1. Carol found a recipe for Mexican Lasagna, a layer dish prepared with Mexican ingredients and flour tortillas, cooked in a crock pot. It was delicious, as was the green salad Paul made with produce from the Roberts' gardens. The freshness of the vegetables was a knockout!
2. Our conversations about local news and life in the theater in Wallace took a turn and, for better or worse, our discussion became a post-kidney transplant seminar. It actually does me good to have a chance to talk about what I've learned about early signs of rejection, why this complication probably came about, and how the medical pros working on my behalf have worked together to create a plan (so far successful) of treatment. Talking about it helps me get what the doctors have told me outside of myself and I can gauge how well I've absorbed all I've been told.
No one fell asleep while I explained things, so that was good.
I think all of us are struck by how little we knew just over a year ago (and why would we know more?) about transplantation and living with a new organ.
3. Today Kathryn Gabbert posted on Facebook that she and her collaborator finished their capstone project and, by doing so, had finished two years of rigorous academic work and earned a Masters in Business Administration.
Ever since she began to pursue this degree, Kathryn has been posting short essays on Facebook about the challenges of engaging the demands of graduate school while also pouring energy into her career, family, and personal development and responsibilities.
Over twenty years ago, Margaret Bayless and I started to team teach a course once every school year combining American Working Class Literature with English Composition: Research.
Kathryn was a student in our first class.
Margaret and I learned almost immediately, to our utter delight, that Kathryn was enrolled in college not to receive an education, but, in Adrenne Rich's words, to claim one.
She was an active reader and writer. She cherished, protected, and energetically pursued her intellectual independence. She was not in school to hold fast to ways of thinking she already held, but always sought to expand her understanding of the questions the readings we assigned posed and was receptive to being moved, unsettled, angered, inspired, and enriched by the history, stories, poems, songs, essays, photographs, and movies we examined in the course.
Her Facebook posts are brilliant pieces of writing -- and back in the early 2000s she submitted one brilliant piece of writing after another to Margaret and me.
After I read Kathryn's post about completing her MBA degree, I commented, telling Kathryn that I was happy for her and that I admired her intelligence, determination, and creativity and wished her the best as she moved forward into the next phase of her life.
Kathryn wrote back and told me something I'd always hoped was true. She thanked me for "the undergrad exposure to the issues of the working class" and -- this moved me -- told me that "that term had more impact than you even know."
Coincidentally, yesterday a thank you card from one of Debbie's third graders came in the mail. Not only did the student thank Debbie for an elephant Debbie had made and gave her, the student told Debbie that she was the best teacher and wished Debbie could be her teacher again.
Kathryn's gratitude moved me.
Debbie told me how her student's thank you card moved her.
I now feel something like what James Wright describes at the close of his poem, "A Blessing":
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