It is a spectacularly beautiful autumn day in the Pacific Northwest. The morning was crisp and sunny, with a bite to the air. I wrapped myself in a hoodie and cheerfully flung wide the door to my classroom, propping it open.
"But it's cold," my students cried, the delicate flowers that they are. I smiled and reminded them that I am from Montana and a day like this in November is golden and lovely and meant for enjoying, and I was sorry that I am made of tougher stuff than they are. By the end of the day the sun was just a little lower, but warmer. I left school as soon as I could and managed to squeeze in one of my head-clearing runs before collecting my children at school. This is one of the most perfect times of year to run outside when it's not raining. The air is smoky and sweet, the sidewalks full of soft piles of leaves, still damp, not quite turned to brittle crunchiness. That will come later this month.
This afternoon at soccer practice I sat comfortably on the sidelines for the first time in a few weeks -- the practices have been damp and drizzly lately -- and read A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life, a collection of Pat Conroy's blog entries, letters, interviews, speeches, and articles. Ron mailed it to me and it arrived in the mail yesterday, the best gift from one of the best men in my life. I am utterly heartbroken that these words are the last of Conroy's that I will read but so grateful that someone else shares this love with me. I sat at the edge of the soccer field and read and read, falling in love again with things I've already seen (I've read everything on his blog, but it is such a joy to have it all between two hard covers, especially since I share his distaste for the word blog), and falling in love with things I've somehow missed. No one else on this earth can remind me in quite the same way why I am an English teacher and remind me how fiercely I love it, and how fiercely I love my kids, these kids, exactly where we are. No one else can remind me in the same way how desperately in love I am with perfectly crafted sentences, a love that drives me to write my own clumsy attempts. I was a voracious reader before I fell in love with The Prince of Tides at the age on fifteen on a roadtrip to Minnesota, but encountering Pat Conroy opened up a wider love for the power of language and books than any writer has before or since.
I cannot read his work without tears streaming down my face, and I cannot read his work without laughing out loud. Years ago I said that one thing I wanted in this life was to meet him and tell him exactly what he has meant to me. I've met a number of writers I have loved and admired but I am grieving the loss of the one I loved above all others. Back in February -- have I written this already? I think I have -- I read his announcement that he was battling pancreatic cancer while sitting in our hotel room in Portland, Oregon. That afternoon I went to Powell's and bought a signed hardcover copy of Beach Music, which I read for the first time in my dorm room during my freshmen year at Concordia, as well as a new copy of The Water is Wide (my battered paperback is tucked in my old bedroom at my parents' house and I need all of his books with me) and a hardcover first edition of My Losing Season, which I loved much more than is reasonable for a girl who doesn't care about basketball or the Citadel but who found herself caring very much when Pat Conroy wrote about it. And then I walked to a coffee shop up the street and wrote him a long letter. A young woman sat nearby and asked me, after awhile, what I was writing. I told her, and we talked about books and writers and the IB program (she was an IB grad!) for a long time. We exchanged book lists.
Pat Conroy died three weeks later, and I never sent the letter.
*
I'm off Facebook for awhile, at least until this election is over. I'm anxious enough without the relentless noise of social media. I really am terrified that Trump will win. And I am terrified that people I love, people I respect, will reveal that they voted for him. I really do not want to know. I've never felt like this before; in every other election of my life I've disagreed with plenty of people (I hail from a mightily red state, after all) but I always felt like I could at least try to understand their perspective and appreciate where they were coming from. I can't do that this time. I cannot in any way condone voting for someone who is an unapologetic racist, a bully, a xenophobe, a misogynist. I do not want to raise my children in a world that normalizes that behavior in a leader. I think about how anxious I was four years ago, but my word, after the horrifying Al Smith dinner this year I went back and watched the Al Smith dinners from both 2012 and 2008, laughed with appreciative nostalgia, and realized just how ugly year is. John McCain and Mitt Romney possessed a fundamental decency that Donald Trump just does not, nevermind everything else about him that is just monstrous. And watching people rush to excuse that is revolting to me. (I read a comment on a friend's page that went something like, "Donald Trump could stab a baby on live TV and his supporters would still be all, 'But e-maaaaaails!'")
I read what I wrote on election day four years ago and it all still applies now, every word, except now I look at Mitt Romney almost fondly. Oh, 2012 self, if only you knew what we were in for next.
In 2012 I was not disciplined enough to not read Facebook around the election. (I don't think I was nearly so afraid of losing friends.) Now, though, it feels absolutely necessary. I love Facebook for a lot of reasons but every single time I step away I recognize an almost immediate and significant improvement in my general mental health.
I'm teaching Margaret Atwood in my junior classes right now. This feels appropriate.
I can imagine what Pat Conroy would write about all of this. I wish he were here to do it.
(Please just let everything be okay.)
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