Remembering Dr. Lell

Yesterday morning, at the age of 74, Dr. Gordon Lell died after battling a malignant brain tumor.

Dr. Lell was my Shakespeare professor at Concordia, and he was one of the best teachers I've ever had -- and I've loved a lot of teachers. I still remember how excited I was to sign up for his Shakespeare class my sophomore year. My advisor tried unsuccessfully to convince me to take her Ibsen class instead, which was offered at the same time and would have fulfilled the same requirement. No disrespect to her or to Ibsen -- I loved her too, and I like Ibsen -- but I had to have that Shakespeare class. I'd been salivating over that Shakespeare class practically from the moment I got my acceptance letter to Concordia. I remember finding one of my friends after registering for spring semester, and we actually jumped up and down with glee over the fact that we were going to get to take that Shakespeare class together. We just kept saying, "I'm so excited!" over and over again. English majors can be a special kind of nerdy.

The class didn't disappoint. Dr. Lell was possibly the most energetic professor I ever had. His passion for Shakespeare, for literature, made him one of my most inspiring role models. The Fargo Forum ran a nice piece on him at the beginning of March, part of which I'll include here:

Lell has long been prominent at Concordia, where he filled lecture halls with his class on Shakespeare and made countless trips with students to watch productions of Shakespeare’s plays, including study sojourns to the bard’s England. “I’ve always been able to hit it off with the undergraduate students,” Lell said. He was an academic rebel of sorts, shunning the “publish or perish” pressures to conduct obscure scholarly research to focus instead on the classroom. When he began his teaching career at Concordia in 1970, after seven years at the University of Nebraska, Lell was a pioneer in the study of Shakespeare in the American academy. His hallmark was a stubborn devotion to the performance – “The play’s the thing!” – instead of the text, long given primacy in academic studies of Shakespeare. For Lell, who has an undergraduate degree in piano performance, studying the text of the play was the path to enjoying the staged version, popular entertainment of Elizabethan England, when the Globe Theatre was the Hollywood of its day. “It’s almost like a foreign language when you read Shakespeare,” Danielson said. “He made it approachable.” So approachable that 4,600 students took his Shakespeare class, 6,000 accompanied him to productions at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg, and more than 400 joined him on seminar trips to Great Britain. Some came back for more as students at his courses through F/M Communiversity, and others joined Lell on study trips to Italy and Scandinavia, among other destinations in his global classroom. Cathy McMullen, a member of Concordia’s English faculty, accompanied Lell on two study trips to Great Britain. As preparation for one of the trips, she sat in on his Shakespeare class, where Lell’s enthusiasm for his subject was infectious. That enthusiasm took physical form on a study trip, where his ritual for combating jet lag was to immediately set off on a walking tour of London, with students five decades younger struggling to keep up. “You can’t help but catch his enthusiasm,” McMullen said. Lell made sure to take time when students came to him with questions, never giving the impression a question was unwelcome. “He just had all the time in the world for them and never made them feel small for asking,” she said.

I have so many specific memories of that class -- where I sat, who took it with me, where I was when I read each of the plays (I read Richard III sequestered in the basement of Fjelstad Hall, Othello in Barnes and Noble in Fargo, Hamlet on a bus during band tour, etc). One day Kristin Rudrud, best known for her role in Fargo, came to class and acted a scene from Richard III. I was struck both by how multifaceted an actress she is -- she played the bereaved queen as convincingly as she played a very, very Midwestern mom -- and by how much love and admiration she had for my teacher. (We had the same teacher! Wow.) I was fortunate enough to attend three Shakespeare productions at the Guthrie during my time at Concordia: Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet. I used to take my friend Dana to his weekly Shakespeare movie night; she enjoyed it as well, even though she wasn't an English major. I remember talking with him during the spring semester of my senior year, worried about teaching Julius Caesar to a bunch of high school sophomores.

"I'll never understand why they always try to do that one with sophomores," he said, wincing a little. "There are so many great comedies!" But he gave me some good suggestions, and if anyone could make Julius Caesar an enjoyable experience, it was Dr. Lell. While teaching Othello the next year to high school students in Washington, I found myself recalling my old teacher's words about how the Laurence Fishburne version of the movie had the best Desdemona, and like my old teacher, I showed clips from a couple of different versions for comparison. (That was back in the day when my school district didn't ban everything.) I wonder how many times I subconsciously echo him in my teaching; I hope it's often, because he embodied everything a teacher of literature should strive to be.

In the fall of 2006, when I was still on maternity leave with Suzannah, my mom and I drove from Seattle to Moorhead for Concordia's homecoming. I'd only been back once in the five years since I'd graduated, a quick trip to campus a few summers earlier after my brother's graduation from UND, but the campus was pretty empty. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was the open house in the English department. I've kept in touch with some of my professors over the years, so I loved seeing them again and catching up in person. I hadn't spoken with Dr. Lell since 2001, though. I wanted to tell him just how much I appreciated his classes, how much he inspired me both as a teacher and a reader, but I didn't actually expect him to remember me personally. To my surprise, as soon as he saw me, his face broke into a grin, he called me by name, and grabbed me in a warm bear hug. I wasn't as close to him as some of my fellow English majors were, and I don't claim to have had a particularly special relationship with him; I was simply a girl who loved Shakespeare and loved his class. It's true, though, that he had this gift of making us all feel special to him.

Someone on Facebook commented yesterday that when he wasn't smiling, he was twinkling. I think that's a pretty apt description.

It seems only fitting to end with Sonnet 30, one that Dr. Lell recited for his fellow faculty members at a recent appreciation dinner, and one that is making the rounds in various online tributes. Conclusions have always been one of my weaknesses anyway; I can only say that I miss him, that my heart hurts for his loss, and that I feel so blessed that I could be one of the thousands of lives he touched.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

The Everything-Update

Last Sunday evening, we returned home from an extremely chaotic yet strangely wonderful trip, with a lot of travel packed into 72 hours. Matt's brother got married on Saturday; Matt was the best man and Suzannah was a flower girl, so our weekend was full of wedding festivities on top of all the travel.

The actual wedding took place in Emerson, Nebraska -- a tiny town about a thirty-minute drive from Sioux City, Iowa, where Dave and Tia live. We flew into Omaha on Thurday night -- late Thursday night, because our flight out of Denver was delayed for a few hours. (Do you know what's not fun? Waiting in a crowded airport with a two-year-old, long past her bedtime.) We landed around twelve-thirty in the morning, long after the shuttle to our hotel had stopped running, so we picked up the rental car -- thankfully, they were still open -- and tried to find it ourselves. By then it was after one in the morning and we were all a little delirious, having spent twelve hours traveling, and we got a little lost, but finally we carried a sleeping Suzannah into our hotel and tucked her, still sleeping, into bed. She hardly stirred; she slept curled with her "Lambie" (her new lovey from Auntie Morgan -- she is so attached to it!) all by herself while Matt and I collapsed on the other bed. We requested two beds this time; we haven't shared a hotel room since October, which was sort of a disaster since Suzannah is too big for a pack 'n play and is also an incredible bed hog these days, so I thought our best bet would be to have two queen-sized beds, and she could either have one to herself or sleep with one of us. This proved to be a good idea.

On Friday morning, we "slept in" but still rose after only six hours of sleep. Matt and Suzannah played in the hotel pool for awhile, and we were both surprised and completely delighted at how much Suzannah finally enjoyed it. She was so tentative at first, only dipping her toes in the water or sprawling on her belly at the pool's edge and splashing her hands, but finally she allowed Matt to bring her all the way in.

I cannot get enough of her laughter, her easy joy.

We checked out of the hotel and drove around Omaha looking for a place to eat lunch, finally settling on this cute little European cafe downtown (let me tell you about my colleagues' raised eyebrows -- they have something like that in Omaha? Like Omaha, Nebraska?) before embarking on our journey to Sioux City. It was a short drive for this Montana girl, but it was lovely. I'm not ashamed to admit it; I love the Midwest. I love the fields, the open spaces, the sky, the people, the road. I love all the little places you stumble upon only if you're driving, the places no one would ever consider as a destination. I feel healthy and I can breathe deeply.

Highlights of the weekend: Suzannah loving her flower girl dress -- she kept crouching to make it puff up around her. Spending time with Matt's parents and hanging with family we haven't seen in a year-and-a-half. All of Matt's cousins loving on Suzannah. Good food. Open spaces. Cozy stolen moments of reading Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Really rockin' Mexican food after the wedding rehearsal. Cuddling with Suzannah in the bed we ended up sharing for two nights in Sioux City. Realizing that my daughter was rising above every expectation I had for how she'd travel on the airplane -- she was so fabulously chill about it all, which was such a welcome change from December of 2007. We didn't even have her DVD's playing much (although she did eat a lot of snacks -- it was like such a novelty for her that she could have another pack of Nemo fruit snacks if she wanted, or another granola bar); she was so content to just flip through books and magazines with us, or play with Matt's headphones. She cried on the final leg of our trip as we descended into Seattle, but that's because I had to wake her up -- she'd been sleeping on me for a good part of the flight from Denver -- and buckle her into her own seat, and she was just so exhausted I think she'd had it, but I figured the people seated around us still had it pretty good. Three hours on a plane with a two-year-old and ten minutes of crying? Not too shabby. Actually, she received plenty of compliments; people can't resist her huge blue eyes. She just handled it all so well -- the flights, the hours in the Denver airport, the car rides, the hotels. It was all new, and she just seemed so happy and curious and easy about it all.

Not-so-high points: The wedding reception -- although, I must hasten to add, not because of the reception itself. Unfortunately, this was the hardest part of the entire weekend. We'd spent most of the day at the church in Emerson; they had lunch for us at noon, pictures at 1:30, and the wedding at 4:30 -- which amounted to a long afternoon without a nap for our little lady. Suzannah did really well, especially since there was a play room in the basement and she had plenty of cousins to entertain her, but by the time the wedding was over and we'd all driven back to Sioux City, she was just so done. She'd passed out the minute Matt's mom buckled her into her car seat (I was riding a trolley with the wedding party!) and she had absolutely no interest in waking up and partying. I couldn't really blame her. She threw her only real tantrum of the entire trip there, so I spent plenty of time in the basement of the Masonic Lodge trying to calm her down while Matt took care of his best man duties -- the toast, the bridal party dance, etc. Neither one of us ate much, which was also unfortunate, because the food was actually freaking fantastic, especially for wedding food. It was simple -- barbecue chicken and beef, cheesy potatoes, fruit salad, green beans, rolls -- but just, I don't know, so good. I was intensely crabby that I had to leave most of it.

Suzannah did, however, rally in time for the cake -- chocolate with raspberry filling -- and cheesecake. The cake pretty much erased my crabbiness. Well, that and the fact that when Suzannah smiles, she's so beautiful and sweet that I pretty much forget every tantrum she's ever had.

(My students wanted to know if she actually "did the flower girl thing." And she didn't, really -- at least not in the sense that she walked up the aisle after the bridal party but before the bride. I never actually thought she would; she'd never consent to watching her parents walk away like that, leaving her standing between rows and rows of beaming strangers. We actually had to do some creative work to get her in the bridal party pictures at all; she finally consented to being in a few with her daddy holding her. I didn't even try to see what she'd do for the processional. I thought it would be too disruptive for me to have to trot back there and retrieve a wailing, fatigued, confused toddler after the bridal party had already walked up there, so I just carried her to my seat in the front. I rocked her while she rested wearily against me, moaning softly, "Da-aadddy. Da-aadddy." It was hot in the church, and she didn't understand why he was standing so close to us without picking her up, but I think -- or hope -- she was quiet enough so it didn't really bother anyone.)

The wedding, by the way, was lovely, and very much worth the trip.

The other not-so-high point of the weekend was dealing with United Airlines. We flew Frontier on the way, and they were fine. United didn't allow us to choose our seats when we booked our flight; they said we'd take care of that at check-in. But then they didn't have any of us sitting together -- hello, we have a two-year-old, and at least one of us needs to sit with her, and everyone will be happier if we both can. In order to guarantee that we could sit with our own two-year-old child, they tried to get us to pay the extra fifty bucks for Economy Plus or whatever the heck it is, and if you want to get my husband on a soapbox, by the way, ask him what he thinks of that. On our flight to Denver we managed to convince people sitting near us to trade seats (it wasn't difficult; who wants to sit next to a two-year-old, right?) and in Denver we finally convinced a ticket agent to move some seats around, which happened about five minutes before we boarded the plane. It was just enough for me to declare about ten thousand times that I am most definitely through with air travel and I don't care how far we have to drive, I LOVE TO DRIVE.

Matt, of course, seemed more or less unruffled and reassured me about eighty-five times that it would all work out just fine.

We're home now and things feel normal again; I spent Monday morning unpacking, putting away the Easter decorations, and doing laundry (thank goodness for the WASL testing schedule; I only had to teach one class after lunch) and Matt mowed the lawn when he came home from work. The day was sublime. Every time I went outside I smelled grass and trees and felt the sun on my arms, and for a few moments, I could actually smell summer, could literally feel it on my skin.

Suzannah bounced right back into her routine, too -- hugging and kissing me when I dropped her off in the morning before scampering off to get down to some serious play. She had good outside time this week, and she smells like summer, too. Every day I'm struck by how much I love this person she is becoming, how I love being her mother more and more each day, even just in goofy little moments like tonight when she took very little interest in her dinner until I said, "Okay, jammies then?" And she sat down and picked up her fork and scooped up some of her untouched rice and said pointedly, "No. I eating, Mama." Then before bed, she wanted to rock with me in the big chair, so I scooped her up and we settled into the recliner, where we rocked quietly for awhile. She stroked my hair, very, very softly, and said, "Mommy. Oh, Mommy." And my heart. Oh. My heart, it is full.

Spring Break

Today, my husband turns 31, the sun is shining, and as a birthday present to her daddy, our daughter slept in until 8:30 this morning.

I cannot quite put into words how extraordinary this is. Our daughter doesn't sleep. I actually suspect that she pretends to fall asleep just as she's pushed us to our breaking point, and when we fall into our own bed, trying not to weep for the bygone days when she'd go to bed at a normal hour and we'd have free time, she gets up and watches all my DVD's and helps herself to whatever's in the fridge and then, possibly, instant-messages all her other toddler friends who are currently working on their plans for World Domination. She slips back into bed just before dawn, where she tousles her hair and puts on her sleepy morning face.

Actually, I suspect her sleeping has been so wretched lately because she hasn't felt well. A couple of weeks ago she experienced a flare-up of her cold, and since then, she's gotten worse and not better, so off to the pediatrician we went. He diagnosed a sinus infection, wished us luck, and sent us home with a prescription for Omnicef, which Suzannah actually loves. It's a weird blessing, I suppose, to have a child who doesn't resist taking medicine -- the gloopier, the better. YUM. (I'll tell you what she resists. She resists all of our attempts to rub a little Aquaphor on her red little nose, which is so raw it makes me want to cry when I look at it.)

I spent much of yesterday feeling bitter and surly about this sinus infection thing, because, you see, this week was my Spring Break. Instead of packing up and heading to Bozeman for spring break this year, we opted to stay home. Well, Matt has to work, as always, and since we're both taking a couple of days off later this month to travel to his brother's wedding it's not really feasible for him to take more days now, but I have time. Anyway, we're here. I thought, hey, this will give me time to catch up on any number of things that will threaten to overwhelm me very soon if I don't take care of them. Like grading massive amounts of papers. I didn't bring them all home, since it is break, but I did bring some home, because my students are handing in comparison papers on Tuesday and if I'm not a little more caught-up than this, I will soon be facing a pile of papers that's taller than my desk. And then I will cry.

So I took Suzannah to daycare as usual for a few hours each day this week so I could Get Things Done. My plan looked something like this:

Monday: Get the car serviced. Run errands. Cook a real dinner that smells good when my husband walks in the door (something I greatly enjoy doing, actually, but don't always do on weeknights).
Tuesday: GRADE PAPERS. Catch up on laundry. Cook a real dinner that smells good when my husband walks in the door.
Wednesday: GRADE PAPERS. Clean the house.
Thursday: Selfishly carve out a few hours in the morning to do something spring-breakish. (In my case, this means curling up with some coffee and some uninterrupted reading and writing time. I'm a simple woman, people. I'm always reading something, and I'm always writing, but out of necessity, I'm a pro at reading and writing in small increments of time when I can snatch them. What if I had, like, the whole morning? Unspeakable luxury!) Cook a real dinner that smells good when my husband walks in the door.
Friday: Possibly go shopping with my sister-in-law. Possibly bring Suzannah. Possibly carve out a few more morning hours for a little blissful solitude. Definitely work on finalizing plans for Matt's birthday.

And that's mostly what the week looked like, right up until Thursday afternoon. I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday grading papers and cleaning and being all domestic, and I felt good about everything I accomplished. I managed to turn even my busy Get Things Done days into relatively pleasant affairs. I read while I waited for the car. I graded my papers in coffee shops. I watched Gilmore Girls while I deep-cleaned the kitchen. But I was so looking forward to my mornings today and tomorrow. And today was lovely; Suzannah and I took our time this morning, and after I dropped her off I drove up to West Seattle, where I spent two hours at Uptown Espresso before taking myself to a cozy lunch at the Elliott Bay Brewery. It was raining and I was warm and it was good.

But then I returned to find a listless, runny-nosed child waiting for me, and Friday became a Sick Day. Part of me is grateful that at least I didn't have to take a day off work, and I tried, I really tried, to have something resembling a positive attitude. Sometimes sick days with her are all coziness and cuddles. And of course I wish she never, ever had to be sick, but there is a part of me that really loves doing the mama routine, all that active nurturing, when she's feeling miserable. Maybe it's narcissistic, even, because I know that I can comfort her in ways no one else can when she's sick, or maybe it's just that there's a part of me that loves fixing things, knowing what to do, whether it's simply holding her, or placing a cool hand on a flushed cheek, or tucking her into a blanketed nest on the couch.

Yesterday, though, was the kind of sick day in which she refused to nap, cried a lot, yelled at the dog for no reason, went through about eighty-five boxes of Kleenex, and drove me crazy. When we were leaving the pharmacy, she took her sweet time climbing into her car seat, so I not very patiently hurried the process along a little by plunking her stubborn rear in her seat and buckling her in, and she howled about that the rest of the way home. And when we got home, she had to climb out of the car and then CLIMB BACK INTO HER CARSEAT and then CLIMB OUT AGAIN, to make some sort of point. It was that kind of day. I won't even write about bedtime, because the memory is too raw and painful for me right now.

"This is what happens when you decide it's a good idea push a person out of your nether-regions," I grumbled to Matt as I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Suzannah to let me dab some Aquaphor underneath her raw little nose.

"Yeah," he said. "You never get spring break again."

But she slept in this morning, SHE SLEPT IN, and she helped her daddy make waffles, and she only yelled at the dog once, and the sun is shining, and I have coffee, and life is still, despite everything else, pretty great.