The Professor
In
the style of Natalie Ginzburg’s “He and I”
He has taught history at the same
college ever since I have known him. He loves history. He loves to teach it and
hopes that his students will come to love it, too.
History, for him, encompasses past,
present, and future. Knowing history is knowing ourselves.
He is energetic in the classroom. Once,
I heard, he impersonated an ape.
He looks very much like a professor. He
hardly ever wears jeans, especially not to class. He wears dressy cotton pants
of varying neutral tones, button-up shirts, and cardigan sweaters. His favorite
cardigan sweater that he wears around his house has a hole in the elbow. For
special occasions he will pull a tie and dress coat out of his closet. He has a
graying beard and black, thick-lensed, round-framed glasses, which make him
look very academic.
He is tidy and orderly. His office is
organized but crammed with bookcases, his walls with framed pictures. He keeps
his lunch, usually carrots and spinach, in a mini-fridge. Yes, he sometimes
eats only raw vegetables for lunch. The room smells perpetually of tea and
cinnamon sugar toast.
It seems as if he knows a lot about
everything. He is always reading something. As any good professor, he loves to
learn. Once we watched a documentary on TV about scientists who found an
ancient but well-preserved Roman ship on the bottom of the Mediterranean. We
were both entranced, especially when they talked about the preserved garum, the
fermented fish sauce.
He spends many hours sitting at his desk
at home, grading undergraduate papers. He is a tough grader. Or so I have
heard. I have never had a class with him but am told he is a very hard grader
and makes you work for a good grade. I have no difficulty believing this,
knowing him to be a man of high standards. He expects good work not only from
students but from himself, so he gives of himself continuously. I have seen
this side. He grades carefully, forms lasting relationships with students,
attends conferences, and always wonders what he can do to be a better professor
and Christian.
He has applied for administrative
positions in the past. He would make a good administrator, I think, but he
makes such a good professor, too. I’m a little glad that he didn’t get those
positions because that means he is still in the classroom teaching about
something he loves.
He is thoughtful, reserved, and somewhat
introverted. He is comfortable in silence but will talk to you in length if you
have asked a question. I remember when he drove me home during the middle of a summer
camp so I could attend the funeral of a friend who had died in a four-wheeling
accident. The car ride was three hours long, and I cried for many of the miles.
Sometimes he talked, sometimes he didn’t, but was always the comforter. When he
did speak, it was to talk about grief, God, or death or to tell a story from
his own experience. He said crying was good.
He is quirky. I have seen him dance to a
Lady Gaga song at his daughter’s wedding during the father/daughter dance. He
couldn’t move his hips, but he tried his best. Everyone at the reception
laughed. I probably won’t make him do that at my wedding.
He usually prefers older music than Lady
Gaga. He likes Renaissance music and Bach. When he cleans up the kitchen after
dinner, which is his contribution to the dinner process, he tunes the radio to
the classical station or NPR. He likes radio shows, too, like Prairie Home Companion.
However, his entertainment tastes are
quite wide for a man in his fifties. In the evening he likes to watch the
popular crime shows. He likes old things—books, movies, music. He likes drama
and used to act some. I found a picture once from his college days. He was
dressed up in spandex and a wig as the fairy king Oberon from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I tell this
to people sometimes to embarrass him.
He likes new things, too. We recently have
watched Babe together, the Disney
movie about the pig. Once, when I was at the very beginning of watching Beauty and the Beast, he came into the
room to fetch something. I asked if he’d like to watch the movie with me. In a
strained voice that let me knew he was tearing up, he told me no. He said it
was about redemption and left the room. That was the first time I cried while
watching the opening scene of Beauty and
the Beast.
He tears up over many things—hymns at
church, movies, talking about his children. I have never seen a sob, but I see
his eyes water often. He is easily moved by what he loves or by where he finds
grace. I tear up, too, over these sorts of things.
He has a goofy laugh. I once told him a
joke that has now become his favorite. Why
did the blonde get fired from the M&M’s factory? When I tell it to him now, I can barely
get past the first few words before he’s lost it in his tenor laugh. Because she threw away all the Ws.
He used to have a bad temper. I remember
once he threw a large phone book across the living room, ripping it at the
spine. As a young girl, I was terrified. I don’t even remember why he was
angry. But he’s older now and doesn’t lose his temper very often. Sometimes he
gets frustrated if the house is a mess or if the dog is annoying.
But he loves the dog, too. He talks to
the dog in a voice people often use to talk to babies. He always let me get
whatever pet I wanted if I was willing to care for it diligently. So I’ve had a
rabbit, parakeets, hamsters, and mice. He used to grumble about the number of
animals in the house because he let my siblings get their own little pets, too.
Add the four young children, and you’ve practically got a zoo.
He mows the lawn every Saturday morning
during the summer, wearing shorts that come just above the knee and t-shirts
two sizes too large that hang on him like tents and socks that come half way up
his calves and ear plugs and a large-brimmed hunter green safari hat. If I need
to go outside and ask him a question I have to wave my arms and yell or
practically walk right in front of his path. He’ll stop the mower, yank out the
ear plugs, and look annoyed that I’ve interrupted his ritual. I guess most of
those questions could wait.
He walks the seven blocks to work at the
college most mornings. He wakes up at odd hours in the morning because of the
insomnia and sits at the kitchen table reading a book and eating his favorite
snack, tea and peanut butter toast. Then he might go back to sleep for an hour.
He wakes up very easily and usually is
very surprised at first, asking with a start who is there. When I was younger
and if I became scared in the night and wanted to go into my parents’ room, I
made it my quest to sneak into their room without waking him. I succeeded a few
times and slept on the floor by my mother’s side.
He used to play a game with his children
when they were very young called bonker. It was a made up game. Whenever we ran
out of a roll of paper towels, he would take the cardboard tube and sneak
around the house bonking us on the head. We would run away squealing only to
get surprised again with a thunk. We
used to have tickle fights, too.
Sometimes when he and mommy used to
argue and fight, my older sister and I would go up to the attic and cry because
we thought surely our parents were getting a divorce. They don’t fight very
much anymore. He doesn’t lose his temper as easily, and she is more accepting
of everything. Now they have been married over thirty years, and I don’t worry
about a divorce. There was never, in fact, a need to worry about divorce.
I can’t remember an argument between us.
Perhaps it is because I have too much respect for him to argue with him.
Perhaps it is because I never disagree with him. I have found him annoying on
occasion, but I don’t even remember the reasons.
I hope he is proud of me; I think he is.
He has told me before that he is proud.
He does things like study virtue and
vice. I bought him once a collection of daily readings by J.R.R. Tolkien. He
uses it often. This year for Christmas I got him a hand-crocheted set of Star
Trek dolls. These days I like to get him sentimental things.
Sometimes I look back on my childhood
and wonder where my father was at all my middle school basketball games and my
high school track meets. He wasn’t there cheering me on. He was working. Sometimes
I look back on my desire for “daddy pal time” and wonder if was deeper than
just a call to hang out with dad. He spent many hours in his study, grading
papers, or at the office. But he says he is proud of me. Teaching takes much
time.
I think about the dance lessons, the
music lessons, the horseback riding lessons, the art lessons, the big house
where I had my own room, the well-stocked pantry, my many pets, my good grades,
my independence, and I know that it’s okay that he only ever saw me compete at
a track meet but once or twice.
He is a professor. A good professor,
caring, thoughtful, deliberate. But he is my father, caring, thoughtful,
deliberate, goofy, sentimental, loving. He will always be both, but he will
first be my “Dado.”
