Make me be happy
By: Allison Gruber
Tags: Cancer, Schools, Trump, Education

In our Tucson home, I have my very own room.

I have not had “a room of my own” (reference, poorly made) since I got married.

Not because my wife is a monster, but because even with

two advanced degrees and well over forty years in the workforce

between us we couldn’t rent, in Flagstaff, a place where we could both

have our own space. This is true of most of America. Most folks

don’t get their own room. I’m very lucky.

The first time Sarah called the room “a studio,” I laughed,

“Studio? Who the fuck do I look like? Brian Wilson?”

(Weirdly, and perhaps sadly, Brian Wilson was the ONLY person I could think of who ever had a studio.)

Now I call my room my “studio” all the time.

I don’t plan on using it to spin out on drugs, liquor, fatty foods, and women or whatever Brian Wilson did in his studio . . .

but it is my studio because a multitude of things happen here —

I teach, write, listen to music, watch birds, eat hummus on potato chips, take phone calls, make phone calls, write emails, answer emails . . . all from my studio.

The “studio” is still being assembled, but as of now, there’s a Grateful Dead tapestry on one wall (fight me) and string lights on the other wall,

all manner of Buddhas, family photos, a sort of nondescript black/gray area rug on the floor . . .

Last weekend, my mother-in-law, Sarah, and I went to this amazing antique shop that felt like a museum and because I haven’t been in a museum in so long I was filled with such abundant joy.

This was one of those places where the people actually “know” about the pieces they’re selling — where it’s from, how old it is, etc.

They skim the cream off the top of estate sales.

A lot of the stuff was decidedly southwestern, but there were also some gorgeous old pieces from China (the Chinese played a HUGE role in the development of the American west), lots of groovy mid-century American stuff, and one art deco silver-leaf cabinet that had my name all over it.

(Luckily, we could actually afford the object that had my name all over it.)

I’m going to put the silverleaf dresser/storage cabinet in my studio.

Right between my desk and my Grateful Dead tapestry. I am finally going to have the office — sorry, STUDIO — of my nineteen-year-old dreams.

Sidenote: I’ve been watching a lot of Ken Burns. Right now I’m more than halfway through The West. When I’m not watching Ken Burns or space movies, I’m catching up on movies I was “supposed to have seen.” Like Castaway. I saw that for the first time two nights ago. Decent little film. And I’m shocked no one ever let slip, in front of me, how Wilson gets “away,” so even though the film is more than 20 years old, it was almost kind of sad when Wilson bobbed away into the place where sky and sea meet . . . Also, I never saw Castaway because it came out when I was in college and “too cool” to see anything without subtitles/anything that wasn’t playing at our little campus coffee house — shit that literally DROVE CUSTOMERS AWAY. (What college coffee house has a “good business model,” anyway?)

(Also, the people who would leave were dull prudes anyway. “What? Jenny from Gurnee, Illinois? You’ve never seen a drag queen lick dog shit off her fingers? That’s not going well with your stale biscotti?”)

(Also, I was an asshole snob. I missed out on some good shit like Castaway, by being an asshole snob. Don’t be like me.)

(for the record, I still think Pink Flamingos is a much better film than Castaway.)

Today one of my 6th graders asked me if my “camera and mic” were working. Twice I’ve had to teach their class through chat/Google docs because my “camera and mic weren’t working” was the code I’d use with them when I was so sick I taught from bed. (As I’ve mentioned — this past October/early November, Sarah and I thought I might be about to “die of complications from . . .”) One of the kids, this little girl, always remembers those two instances and asks EVERY time there is silence or my camera is off (and it’s only off when I’m taking attendance/letting students into the Zoom) if both are working today. I don’t know if it’s a hopeful question or an anxious question.

When I told her both were working, she sent me a private chat with the names of her imaginary horses. Sixth graders are fascinating in this way. There are some who are still so little and innocent and dear and some who act like mini-adults. That gap narrows considerably in high school.

I used to say I wanted to die in my classroom.

Not necessarily my classroom at FALA, but in a classroom,

one that was mine, one where I’d taught and had lots of good memories.

Preferably not in front of the students, but during some everyday activity

like writing the agenda on the whiteboard or straightening out a desk

or checking to make sure there were enough copies for the whole class

and wondering who I’d send to the front office for more were I a few copies short . . .

In this death fantasy, I was AT LEAST twenty years older than I am now.

The whole POINT of the death fantasy was that I didn’t DIE at HOME or

IN A HOSPITAL but that I died doing something I loved and so the death fantasy does not translate well AT ALL to Modern Times.

There’s nothing comforting about the thought of dying on a Zoom call,

like while I’m waiting to admit students, slumped over a card table

that is standing in for a desk until my real desk arrives, in my own

goddamn house, like I haven’t even left the fucking house, and I’m

listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young

in what are basically pajamas but can pass as “street clothes”

because they match . . . sort of . . .

I don’t want to die like this.

I have to rebuild my whole death fantasy.

Thanks, Trump.

You even managed

to fuck up my “preferred death scenario,”

you waste of blood, bones, and flesh.

Anyway, teaching from home is a little better on the Tucson Spaceship

(our house)

because I have my own room and Sarah has her own room

and we can shut the doors. (Seriously, the doors in our last place

did not shut because the house was separating from the foundation

that dramatically.)

More than before I find myself getting up

to wander to the kitchen for snacks.

I don’t know what that’s all about. Maybe it’s just that

I love my kitchen, but yesterday

I ate an ENTIRE BAG OF TRAIL MIX

and told Sarah, as I shamefully trudged to the garbage can,

“Don’t ever buy this trail mix again.”

Can’t lie. I feel depressed.

I lie awake at night watching Ken Burns’ The West and thinking

about how humans have always been awful and full of cowardice

and delirious on money and power. Not much has changed

about America since the 1800s. One episode of The West tells the story

of how leaders refocused the hatred of white supremacists in Kansas

by sicking them on the Mormons and even the progressive thinking,

anti-slavery forces in the west

couldn’t see indigenous people

as human . . .

A few weeks back, watching 2001 I was struck by the limits of white, male creativity. Kubrick could imagine this amazing world of the future, but nowhere in that world does a woman or POC hold a position of power or import.

And it’s not just Kubrick. Virtually all of the most imaginative literature, all of the imaginative filmmaking made by white men lacks the ability to imagine women or POC having a meaningful role in the world of discovery.

That’s the world.

The white imagination is limited by colonialism

The white imagination is limited by racism

The white male imagination is limited by colonialism, racism and misogyny.

All American imaginations are limited by capitalism.

It’s an observation.

A scary observation.

A depressing observation.

Last week, I was telling my therapist about how being in a city

seems to place me in closer proximity to the pandemic.

I mean, I notice it here more — more is shuttered, and the streets are far quieter than I know they normally would be — what with college students and people out enjoying the beautiful winter weather.

When she brought this subject up again, I told her I was adjusting.

Told her my life has equipped me to “handle tension.”

I’m not just talking about cancer.

Most of us who’ve lived past thirty have had some real adversity.

Some of us are made bitter by adversity.

Some of us are made reflective or religious or destroyed

completely by adversity. Some of us just “accept” that

adversity is and always will be and there’s not a damn thing

one can do to change this.

I’m in the latter camp. The suffering is 100% inevitable.

The form just seems to change from year to year — sometimes from one day

to the next.

But the trick is not allowing the suffering to seep into all the corners

of your mind, your heart, your life.

Not allowing the suffering to warp you completely.

This is fucking tough.

My father used to have a flair for hyperbole. When I was a kid, if the dog

shat in the house, dad would say, “the dog shat everywhere.” And even

as a youngster I was keenly aware that it was not possible for the dog to

“shit everywhere.” Like, did Coco really shit in the refrigerator and

on the kitchen table and in the silverware drawer or . . . what’s that?

No? He shat on two, maybe three, tiles in a kitchen FULL of tiles.”

What I’m saying is that the dog shit isn’t everywhere.

That was sort of where I arrived with my therapist.

There’s dog shit, an abundance of it, but it’s not all over everything.

Many things are tainted right now, but not all.

At least this is what I have to tell myself.

The logical, rational mind understands what the heart sometimes can’t.

This is the last week of school before winter break.

My middle schoolers and I planned what we’d do with our forty minute class on Wednesday, our last meeting “until next year” (they still love saying this even after everything).

We slipped into an “if we were in school” conversation and they started listing all the board games they’d want to play together, waxing nostalgic about Apples to Apples and Exploding Kittens . . .

I was talking to a friend this week about therapy, how as kids we had this notion that therapists just “fixed you.”

Like they were an orthodontist for your mind.

Or a chiropractor — just crack the sadness right out of your bones.

You’d tell the therapist, “make me be happy”

and they would comply.