Invisible

I found myself in the examining room of an ophthalmologist, waiting. I accompanied my partner Dan to the inner realm, beyond the hospital’s outer waiting room to help calm his agitated mind. A few years back, he had a detached retina in the right eye, and now he was not only seeing floaters in the left, but also flashing lights. So he made this urgent appointment at Oakland Kaiser.

The nurse told me to sit in one chair in a corner of this small room, in back of the heavy metal equipment, while she fired questions at Dan, and then as she left, she said the doctor would probably want me in the other chair, so she asked me to sit there, next to the counter with all its instruments, package of plastic gloves, and phone in its cradle. I made sure to back the chair up to the wall and tucked my legs under it so I wouldn’t take up too much room, because the door, as the nurse left, swung right up to the chair.

Dan and I passed the time making observations about the equipment—how little it had probably changed over time. I had worn glasses since the second grade, while he had only known this world of eye care since his retinal surgery, where they first put a “bubble” in his eye, and when that didn’t work, put in a “buckle” to keep the retina attached. Since then he needed to wear glasses. The equipment may have seemed more exotic in its newness to him, but to me, it was all part of my everyday life with glasses for most of those years and contacts for eight of them.

The doctor came in, his white coats whisking past my knees.

“Mr. Dickinson?” He shook Dan’s hand.

I waited for my turn. Would he call me Mrs. Dickinson or ask my name?

“I’m going to ask you a few questions,” he continued to Dan, facing him, his back to me. More firing away of questions. How long had the floaters occurred. Did he touch his eye area when the flashing took place.

“Dr. Lewis didn’t ask me that,” Dan said, referring to the doctor who did his retinal surgeries at Santa Clara Kaiser. “Is that important, whether I touched my eye or not when that happens?” Dan clearly felt this was significant.

“I don’t know. But I’m going to examine you. These drops will make your vision blurry while I look at your eyes through this magnifier. Then I’ll insert the drops to dialate your eyes. Okay?”

Dan agreed. What else could he do? I wondered how much longer it would be before the doctor acknowledged me, as I continued to sit there silently. I started back in on the New Yorker magazine article, not to become absorbed, but to distract myself. I was here in this room, yet I was not here. My presence felt ambiguous. What was my role? I had come to support Dan, was a witness to the process, to the doctor’s explanation of his procedure, and to Dan’s future.

We had gone through Dan’s diagnosis of cancer two years earlier, along with the research, surgery, and treatment, and when I had offered to accompany him to this appointment, he had agreed. I was happy to support him emotionally. It was not only the retinal detachment before I knew him, but also the cancer, which raised his anxiety about being in a hospital, let alone visiting a doctor.

Then the doctor flicked the lights off. I put the magazine back in my bag.

My own eye doctors, doing a regular eye exam, had never completely darkened the room. All I could do now was sit there in the dark while the doctor carefully manipulated the machine, turning a lever a tiny bit to look more closely at Dan’s eye. The outline of Dan’s shoulders were crisp from the doctor’s pin-sized light, and his eyes shiny. The doctor’s chin and nose shone too, but not his eyes or beyond. I was invisible. Unacknowledged.

When I was little, it was important to be good, or go unnoticed. My brother’s behavior demanded a lot of attention from our parents, and arguing and yelling often caused me to hide in my room, a sanctuary. I learned to be invisible because I didn’t want to get in the pathway of conflict any more than I had to. I had a way of manipulating my brother so that he would get into trouble and I would look innocent. I was anything but innocuous, fully participating in the tension that ensured after I gave him a seering look which caused him to beat my legs to bruises. In the car, we sat on the back seat together on long Sunday drives, or on journeys in summer to one campground after another in one of my mother’s well-planned vacations.

Learning not to be noticed extended to school, where, as an introvert, I said little, did what I was told, and tried not to stand out. One of the only times I drew attention to myself was a reminder not to. I got caught, along with a few boys, for playing during Mr. Pang’s sixth grade class. We sat in the back row. One of them demonstrated how we could make a racing car out of an eraser with staples attached to the bottom like wheels. The cars slid back and forth along the desks pushed tightly together.

When Mr. Pang finally noticed, his dark eyes pierced through me. I went stiff. The class stopped talking completely. All eyes were on us. I can tell you what I was wearing and the punishment, but I can’t tell you what the teacher said, what any of us said in response, if anything.

As punishment, we were required to stay in at recess for one week and read Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. That doesn’t sound like much, but when your friends are outside in the air, out of the classroom, every word stings. I wore light orange colored brushed cotton pants and a purple zipped-front long-sleeved ribbed top with a large O-ring at the end of the zipper, zipped up to my neck. How can one remember the worst incident, but nothing about it? My cloak of invisibility dropped—I was the center of attention, the one thing I had tried to avoid.

A technique that is well-worn, used for a couple decades, will not wear out. It becomes unconscious, like a daily routine of eating particular meals, brushing teeth, washing the face. You don’t even know you are wearing it. At some point, it became not preferable to always be invisible, and I started clamoring, in the form of wanting to be recognized for achievement. It took a long way to want that and sometimes take down the cloak.

In my 30s, when I became the children’s book buyer at a bookstore, I was the person customers came to for advice and expertise. I consulted with the publisher reps. Staff sought me out too. For a short time I was even assistant manager. It felt comfortable, since I had taken on more responsibility incrementally. I worked closely with a manager who had deep psychological issues, however, and she hounded me out of the position on invented charges, even claiming I had prior warnings, I took it as a warning to not be too much in the limelight.

More recently, in my career as a community college teacher, I find a strange mixture of high profile and invisibility. Up in front of thirty students in a classroom, all eyes focus on me, I exist fully and completely. I cannot hide. I prepare well, have my lesson plan which serves as a script for the session. I play a role which feels unatural. Fortunately, my last semester in graduate school I took a play writing workshop, which included each student acting in each other’s plays, so I learned how to put on an external layer. This kept me in good stead as a new teacher, yet every class felt like doing yet another presentation, a big deal. I shook before going in, but no one could tell. It took a couple of years to get past the nervousness, but it still didn’t feel natural, until another year into it. I was a gatekeeper to the students taking a required English composition class. To them I was anything but invisible, and not introverted. I embraced the role and learned to have fun with it. Gradually, it has felt more natural.

Outside of the classroom, in school as a professional to other professionals, it’s a different story. Riding the elevator in the administration building which holds various departmental offices and higher ups, I see people who I have been introduced to multiple times. When they do not acknowledge me, I change from a teacher who matters and is present in the lives of her students, to a person who does not exist—the invisible one. Defeated, I exit on my floor and head to the office I share with other adjunct, or part-time, faculty, where I belong as part of this group. Being unseen is common for adjuncts, generally. Literally, we are not present as much as full time teachers, and we don’t have the same benefits.

Adjuncts often have to take classes at times when most other faculty are not there because they don’t want it, or because many adjuncts work in more than one district, driving from place to place. Part timers are less involved in planning and assessment committees, they do not meet with staff on college issues unless they can fit it into their schedule, and are not properly compensated for any of this. In other words, we do not lead high-profile college lives. Adjuncts have a hard time making contact with full time faculty, staff, and administrators. Combine that with a tendency towards invisibility, and you have a recipe for not being acknowledged.

High profile work, then, would suggest garnering recognition. Yet in spite of co-coordinating a special program on campus, I did not yield nods on the elevator. I worked with students in this program for three semesters, holding events where other staff were invited. What matters is that the work challenged me—not in organizational ways, which are my forte, but in terms of interfacing with people beyond my level of comfortability, and in situations outside the classroom. It was like giving a party where you were a co-host. My co-coordinator, the counselor, would lead these events, introducing people, making the opening statement, and we would arrange for my part, what I would say to a room full of people, either taking some of what she would normally say or mixing it with something I came up with myself, such as explaining students’ writing in my English class component and having the students read examples from a compilation I put together. I shook hands of people who later ignored me outside this setting, including one administrator who, when I recently appeared at his desk to retrieve an add form for a student, told me “It’s nice to meet you,” even though he had participated many times in our events, had spoken on a panel we arranged, and when I rode the elevator with my co-coordinator that semester, he had greeted me warmly.

My co-coordinator, chatty and gregarious, had no such problems with recognition, partly because she had worked at the college for twenty years in another guise prior to retraining herself and becoming a counselor, and knew everyone, but partly too, because she would go up to people, put their two hands in hers or hug them, and offer her wide smile, opening herself up to them.

She wanted to be seen, wanted to engage with people as it gave her energy. For me, as an introvert, this drained me. But now I had this problem where I didn’t want to be seen and I did want to be seen at the same time, and it happened quite suddenly. It was important to be seen because I, too, needed to network, get support for the program, get people to mentor the students in it (part of how the program worked), and it was required of my job to participate, at least in some way, in public.

I wanted credit for the work I was doing, and wanted to open up possibilities for the future. Talking with the counselor had opened my eyes to that. I wanted my career to grow and become more secure, whichever direction that would go. How could I do that if I didn’t exist to others? The girl in me was fighting against this new calling to stand up and take off cloak. Be seen and heard. When you discover you have a voice, when you have something valuable to say, you want others to sit up and take notice.

I wondered why the doctor did not speak to me, let alone glance my way. The nurse had recognized me. If Dan had introduced me—“This is my wife Laurel—is it okay if she sits in with us?”—the doctor would have had to see me. Or if I had said something, he couldn’t ignore me. Dan was preoccupied with his own possibly serious health issue. The nurse had paved the way, creating an expectation that the doctor would say something to me about the chair I was in, whether or not that was satisfactory. I was waiting. He might have wanted me to move to the other chair, or he might have commented that I was fine sitting in the one by the counter. I could have initiated a comment about this myself. My partner in the college program would have said something.

The doctor had his own professional behavior. His confidence, knowledge, and explanations to Dan were informative and helpful. He assuaged Dan’s concerns and had him make an appointment with a retinal specialist. His behavior did not extend outside that realm. He did not know what to do if a significant other or friend came into the examination room, or perhaps this was what he felt comfortable with, what he came up with as his solution. He did not seem to think it strange for someone to witness his consultation in the dark space. In that little room I struggled. It never even occurred to me to speak up.

The doctor turned the light back on in the little room. Then he shook Dan’s hand. Without looking my way , he left the room. I put my bag on my shoulder, got up, and walked out with Dan to the bright hallway.

Recipe for Memoir

The rant and alienation of lemon bars baked too long

cracks forming bright yellow corridors

medical and psychological hell

running down a hallway, paper bracelet torn on the corner of metal

            inner oscillates to outer            letters someone has read

                        no longer private                 willingly lowering the veil of anonymity

                                    a label with dates and dialogue

what my mother never told me.

Poetry of abuse

            character turned flesh and blood, searching

vignettes will work, unadorned, without a paddle to navigate

through the reeds

cornflakes and eggs in an ocean of white

            powdered sugar stuck to moist lips—

where is my apron?

Biography, voice from within

eggwhite foam—

You

            and

                        the lyric I

crust of flour, butter, and white sugar

cut with fingertips.

but can one person swallow enough trouble to slap it on the refrigerator door?

crumbs underneath,

I can see them.

The movie runs,

a list—

memoir.

Experiential: The Puente Program

PSI summer 2010

“Experiential” is the word the Puente Program uses to describe itself. The concept is that students learn best by doing. When I first heard the word “experiential,” I had just begun working with the 30 year-old Puente Program in spring 2009, where I teach at Laney College. I fell into it because an instructor went out on maternity leave, and I took her place without any introduction or background.

The team of Counselor and English Instructor recruit from local high schools, community services, and within the college. The program is open to anyone, but it attracts students who are under-represented in higher education. The students are mostly Latino, as the program was originally designed to help that group transfer to four year colleges by giving them a counseling class and English class, which the same cohort of students would take, along with a mentor program, where a professional—inside or outside the college—helps guide each student.  In fall the students take what’s called English 201 at Laney, and in spring, English 1A: Puente calls them Phase I and Phrase II. In the first semester, the students read materials which reflect their own experiences and do more personal writing. Puente calls this the “mirror.” The second semester should segue into critical analysis and look beyond what’s familiar to them, as well as finding an academic voice. This is called the “window.”

At first, teaching Puente, I groped along in the depths, happy when an afternoon seminar at neighboring College of Alameda elucidated issues I was already grappling with in regards to Latino communities. And when a student in my class said in a soft voice that she was “undocumented,” I suddenly felt included in her secret, what many Latino students hide. What that word meant, and all its repercussions, and what “familia” meant, would take a couple more semesters, as I heard the realities of my students’ lives, so different than my own, and so far, unfamiliar in my experience as a teacher.

It wasn’t until I had taught three semesters of Puente classes that I attended the Puente Summer Institute, or PSI, in summer 2010. Only then did I experience first hand what the program is intended to do. PSI is a teacher training and has the benefit of the several decades of experience and materials behind it.

The training took place at UC Berkeley’s Faculty Club, a rustic setting. Sitting around a rectangular table in the Seabourg room, on the top floor, overlooking oak trees and the lawn to one side, and the music buildings to the other, along with a deck coming off the room, seventeen of us made this our home for eight days. Unlike other conferences, here, we did not look at our watches or the clock repeatedly—participants did not have to swig tons of coffee or iced tea to keep awake, and did not have to sit through endless presentations as passive viewers. Here, we all were active. The work that the leaders of the training, Grace Ebron and Julia Vergara and those who supported their work, did, engaged us as learners, a testament to their passion. Ironically, the depth of the writing that came out these eight days has surpassed what I’ve done in creative writing workshops.

My recent experience as an graduate school teaching assistant figured well into what I was learning in Puente, and now in PSI. My background as an MFA Fiction student at Mills College, along with the critical essays I wrote, both finishing up my B.A. and working on my MFA, helped me understand the relationship between the creative and the critical. Further, my own presentation at the conference for the Teaching Methods Course at Mills demonstrated my attitude towards teaching early on. Ruth Saxton, the teacher of the course, said we did not need to incorporate the pedagogical essays we had been reading into the presentation, yet I was one of a few who did not rely on the rhetoric and jargon in the diatribe. Instead, my focus was on using poetry in a composition class, in this case Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina,” as an example in showing how to make poetry analysis accessible to anyone.

Equally relevant to teaching Puente was my experience in the teaching scholarship program at Mills. Every student-teacher: 1: Acted as a teaching assistant in a Mills English instructor’s English 1A classroom; 2: Taught ten students from that 1A class in a “Basic Skills” class; 3: Individually tutored each of those ten students for 20 minutes a week. Saxton not only taught the course, but created the teaching scholarship program—how it was implemented, the three layers acting as a thorough and complex way of learning. Working with students intimately as both teacher and helper invited different ways of assisting and relating to the students. The layered system was thorough and effective, much like the Puente program, I would realize later, with its arms of support.

As a composition teacher, I have focused on using purely critical skills and maintaining distance from the subject in how ideas are expressed, avoiding personal experience as valid an example as citing from text, and too, avoiding using “I” statements. This did not preclude having students do freewrite where they expressed themselves and told their personal stories. But it didn’t enter into the critical dialogue. In spite of my background as a creative writer, it has not been obvious that students should “write what they know,” a mantra that many teachers impart. It has felt wrong, in fact, to practice that as a composition teacher. Some see critical writing as the great equalizer, that anyone from any background can use analysis as a window; rather than depending on ethnic backgrounds for relating to a text, it’s about the process of analysis. However comfortable I am in doing that kind of writing, I see its use to the exclusion of more colloquial language elitist. The academy does not let in slang—they have one platform and you’ve got to speak the language to get into the club.

Students do not easily grasp critical writing, as academic voice is not intuitive and must be explained clearly, especially for “non-traditional students,” who have not been brought up with the assumption that they will go to college, transfer to a four year university, and proceed into professional life. They have not received the legacy of parents who have college degrees. Non-traditional students, though, do have families who want their children to get a higher degree, succeed, and have a professional career. Or, at the very least, the family begins by understanding college is a path to success, a way to get beyond the economic struggles they have suffered in poverty, back in their country of origin.

The idea with Puente is that students will transfer and more—that they will return to mentor new Puente students and make a difference in the community. The connection, then, between what students read and the way they respond to it, is hugely important, because they need to be drawn into the academic dialogue rather than being left outside of it, a hard reality. The idea of the mirror, then, is to bridge the unfamiliar, so they get used to their own voices before adapting to this new way of conversing.

The first morning at PSI, the organizers put up large sheets of paper on the walls around us. At our specified seats around the rectangular table, each of us, including leaders Grace and Julia, took the colored marker pen and wrote the required information on each sheet of paper. On one we wrote our preferred name or nickname; on others the last movie we saw, the last book we read, and a surprising piece of information someone wouldn’t know from looking at us. This is not an unusual ice breaker, but they combined it with the act of physically getting up and walking around to write on the walls, which helped us share the space. Then, we took turns, each of us talking about the name we wished to be called and one other item.

A handful of assignments that we did at PSI reminded me of a term that Ruth Saxton at Mills used frequently in our Teaching Methods class—“meta-teaching.” Here, this meant that we participated in an exercise, which then, in turn, we could use for our classes. One assignment asked us to respond to one of the vignettes in Sandra Cisneros’ book The House on Mango Street, entitled “My Name.” I had used this prompt before, having taken it off the Puente Wiki site the previous fall, but what I didn’t have then was the scaffolding which Grace and Julia now provided. Grace read the vignette once. Then she had a second person read it aloud. During this, we were to underline a few strong lines. Then Grace read her own response to it, which she had written previously, to demonstrate our next task. The entire group was then broken up into “familias,” groups of four, where we sat down and wrote for 15 minutes before sharing. My familia consisted of Julia, the co-leader (because the teacher should participate), along with my fellow participants Vero and Jamie. Family, as I knew from my work around Puente thus far, was important. We would keep working in these same familias for the entire eight days of the conference.

As each person in the familia read, the rest of us wrote down several strong lines and two questions to ask the writer. Then we shared those comments with the writer, who in turn, made a note of them. The writer didn’t need to answer the questions; instead she could use comments later on, in the revision process. Everyone’s writing revealed something deeply personal in response to the prompt. The feedback would allow a door to open up for the writer with the focus on doing a re-write. Other assignments included the photo activity, which also had scaffolding to facilitate a process, and the writing prompt given by author Alex Espinosa, whose novel Still Water Saints we had been assigned to read.

One activity which branched out of the strictly “familia” groups was the “expert group.” The expert groups were made up of people from different familias—people we had not yet worked with. Each group was assigned to read a different excerpt from a longer reading. My group was assigned the opening from Victor Villasenor’s memoir Burro Genius, where he talks about what supports and obstacles he has had in his education. He was under-value and misunderstood, discriminated against, and explains how sometimes the one person who encourages you to excel may not be a teacher or a parent. This particular excerpt of begins with a speech for an award. Up at the podium, he speaks to a room full of English teachers—just the very kind of teacher who has always discouraged him. The enemy. He throws away his notes and goes off on a vicious rant against English teachers. Some teachers in the audience storm out. Some weather the barrage. At the end, whoever is left in the room gives him a standing ovation, because he has, in fact, recognized good teaching.

Using the reading in these expert groups rather than our familias had an advantage in that we were asked to do a critical reading of a text. This contrasted with the work with our familias, which had a more personal flavor— a different tone and different purpose. We spent 15 minutes analyzing the Villasenor excerpt. After reading the piece, we wrote for 15 solid minutes. The reading resonated with me, for even though English was always my good subject, I had no more motivation than Villasenor, and also struggled to feel more positive about myself and achieve something. I responded both on a critical and personal level.

Then we returned to our familias to read our writing aloud. As it turns out, the writing that came out of this expert group discussion allowed me, for the first time, to see my mother and father’s role in my education. Here is where the concept of the mirror and the window come in. The result of working in two groups benefited another layer of learning, but revealed, too, another layer of the personal. This brought confidence and knowledge, looking through a critical lense and transforming that personally. With the familia and the expert group I got a sense of how the mirror and window felt.

With PSI, because I participated in the way a student would in my classes, I benefited personally and professionally in a way which has helped me understand student thinking and student writing.

While the idea of the Puente Program is to utilize the mirror in fall semester and the window in spring, a base of personal experience broadening into critical analysis, the lines don’t seem so clear cut, depending on which Puente English instructor you talk to, or which program you are referring to. Laney's program, for instance, has greater diversity rather than many, so a Puente class there has its own unique mix. Plus, the counselor purposefully recruits some non-Latinos to give a real view of the greater Bay Area community. Mostly the Latinos speak Spanish, but we also have Chicanos who may be distant from their original language and are seeking connection. The end result is that some have the mirror while some have the window on a particular text.

Laney College cancelled its Puente Program for this year. The Dean of Humanities told me several weeks before the semester began. My response was to burst into tears. After a mourning period, I decided to refocus and use my “Puentified” material for what would now be a regular 201 class, because the Dean said she was opening it up to all students who wished to enroll. Most of the students who had registered for the Puente program stayed in my class, though there are more “window” experiences this fall, with the typical mix of African American, Vietnamese, African, Chinese, and others. They are experiencing what Puente students receive in an English class, without the support of a counselor or mentor, so enjoy the materials, such as Francisco Jiminez’ young adult memoir Breaking Through, as well as vignettes from Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. We also examine essays from Gloria Naylor, Amy Tan, and M. Scott Momaday, as well as gender-related essays, to cut across the multiplicity of backgrounds.

The non-Puente class responded to Breaking Through with joy. The story of a migrant farm worker family, when the author was a boy, reaches out to everyone because of the issues faced. I had them do reading responses where they listed which characters appeared in what setting, a summary per chapter, and a close reading of three quotations to look at the author’s use of language. We had already done summary and close reading with the first unit, so this honed these skills. In class, we investigated, firstly, the student’s personal aspirations, and secondly, the challenges of the characters in the story. Beginning with a freewrite about a time they had to start over, they talked about how the characters in the story started over and the hardships and rewards involved. From there we discussed examples of power in the story—who has it, who does not, and how it’s used, pointing in the direction of both traditional family gender roles and a hierarchy and discrimination based on racial lines. Through looking at their own lives, they could now appreciate Jiminez’ story on two levels—personally and critically.

Whether a Puente class or not, any class will benefit from what a Puente teacher gleans at one of the teacher trainings or conferences, conferring with other Puente teachers, and having the support of a co-coordinator and others in the program. When at first I heard people in the program saying over and over “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” about Puente, I didn’t believe it. I saw no need to put students in “familias” for the entire semester and didn’t understand how important family was to the Latino culture. Why was the mentor important? Why did the English instructor and the counselor need to work together. perhaps even co-teaching an occasional class in addition to being present in each other’s classes? Why did it need to be an accelerated program? My questions would be answered in time. And I would discover the experience of Puente from within and how it transforms everyone who participates. The window and the mirror are two parts of the same vision—to open up the boundaries, both looking within and searching further afield, and to grow.

Gum and Other Pleasures

I stole gum. Tons of it, over the course of years. If you weighed the total amount, it could drown you, as you slowly walked into the ocean. 

But that was nothing.

Before that, it was an Indian beaded necklace from the gift shop at Death Valley. I was twelve years old, staying in a housekeeping cabin with my family. My mother found it.

“What’s this?” my mother asked, pulling out the necklace from my bag, her voice rising.

I pleaded with her not to tell Daddy, but she did.

She knew I had no money of my own. My parents never gave my brother or me any allowance because, they reasoned, they would get us what we needed. The word “needed” meant they both had jobs, but it was a modest income. I could have asked them to buy the necklace for me, but I didn’t.

I was a good child, left with little choice in the face of my brother’s hyperactivity, tantrums, and the way he threw our parents into yelling matches.

My father sat me down in the cabin. His mouth always looked the same—square.

“You have to return the necklace,” he said.

I knew he would not hit me, but was afraid just the same, because of the way he yelled at my brother, had kicked his door in and broken his records.

Together we went to the gift shop and I handed the necklace back and apologize to the manager, who stood across the glass counter.

Later, there were clothes. My friend Liz and I challenged each other, venturing from our respective homes to meet in downtown San Francisco at our favorite department store. Liz’ dark brown hair always lay neatly down her shoulders, and she kept it parted in the middle of her pale scalp. Her large brown eyes sat symmetrically against her delicate skin. In contrast, my skin erupted in acne and greasy dryness, and my long blonde hair lay in thin strands.

We had met at S.F. State in the dorms, and partied there together. I witnessed the incident when she left her contact lenses in overnight because she passed out drunk. Early in the morning, our friend Teri drove us to UCSF emergency as I held Liz’ hand in the back seat. After a while, Liz emerged with white eye patches and the nurse instructed us to make sure she lay down for a day with them on.

Liz was there when I met Jennie’s brother at the toga party, across the room raising her right eyebrow. He and I stayed up all night talking, the first time I watched the sun come up. I had to convince most people all we did was talk, but Liz knew, in my shyness and reticence, that it was true.

Liz and I took mushrooms together with Teri, Sally, and JoAnn one afternoon in my dorm room. One girl who visited for a few minutes caught her hair on fire by a candle. That was the least of our excitement, as we giggled our way through hours of distorted shapes of my bedding, curtains, and my own artwork, as the colors astounded us.

I spent time with Liz and her boyfriend Jim, a diabetic, both when they first met, and later at her apartment, after the dorm days. Jim was an artist, drawing darkly-colored comics on a lightboard, smoking cigarettes, and staying in Liz’ room sometimes, while I slept on the living room couch. Liz’ younger brother John, who also hung around, adored me—it was written into his wide-set eyes, moisture compacting at the corners, his tall thin stature contrasting with his ample lips. Liz warned me not to lead him on, protecting him.

This was the “preppy” era, so the clothes we took from the department store were crisp cotton button down shirts with small plastic buttons, khaki pants with cuffs, and jeans with pleats. It never occurred to us that we could get caught, that the store employed people specifically to nab shoplifters and that there were security cameras. At least, we never discussed our fears. Before entering, we were calm. Afterward, we exploded with laughter, our non-purchases hidden in our bags. We had an unspoken bond in our thievery. We were outlaws. My favorite shirt, soft white brushed cotton with thin, pale pink stripes, I kept for years, even after I stopped wearing it. It was a trophy.

We would take the elevator up to the Juniors or Misses section. I hugged my canvas bag close—the same bag which the Moonies canvassing near the Powell Street Bart station would zero in on, the pattern of large geese beckoning to them. Liz’ bag was a designer model of dark blue synthetic material. We entered the dressing room without anyone noticing, and under its guise the items in question easily floated off the hangers. It was too easy.

Liz’ father was a judge who had relocated his family to San Francisco from Indiana.  Besides the one brother, Liz had one biological sister and two adopted sisters, both African American. Probably, I thought, a reason they moved to the multi-cultural Bay Area. The family, as I knew it from a few visits, seemed an unusual mix of independent thinking, idealism, and strictness, demonstrated by the warmth of Liz’ voice as she spoke to her adoptive sisters, but also by the strict tone of her mother towards Liz.

She, like me, had probably done this on her own before our joint escapades, though I never asked her. Since my theft of the necklace at Death Valley, I allowed myself to take gum whenever the mood struck. My friends, who thought of me as straight-laced, were surprised when they witnessed it, though they got used to it and even mused on it. With Liz, every time we got together, I thought we should stop, but I never said anything. Eventually, we stopped seeing each other, as friends sometimes fall away, but it was never with any definition or reason.

Still later, on my own in another department store closer to home, I found myself tempted. Liz and I hadn’t seen each other in a while. I hadn’t met my first boyfriend yet, I did clerical work I hated, and had moved back home with my parents because of an emotional collapse after living on my own. Desperate and empty, wanting something I could not afford to buy, I couldn’t resist.

I was out the door of the department store when I felt an arm on my shoulder.

“Excuse me.” The deep voice rumbled through me.

I turned around. The man wore a dark blue suit, his expression business like. No frills. We walked back through the store. My legs were numb, heavy yet weightless.

I held my head down, afraid to see anyone I knew. After all, I had grown up coming to this store.

We reached a double door. He pushed it open and we strolled into a large cold space with a cement floor, which could not be considered a room, as it had various open doors and passages coming off it. At a desk sat the manager, a man wearing slacks and a short sleeved shirt.

He asked me short-fired questions about who I was and what happened. These should have been easy to answer, but with each, there was a delay, my throat closing up and my voice nowhere to be found. When it did come, it sounded low and gravely. My name. My address. I don't remember the rest. Not close to tears, but nearer to dread, I stood there. I gave up the shirt from the goose bag. Multi-color stripes on white, short-sleeved cotton, button down. Cheerful, full-priced.

What seemed like hours later, a policeman appeared, his voice a blur. He put handcuffs on me, walked me out a corridor I didn’t know existed, there all the time in the bowels of the store.

The sun blazed outside. My eyes tried to adjust as the officer held open the back door of his squad car and motioned for me to get in. I slid onto the smooth upholstery, hands growing numb from the tight metal. I finally felt the tears at bay as he got into the driver seat and took off, this whole escapade rising to a new level of seriousness, but I would not give him the satisfaction. This felt like a mirror for my whole life, the complete disaster filling up my insides, but I didn’t want anyone to know. My eyes would have been puffy from the tears.

Then the police station desk. Cuffs removed. Signing paperwork. A court appointment the following week and community service assigned to me there. I would have to tell my mother. But she would tell my father.

I would spend a few hours each week at the Cancer Society, filing paper and learning the statistics of the disease. Lung cancer was the most prevalent. We were all volunteers except for the woman who ran the office, so I didn’t feel shamed or out of place—just doing my bit.

After a few weeks, I threw away the old trophy shirt in the garbage. I should have burned it in a fire that would encompass something deeper. At the time, I could not see what called me to steal. It wasn’t the lure of excitement, not the idea that you could get anything you wanted for free without asking, or even that you could have an elicit secret and enjoy that power. No, it was having to be “good” which propelled me into crime. Eventually, this acting out would transform into gaining agency and allow me to be the person I needed to be rather than passive, rather than the idea of good. I would no longer take such risks as with the shirt, nor entertain myself with such pleasures as stealing gum.

Gifted

My lack of motivation was born in 5^th grade at El Monte Elementary School. Mrs. Werner would announce after lunch, “Time for the achievers to leave.” They stood up and filed out the door.

The “Gifted Program” * left me ashamed. I had to stay in the classroom with the rest, studying with the new-fangled learning tools. The underlying suggestion was that the rest of us needed extra help. Tall cardboard towers stood near the front of the room. We would get up from our seats, choose which subject to work on from the many-colored options—geography, math, English, etc.—and return to our seats and work quietly by ourselves with the cards.

What happened in that room down the hall? What did they discuss? Why did they need a special teacher, all eight of them? They all lived up on the hill near the school, while I lived in the flatlands, bussed up with the kids in my neighborhood, all African Americans. Not one of them belonged to the special program either. And, coincidentally, everyone in the program were high-achievers. I didn’t know boundaries then. Did not have questions about I.Q., race, or psychological damage. I was just a child.

Until then I perceived myself as normal. My teachers were mother figures and learning was game-like, even with the atmosphere of natural competition. But school had been more than learning. The relationship I had with my teachers was central to how I received the subjects they taught. Mrs. Brown, my First grade teacher at my old Elementary school, Stege, back down in the flatlands, was the most motherliest of them all. Warmth radiated from her lovely brown skin and softly curled hair, and her thick-framed glasses spoke of intelligence. She did not hesitate to envelope a child in her skirts, nor did she have a problem with telling someone who was misbehaving to sit at the back. My parents had me bussed up to El Monte in Third grade because they were not happy about the quality of education at Stege, or perhaps because of the roughness children displayed on the schoolyard. Mrs. Emerick, at my new school, had reddish-blonde hair, also treated us warmly, and wore glasses. At the new school, I saw less African American children than at Stege, but there were now some Asian faces, among a predominance of White ones. El Monte benefitted from bussing, but diversity or special programs escaped my young eyes and ears, how adults were manipulating us into our present and future lives.

The relationships I formed with my teachers was of equally importance to those friendships I formed with my classmates. The ranking among peers took place in the classroom, where it was whether we raised our hand or knew the answer that identified us as being higher or lower in some way. We formed our own cliques at recess, away from the teachers’ eyes, each of us finding a place in the society of children which would mark us forever, as a leader or a follower, a joiner or a dissenter, as loud or quiet, pretty or plain, tough or wimpy.

If not Mrs. Werner, it would have been some other teacher who said those words heralding the secret group to go down the hall to another room, to separate, like cream from the top of the milk, the best part. I didn’t feel any different than those other kids until that moment. I played with a couple of them during recess, off in the corner of the field near the fence, right up against the school wall of the last classroom. There, we could see the steep streets the bus had driven up on, and below us, the flatlands spread out like an apron. Petite with a sweet, gentle smile, Jill had pale skin with freckles and wavy dark hair framing her face. Wendy’s frame towered over us slower developers. She would bring her Steiff animals to school, larger ones like the brontosaurus with orange, green, and purple colors. As equals, we played quietly and happily together. I did not feel different than Jill and Wendy, the gifted program sliding under my consciousness while at recess. They did not choose to enter the program, and they, along with other friends, cannot be accused of separating themselves from the rest of us let alone participating in it. Yet it changed us all. For some who were chosen, it meant getting more attention, which in turn may have helped them become clearer about their interests or learning styles.

What the program meant for me in the long term was that I would consider myself a less-than smart student for the rest of grade school, and through junior high and high school, and even into college. I dropped out of college, another indicator of lack of self-worth, in addition to lack of direction. When I returned to complete my college education twenty years later, it was with a consciousness about what I was worth. Because I had not withdrawn from a number of those initial college classes and those grades had turned into Fs, I had to petition to have those grades stricken from my record in order to restore an acceptable grade point average, in order to be accepted back into college.

That school happened to be San Francisco State. Proof of my self-worth, I did the considerable paperwork, meeting with a counselor there and then going to each department asking for signatures. At each juncture, I teetered on the bridge of humiliation and pride, not knowing which I felt at any given time or how some of these new department chairs perceived me. The music chair gave her entire support, as I wanted to apply to Mills College for the following fall, her alma mater. She said that she did not want to get in the way of my completing my degree and moving forward in life. I never even met the English chair, as the secretary disappeared into his office and then magically returned with the desired signature. The Sociology department similarly presented an enter-and-exit proposition. The P.E. teacher rejected my petition outright. Unfortunately, the same teacher still worked there, so the petition could not just go above him to the chair level. But I was shocked. P.E.? The other teacher who still remained was my Philosophy professor, with whom I took four classes, all in existentialism. She stared at me with her huge blue eyes.

“Sartre would not approve,” she said, her full lips with light pink lipstick clamped together, her short blonde hair see-through with the sun in back of her. She still wore the same pink shirt and dark knit skirt. “You know what he said about denial.”

It had taken years of working at a bookstore job where I was valued and where I benefitted from challenges to give me self worth. I grew personally and professionally. When I returned to school, it was this experience and knowledge that raised me up and gave me a voice. I could speak instead of cowering quietly as I had my whole youth. I had talent and ideas. I had traveled, read, and written. Returning to school, I became the star of all my endeavors.

The gifted program has changed, and now, in the 21^st century, at the grade school level it embraces both high-achieving and under-achieving students, with the idea that economically disadvantaged and varying cultural backgrounds are represented. Sometimes change happens too slowly. Did evolution of the program had to happen, perhaps, for this new incarnation of it to happen? Or could we just have jumped into representing more styles of learning? I still don’t understand how I.Q. is a valid assessment tool, in determining who is gifted. And then, what does gifted mean?

I now teach English at a community college, so have yet another perspective on students and their abilities. I find it clearly evident that all students have a gift of some kind or are talented in some way, whether they have advantages or are disadvantaged, whether they are “traditional” students entering from families who have already gone the college route, or from families who had been disenfranchised by higher education. How well a student does on a test or how well he or she writes does not yield any information about what could be teased out from within.

* The gifted program was authorized by an Education code in California, and therefore institutionalized. In the 1960s and 70s, when I attended grade school, the program was based on I.Q. 

John’s Garden: Losing John Tinker to Cancer, November 2010

Late August, when I saw John Tinker at the cancer support group meeting, I told him, “It has been a privilege knowing you.”

He sat there, looking his usual slim self, with his rosy-cheeked face.  His hair was greying at the temples. His eyes were alert. 

This was what he looked like ever since Dan and I had been attending these meetings at UCSF in spring 2009, soon after John and his partner Adrian started coming. John just kept showing up, after every creeping back of the cancer into his body. His appearances meant a new day, a new chance at life. Even through pain he was a fixture, one of the main members of this collection of people in various stages of colorectal cancer.

He wore his thick hair a bit longer in the front and short around his neck and ears, reminiscent of the F. Scott Fitzgerald era. The contemporary part of him wore jeans and a button down shirt, and glasses. He and Adrian both seemed like they were from another time. Adrian, skilled in the decorative arts, painted intricate designs on harpsichords, furniture, and walls. He was soft-spoken, humble, with a little pointed beard and twinkling eyes.

They finished each other’s sentences, and when their words would collide, they would ask each other, “Do you want to say it, or should I?”

This was the last meeting I could attend before my semester started, since I was assigned a Thursday night class. We all sat in a circle. The one couch often held either Marsha and RaeAnn or John and Adrian or Dan and myself, couples. Vittorio, the leader, sat in the same chair he always did, but the rest of us alternated. The room was vacated of the usual traffic by our 6pm start time. All the desks were empty, as were the other rooms with tables and chairs. On a shelf to one side were photos of a couple of women who had died of breast cancer, their names inscribed on the frames. On top of another shelf hats were piled up for women who had lost their hair due to chemo. On top of and in cupboards were balls of yarn and knitting needles and crochet hooks for people to make the hats.

John had expressed many times that he was dying, yet this time seemed different. His pain was worse, but too, the cancer was invading further. All of us did our best to respond in some way, and it turned into praising him and showing him gratitude.

“We wouldn’t have met, even though we we’re both English teachers,” I said.

We went in different circles, even though we both helped students with their writing and were both writers. He worked for Stanford and I for Laney. He directed the writing center there, taught literature. When I had looked him up on the internet, I found that he had written papers on a writer I never heard of. The cancer transformed not only his life, but his writing. In between various surgeries, emergency room visits, chemotherapy, and other treatments, he worked on a book written from the perspective of a cancer patient.

It’s not often that one gets the chance to thank someone to their face, to say things that you would otherwise end up saying after their death. But this was a facet of the group, where we practiced the extraordinary.

Three years ago, in fall 2007, John fell down in a grocery store, writhing in pain. He went to his doctor, who did tests and told him he had colon cancer and would need surgery immediately. John balked in disbelief. Cancer? Out of nowhere. He was in perfect health—exercised, ate right, was of sound mind and body, lived daily as a vital person. After the denial wore off the next week he went in for the surgery.

We joined this group as we were doing research around Dan’s own cancer. Dan had been diagnosed with rectal cancer that spring and we had gotten two recommendations for radical surgery from inside Kaiser and one outside, at UCSF, from the new head of colorectal cancer there. The group helped us navigate the terrain. We found people with experience and a leader who moderated the conversation well and with humor. Everyone was frank, which made sense, as we ourselves had already entered into the realm of “too much information” being de rigeur, where bodily descriptions were not tasteless, but necessary.

At first, while waiting for the meeting to start, John and I would talk about our teaching programs. As he vanished from that world, he would ask about my work, and I gladly shared, knowing he understood and appreciated the details of my composition classes, which always benefited from an airing out.

Another connection I had with John was writing. Dan and I were waiting for a surgery date in June 2009 and I could not write. In between semesters, I was drowning in the limbo of not knowing and not having any control. I was anxious that Dan’s surgery would be in the midst of my summer teaching schedule, which was much more rigorous and condensed than a regular semester. We bandied back and forth with Dan’s surgeon about the date to no end, because he would forget what we requested and scheduled a date that had to be pushed back.

It was John who prodded me. He said I must write. John inspired me because of his own writing—not only little essays he was working on in spite of his physical condition, but the book about patients’ attitude and experiences with the health system. He wanted to affect change with this collection. His own positive attitude was the catalyst. The book would be available as hard copy, but also free, online, his gift to everyone and anyone. Thanks to John I put pen to paper, and that grew into writing over 100 pages about the steps and stages from Dan’s diagnosis to his surgery, the hospital stay, recovery period, and beyond, diagramming in words a partner’s experience with the medical system, an arc of a relationship.

John had gone on a leave of medical absence from his teaching position before we met in the group. By the time he had retired for good, a few months into our association, he declared that he did not miss work and did not understand how he could have spent that much time doing it. He was once passionate about teaching, but now a nice day consisted of waking up to Adrian’s touch and a little gardening. His priorities had changed. He and Adrian would have a nice dinner after hearing a new, even more devastating diagnosis, or brunch at the Cliff House.

“What else can we do?” they said to us all, with smiles on their faces.

We were all impressed with John’s attitude from the start—how he had been dealt this hand, yet he was approaching it positively, frankly, step by step. He was not “battling” cancer, as the medical profession wanted him to do; rather, he treated it as much as he could, and then accepted it. This does not mean he was passive. He had undergone surgery and rounds of chemo. When the cancer spread to his sacrum at the base of his spine, John had the new-fangled “cyber knife” treatment, lasers attacking the very spot where the cancer was hitting the nerve. In fall of 2009, he said he didn’t think he would live to the following summer. He took valium to mediate the pain, as the cancer was touching the nerve. Then he tried morphine, but it left him too out of it to pursue his creative outlets, like writing. Then methadone.

He and Adrian were unable to control the actual disease, but they controlled how they experienced the disease. The “we” here is significant, because it means that he and Adrian were dealing with this together. I understood the “we,” having gone through Dan’s cancer, where sometimes the line between patient and partner blurred in the work and emotional investment I put in which involved in attaining the right answers, treatment, and care for Dan.

More than working together to attain an end, because of the recurrences and complications, these two were living more fully than anyone I’d ever known, in spite of setbacks which left John taking the various pain killers, and making an emergency visit to the hospital because of a blockage in the colon. He led a life of laxatatives to avoid further blockage, before he ended up having a colostomy, which deprived him of wearing his nicely-fitted blue jeans, similar to Dan. John’s experience kept turning corners, and we would hear tales of something new all the time.

At the garden party they hosted in September, it was clear that this was a farewell party for John, despite the delectable sheet cake someone brought for his birthday. Adrian explained, as he welcomed us through the house and down the backstairs towards the garden, that John might have to lay down at some point, because he tired easily. Fall was approaching and he only had at most a few months to live since the cancer was uncontrollable and all they were doing at this point was trying to mitigate the pain.

Baroque music from a string trio flowed through the air from under the canvas cover at the corner of the garden, the hire of the musicians a gift from one of John’s friends for the event. A bowl of lemonade stood in another corner, next to the house, along with some chips and guacamole. We were introduced to some of John’s Stanford colleagues, as well as some friends from the Quaker church Adrian was a member of and which they both frequented.

We wandered back upstairs, to the dining room table, where an assortment of French breads beckoned, handmade by another friend who was taking a baking class, along with a platter of Mediterranean finger foods and the brownies I had brought. Then back out to the garden, where at second glace we could take more in.

The variety of growth paled beside the height of some of the plants, such as a couple of olive trees, pink roses climbing a trellis, and the pink holyhocks, in full glory. These mixed with tropical plants and low-lying grasses and flowers in yellows and purples. It seemed like a mad disarray, but the closer you got, the planning became apparent, as you walked on one of the little paths, or sat on a stone wall to enjoy the music more closely, avoiding the prick of a cactus here and there.

Sitting on cast iron furniture under the mid-afternoon sun, Dan and I spoke to a friend of theirs who had a studio near Adrian’s, in the same area, Hunter’s Point. She explained how Adrian drove past the house to his studio and saw the “For Sale” sign. We told her how we knew the couple, and she listened intently as we spoke of the support group experience, of John’s health. Dan, who didn’t readily open up, spoke to her of his cancer. 

As this conversation waned, Marsha and RaeAnn from the group appeared. Like John and Adrian, they had lived most of the years of their relationship in separate dwellings and recently moved in together. Marsha said they had visited this house, and explained their joy at the new picket fence at the front which replaced the chain mail one.

He and Adrian had bought the house together a little before John was struck down by the disease. At that juncture, they had already lived together for 14 years, and had been together as a couple for three years before that. Theirs was one of the oldest houses in San Francisco, and a wreck, which they spent considerable time and effort renovating into the Victorian jewel it once was. Adrian used his skills as an accomplished decorative artist to restore the décor. They selected the right furniture to complement the era. They kept all the old pictures that were already in the house, of people they did not know, and propped them. They re-upholstered. John took on the backyard, finding old and new plants and flowers to make a lush, enveloping garden, a legacy for Adrian and John’s friends.

The other connection between John and Adrian and Dan and myself was what cancer gave our relationship. It was a gift. Dan and I realized how committed we were to each other in the midst of the cancer, over lunch down the block from the hospital, during a day of many doctor appointments. We married in April 2010. John and Adrian had their marriage ceremony near the time Dan had his surgery, summer 2009, in Mendocino. These relationships have been the richer for this disease entering our lives, like a secret garden that needs a key.

The meetings I could not attend in September and October, Dan informed me of. He said that John and Adrian were looking into hospice care and discussing the details of John’s death. Adrian so openly talked about John’s death right in front of John, it felt weird and unusual, but it was also mark of their frankness with each other and their openness with the group. Adrian wondered if he could accompany John’s body to the crematorium. John expressed how he had prided himself on his body, and how he had lost control over it.

Cancer has made us seen who are our friends and who are not. It has shed a light on priorities, values, and love, in the same way that death does. When my father died over a decade ago, his absence cast a shadow and made everything clear—my love for him, the balance of my parents’ relationship. Cancer, too, reveals all—what is important in life.

In the face of John’s death, questions come to the front. Why does one person die, while another’s life is spared? Just because Dan’s cancer was caught in an early stage? Why must Adrian deal with this loss? Longing comes up—how I wish I had known John more, better, for more years. Was it enough to see John in group? I picture John’s face and want to hug him as I did the many times after a group meeting.

Knowing someone through a support group is different than sharing their everyday life—it is no better or worse, just more concentrated. I didn’t think of myself as a close friend of John’s because I did not share this everyday life, and because outside of one event they invited us to, we only saw them in group, in a controlled setting with rules, with others around. What the group allows is divulgence of the deepest information—the physical breakdown of the body, cancer cells multiplying and destroying a life. The physical.

In John’s case, the cancer became something spiritual too. His beliefs had helped steer him to a positive outlook of acceptance. His spirituality was, as he told us, something that he went towards to nurture himself in these times. When, however, during one session, he broke down and told us his strength was nowhere to be found, that even his spiritual center couldn’t be found, what could we say? He couldn’t be cured. His optimism failed. He was going to die and was in constant pain. We were there as witnesses to his pain and his struggle to remain optimistic.

As with anyone I love, I found myself wanting to reach out and grasp the pain, removing it for good, along with every part of the cancer, but all I could do was remark on our meeting and knowing each other under these unique circumstances. It was particularly hard to watch someone like John go down because he kept returning to the group, because of the depth which he saw and understood his own predicament, because of his expression of that to us. He was an illusion even before his death.

John’s positive attitude, though it may have waned, was an inspiration, like the garden he left behind to be enjoyed, plants both old and new flowering in the sun and bending to the force of the wind. If there is a way of not “battling” life, but accepting it, recognizing what can be controlled and what cannot, John found it. The garden stands for the connection he felt to the living world, but also his connection to something beyond.

My Name

Inspired by Sandra Cisneros “My Name” 
from The House on Mango Street

Laurel wreath, sharp points, not serrated, not smooth, not round, but oval. Why did she name me after a leaf, a tree, that strong smelling, good for stew, good for sauce, hard to pronounce in some tongues, an “l” at each end, a name so un-Jewish, unlike my middle name, Sara, after her mother? Sara no one would mis-pronounce, Sara, no one would startle, then halt, before diving into a pool, the “el” just about to leave the tongue.

Fragrant laurel leaves making the winner’s wreath without thorns, clearly defined leaves with a point at each end. Nothing hurts. Then why is it so sad, so quiet, unlike my brother, who could be loud, with the “k” at the end of his name—Mark—the end defined with no chance of falling into the water.

I used to think about changing my name to Lauren, Laura, Laurie, making accommodations to the world to be accepted, to blend in, because I wanted to be out of the way in a ponytail, invisible unlike my brother who created a storm out of a room, our parents whirling around him trying to contain him, hiring other people to make sense of him, though our father was a social worker.


My name was too much for me. I wanted something quieter, to fit how quiet I had to be—there was only room for one of my brother. I was nice. I was sweet. I was Laurel wanting to be Lauren, Laura, Laurie, writing those names in cursive in elementary school, learning the order of the letters in case I could change my name. I loved my family, felt safe but hated the yellow, hated who I was, closing the door to my room and stuffing my ears. My mother’s diets gave me a vision of my own body. Not having a high IQ, while members of my 4^th grade class went down the hall to the “gifted” program, gave me what I was worth. Positive negatives.


Only after I could be bad, did Laurel make sense, disappearing during lunch from temp jobs, stealing from stores, hallucinating in my dorm room, colors exploding, drinking the hard stuff in a car bound for downtown, with my housemates screaming “Louise” each other. Even with all this, I remained innocent on sugar overloads during the walk from 29^th Avenue home towards the ocean and park.

I grew into my name, because regardless of child or adult, always the child. It’s not enough that others say it. I grew into the “els,” framing me like a gate.