understand how a person could go that wrong. Religion has so often taught us to love the Creator but hate the Creation.  John Prine understood that each of us is half-saint and half-sinner and that equation makes us ridiculously lovable. 

How fitting that his last album is The Tree of Forgiveness.  Ultimately, that was the gospel of John Prine.  It is a rare soul who leaves us laughing through our tears and loving our fellow travelers in spite of ourselves.

In the end, what matters is legacy.