rosemary for remembrance
As truepenny has recounted elsewhere, we went out to the new house yesterday and cleaned (and cleaned, and cleaned).
The only thing I would add to her account is that the process of cleaning the walls involved mopping them: I filled a bucket with cleaning solution and used one of the two new mops to give the walls a first go; Mirrorthaw followed with a spraybottle of water and a clean mop to squeegee the top two-thirds of the wall; and Truepenny came along behind with another spray bottle, a sponge, and an old towel for the baseboards. She had much the unpleasantest of the jobs, because the grime all dripped downwards.
The cleaning solution, if you're curious, was concocted using the principles outlined in my earlier post about natural cleaning. I crossed the recipe for floor cleaning with the recipe for all purpose cleaner: 2 tablespoons Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds, 1/2 cup baking soda, 2 gallons warm water, 4 drops rosemary essential oil. (I would have just used the recipe for floor cleaner, but we decided we didn't want to risk what vinegar, even diluted, might do to the plaster.) It worked beautifully; the rosemary smelled lovely next to the bucket and faded almost immediately to a nearly-unidentifiable but pleasantly clean afterscent. And although this is one of the longest sustained contact-with-cleaning-solution experiences I've ever had, my hands were not red, raw, cracked, or even itchy afterwards.
Afterwards we went out to dinner and discovered one of my former students working as a busboy, which made Truepenny laugh; she maintains that she can't go anywhere with me without us running into one of my students. This assertion is not completely true, but you wouldn't know it from the events of the past week.
When we were out earlier this week picking up (among other things) the ingredients for the cleaning solution I made yesterday, our checker saw my name and said "I thought that was you! You're one of the four teachers who ever gave me a C." I glanced up, recognized him, called him by name, and reminded him that he got a C because he did crappy work in my class. He agreed, and pointed out that he shouldn't have been in that class to begin with (which is true, but hardly the point from my perspective). He was also surprised that I remembered his name (which I found privately hilarious; he was nothing if not memorable, the little punk). I pointed out that as a rule I like my students, even if they do screw around and accomplish nothing in my class, and like running into them again. Plus, although I didn't mention this, I work very hard to get their names right in the first place, and although I am bad at remembering names, once I get them, they stick.
Anyway, it was good to see him. We hadn't seen each other since May of 1998; I'd known he was planning to leave school and start a band, but students at this school mostly don't bother to stay in touch with TAs (and especially not with TAs who give them Cs), so I'd had no idea what became of him. I was pleased to find that he remembers me with exasperation but no particular animosity; I was always rather fond of him, in an I-used-to-be-just-like-you-so-don't-try-to-pull-that-shit-on-me kind of way.
The guy we ran into last night, though, the one working as a busboy... I'm not sure I can express how relieved I was to see him. He was one of my very best students in the women's studies class I taught in the spring of 1999; in fact, he's one of the best students I ever had. He was a women's studies and philosophy double major, a working-class kid from Milwaukee who wore leather pants and biker chains and had a dozen tattoos, and yet who endeared himself to a roomful of easily-alarmed whitebread rural kids by the sheer force of his considerable charm.
He was by far the most intellectual of all the students in that section (although there were a lot of students whose raw brainpower matched his), and he spent the whole semester trying to get them to have the kinds of conversations he (and I) wanted to have, and he largely succeeded. At the end of the semester, he wrote a poem about what it's like to be a student who needs a challenge and finally finds teachers who will engage with him, which he sent to three of his teachers, including me; it was a terrible poem, but it made me cry buckets, and it remains one of the sweetest things a student has ever given me or done for me.
Then he disappeared. Like, fell off the face of the earth disappeared. I'd known he was having serious Life Problems, on top of which he was working full time, and I'd been worried that he was going to wear himself out; but he hadn't talked about taking a break or leaving school. He'd gotten himself a prestigious writing tutor appointment in a program I was going to be involved in, he was excited about his fall semester classes, he was talking about applying to grad school... and then he just didn't show up, and nobody could find him, and nobody knew how to get in touch with him, and I was worried sick about him (there were some scary elements to his life that aren't mine to share publicly, even anonymously, but that had me truly frightened for him).
And it sounds, from what he said in passing last night, like there may indeed have been a couple of very bad years. But he's back in town, in a punk band that's playing a gig this Tuesday, to which he cordially invited me; he has work; he's been finding philosophy course syllabi online and reading the books; and he looks peaceful in a way that I could hardly have hoped for.
I've been holding my breath about this kid for five years without even realizing it. It feels good, it feels unbelievably good, to exhale at last.
The only thing I would add to her account is that the process of cleaning the walls involved mopping them: I filled a bucket with cleaning solution and used one of the two new mops to give the walls a first go; Mirrorthaw followed with a spraybottle of water and a clean mop to squeegee the top two-thirds of the wall; and Truepenny came along behind with another spray bottle, a sponge, and an old towel for the baseboards. She had much the unpleasantest of the jobs, because the grime all dripped downwards.
The cleaning solution, if you're curious, was concocted using the principles outlined in my earlier post about natural cleaning. I crossed the recipe for floor cleaning with the recipe for all purpose cleaner: 2 tablespoons Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds, 1/2 cup baking soda, 2 gallons warm water, 4 drops rosemary essential oil. (I would have just used the recipe for floor cleaner, but we decided we didn't want to risk what vinegar, even diluted, might do to the plaster.) It worked beautifully; the rosemary smelled lovely next to the bucket and faded almost immediately to a nearly-unidentifiable but pleasantly clean afterscent. And although this is one of the longest sustained contact-with-cleaning-solution experiences I've ever had, my hands were not red, raw, cracked, or even itchy afterwards.
Afterwards we went out to dinner and discovered one of my former students working as a busboy, which made Truepenny laugh; she maintains that she can't go anywhere with me without us running into one of my students. This assertion is not completely true, but you wouldn't know it from the events of the past week.
When we were out earlier this week picking up (among other things) the ingredients for the cleaning solution I made yesterday, our checker saw my name and said "I thought that was you! You're one of the four teachers who ever gave me a C." I glanced up, recognized him, called him by name, and reminded him that he got a C because he did crappy work in my class. He agreed, and pointed out that he shouldn't have been in that class to begin with (which is true, but hardly the point from my perspective). He was also surprised that I remembered his name (which I found privately hilarious; he was nothing if not memorable, the little punk). I pointed out that as a rule I like my students, even if they do screw around and accomplish nothing in my class, and like running into them again. Plus, although I didn't mention this, I work very hard to get their names right in the first place, and although I am bad at remembering names, once I get them, they stick.
Anyway, it was good to see him. We hadn't seen each other since May of 1998; I'd known he was planning to leave school and start a band, but students at this school mostly don't bother to stay in touch with TAs (and especially not with TAs who give them Cs), so I'd had no idea what became of him. I was pleased to find that he remembers me with exasperation but no particular animosity; I was always rather fond of him, in an I-used-to-be-just-like-you-so-don't-try-to-pull-that-shit-on-me kind of way.
The guy we ran into last night, though, the one working as a busboy... I'm not sure I can express how relieved I was to see him. He was one of my very best students in the women's studies class I taught in the spring of 1999; in fact, he's one of the best students I ever had. He was a women's studies and philosophy double major, a working-class kid from Milwaukee who wore leather pants and biker chains and had a dozen tattoos, and yet who endeared himself to a roomful of easily-alarmed whitebread rural kids by the sheer force of his considerable charm.
He was by far the most intellectual of all the students in that section (although there were a lot of students whose raw brainpower matched his), and he spent the whole semester trying to get them to have the kinds of conversations he (and I) wanted to have, and he largely succeeded. At the end of the semester, he wrote a poem about what it's like to be a student who needs a challenge and finally finds teachers who will engage with him, which he sent to three of his teachers, including me; it was a terrible poem, but it made me cry buckets, and it remains one of the sweetest things a student has ever given me or done for me.
Then he disappeared. Like, fell off the face of the earth disappeared. I'd known he was having serious Life Problems, on top of which he was working full time, and I'd been worried that he was going to wear himself out; but he hadn't talked about taking a break or leaving school. He'd gotten himself a prestigious writing tutor appointment in a program I was going to be involved in, he was excited about his fall semester classes, he was talking about applying to grad school... and then he just didn't show up, and nobody could find him, and nobody knew how to get in touch with him, and I was worried sick about him (there were some scary elements to his life that aren't mine to share publicly, even anonymously, but that had me truly frightened for him).
And it sounds, from what he said in passing last night, like there may indeed have been a couple of very bad years. But he's back in town, in a punk band that's playing a gig this Tuesday, to which he cordially invited me; he has work; he's been finding philosophy course syllabi online and reading the books; and he looks peaceful in a way that I could hardly have hoped for.
I've been holding my breath about this kid for five years without even realizing it. It feels good, it feels unbelievably good, to exhale at last.