It came in a large white envelope, and felt several pages thick. I didn't know it was a card - but, from the return address (Dr. Corwin Georges, in the Theatre and Dance department - my major - at my alma mater), I half thought to myself, what is this, are they returning that wretched play I wrote in 1990 or something? He was chairman of the department, though not my advisor, and I was surprised to hear from them. My association with the University pretty much ended at graduation, because life has held my attention by force, starting with the recession I graduated into.
So when I opened the envelope, and in fact there was an exam I had taken in 1990 - purple ditto paper, my barely post-adolescent scrawl and all, I was actually kind of blown away.
The card commemorates more than the holiday - it is Dr. Georges' 40th year at the school. He writes about never thinking this year might come - and about how he has always saved papers, and thought one day he would do exactly this, and reach out to students (I hope he kept it to departmental majors; in such a span, surely there are an abundance of US!), and share some piece of our mutual past.
My own story since then, of course, is that majoring in theater is why I became a writer. I snarkily say how preferable it is to work alone than with Actors (guys, I actually love ya) - but the fact is, I was as close to a Technical Theater major as the size of the program provided for such specialization. I worked in the shop the whole time I was there. I never got cast. I thought I was a good actor, but the fact is I was simply not. Though I once performed a scene from The Runner Stumbles, and no less a figure than Milan Stitt told me I should apply at the Yale School of Drama, my failure to figure onstage in any of the productions we mounted during my four and a third years there (we were on terms; not semesters, so - yes - 1/3, not 1/2) was no accident. I still can't behave naturally in front of people who are there to watch me pretend to do so.
So I tell people I was a technical theater major, though there really was no such thing in my day - I happily recall my memories of casien paint, trying to impress the guy who ran the scene shop, and getting to use the band saw - and I largely push memories of my college years into shadow. I had a townie for a boyfriend, and I married him. College, particularly after I met Beloved Ex at age nineteen, was almost as deniable an experience for me as my far-too-preppy high school had been.
***
And yet.
And yet.
Dr. Georges' rather wonderful idea filled me with exactly the warmth he had intended. It reminded me of how kind his colleague, my advisor, was when I was a freshman. It reminded me of my bosom friend, who shared the program with me during that first year. It reminded me of the way our ballet instuctor admired the arch of the top of my foot, saying even she didn't have a curve that good, and how dancers want to have that curve.
Certainly, it reminded me of the shop. That smell of sour milk, the casien paint. Fresnel lenses, and Lekos. The dance concerts I ran lights for, and helped to design too. The old proscenium designed in his earliest years by Kennedy. The black box theater we used the most; and how hard it was to light, because its ceilings were fairly low. The drawings I still have, of costume designs for a sort of fantasia faerie for a ballet, and of Banquo's ghost. Of set designs, or flats, never to be realized (and, as much as my performance, really not that good). Of my friends. Yes, I had them.
It reminded me of that last project - a perfectly execrable one-act I wrote, which I pray is LOST to history regardless of that 40 years of saved student work - and how disappointed my advisor and Dr. Georges both were in me.
It reminded me of how much that theater degree serves me in my work every day, and how it informs and shapes my writing.
It reminded me of those chants we used to do - because theater kids need chants and in-things, verbalisms special to ourselves. Good blood, bad blood, red leather yellow leather. Or, what a to do to die today at a minute or two to two, a thing distinctly hard to say, but harder still to do, for there'll be a tattoo at quarter to two, a rat-a-ta-tat-a-ta-tat-a-ta-too, and the dragon will come when he hears the drum at a minute or two to to (repeat - louder, and faster, every time) ...
It reminded me how fortunate I am, to have the education I did, and where I got it, and when.
It even reminded me of the day we found out I was not getting even the smallest amount of tuition exchange - a benefit of teaching my father had always counted on - a mere six weeks before I matriculated; and how terrifying, and financially hideous, that was for my family. Twenty-five years later, that is no less fearful than it was then.
I'm nostalgic. But not altogether forgiving, or forgetful, it's true.
But. That was not a decision of this man's making.
I am a professor's kid. So this card means more to me even than my own little memories. It reminds me of the briefcase, just eighteen or so feet away from me right now, where resides a collection of dad's pay notifications dating back to the early-mid sixties, when he started with his own University. It reminds me of the professorial side of the equation - of students remembered, and remarked upon, and so proudly admired. I look at my giant portrait of Einstein, painted by a Physics major, and know its secret; that the Class Notes on the artist are tucked behind the canvas, within the frame.
The return of my ancient test paper (I did score an 89; it was good of the Doctor to think to choose a decent grade) is a unique and winning idea. I can imagine the effect it would have had on my dad's graduates. Just a couple of weeks ago, I went to the dentist - a man who had taken a class with dad - and he told me once again the story I know, but never tire of hearing: how brilliant my father was, and how wise as well. How good a teacher.
Above all, he would have valued the final compliment. As his daughter, of course, I am most fascinated by the first. Reportage of my dad always includes commentary on how remarkable his intelligence really was. It was part of my life from the first, and so its extremity - and impressiveness - was lost on me, growing up. We knew him as interested and interesting, a mechanic and carpenter and instructor, a loving parent, a warm and funny man, someone with a streak of mischief ...
No comments:
Post a Comment