This is a treat. For me, I mean. Not you. Not necessarily.
This morning I had coffee and a bagel with a Favorite Former (student), Lauren. Lauren is a Math Wizard. During our coffee, I pulled out my sketch book and a pen and said to Lauren, “Teach me about math.”
When the server came to our table, Lauren was drawing out the Fibonacci sequence, and I looked up, said, “Hey, she’s teaching me math!”
No one had ever kindly taught me math before Lauren taught me a little math, kindly, this morning. When I was a girl kid, in America, most men teaching math got easily frustrated with me. Their frustration freaked me out, and so I never properly learned math.
Sorry, and it’s true. I am hobbled in the math department because the schools in the midwest, my place of origin, did not hire stable people (men) to teach math in the 80s and 90s. Truth hurts. Untreated depressives, alcoholics, misogynists, and pedophiles taught me math. So I never developed a taste for the subject.
I think I had one nice male math teacher. I know I had one because I know I was about to fail high school — or some shit — over Geometry and this man stepped in to help. So thank you to that man.
Lauren taught me some Math this morning. She loves Math. She smiles and becomes animated when she talks about Math, kind of how I do when I’m geeking out on World War I literature these days (teaching a unit on WW I & also always have been intellectually fascinated by this era). Lauren talks about Fibonacci the way I talk about Woolf, and I love the lightness she emanates when talking about Math. I told Lauren that America needs more Math teachers with her joy for the subject — particularly more female Math teachers who carry such passion for the critical subject area.
And that’s really where we are, America, we’re thinking about what’s “critical.”
Math is critical.
Language is critical.
History is critical.
A happy teacher, like Lauren, is a good teacher.
Lauren and I talked a bit about struggles we each face as women in our respective fields, our respective American lives, and I’m sorry to tell you, reader, I looked at Lauren, considered the madness happening over in Texas, and I said to her, “Leave the country as soon as you can.” I’ve never advised a student, so directly, to do this. I felt a little bad after saying it. The brain drain the country will soon suffer (with or without my advisement), as it loses women like Lauren who will not live in a country that restricts their right to an Actual Human Life, is going to be catastrophic.
But, see, I love Lauren. Lauren is a Favorite Former, meaning one of my students from Flagstaff, and I have born witness to her life for so long that I feel I’ve even had a little hand in raising her, so I encourage her to leave. I do this selfishly, and with love.
“Real nice, Gruber,” some may say. “Way to further destroy the country by encouraging our best young Americans to flee.”
To that, I would say, I do not think young Americans should flee their country: I think young American women should flee this country if at all possible because we’re in for a shit show at the center of which will, once more, be “who shall own the women?” I don’t want kids I know and love to be a part of that shit. I can’t help it. Lauren is brilliant. Brilliant. Why would I want her to stay in this dusty, muggy wasteland? If I were her, I’d go do Math in the Netherlands.
Texas, reader. Texas. Can you imagine being a girl in Texas? Makes my stomach hurt, reader. Probably makes yours’ hurt, too.
I worked on book edits for Transference this morning and into the afternoon. Because it is “Labor Day Weekend” (what does this even mean anymore?), I am “clocking out” of my jobs (plural) at 2 in the pm. After 2, no more editing/lesson planning/emailing/phone calling/dr. appointment-ing. After 2, on a weekend, I am doing what **I** want to do. I am, as Sarah and I say, “introducing myself to myself.” I am, as Maxine Waters said, “Reclaiming my time.” Unless it’s a life or death (mine or another’s ) matter, after 2 pm on a weekend, it can fucking wait.
So I clocked out at 2 and drifted over to Medium, to say hello, to say I’m still here. I’m doing okay. Sometimes, I’m even great. I am learning that I have a great deal more control over my “happy” and my “sanity” than I ever knew. It’s some real Jedi shit, I tell you.
I’ve been listening to The Nap Bishop, and Thicht Nacht Hahn, medical experts . . . following the lead of those who appear to perhaps know more than I do on matters relating to the body and the spirt.
I am evolving.
I am becoming more free.
And with that, I’m off to celebrate Sarah’s birthday doing what I do best: founder like a dog.
As Ever,
Gruber
