Home

Every year, the department in which I teach holds an "open house." In it, refreshments are served (the biggest draw of all--but don't tell anybody I said that!), faculty members plug the elective courses they're teaching and make some attempt to entice students to major in English instead of, say, accounting or physical therapy. It's an easy sell: After all, wouldn't you rather study something for which you need an advanced degree in order to have any hope of meaningful employment ( for which you might have to go to some third-rate technical college in Oklahoma or some such place) instead of something in which you can get a starting salary roughly equal to mine with just a bachelor's degree? Of course you would!

All right. I won't be sarcastic anymore. I actually like the open house, my aversion to the politics of the department and college notwithstanding, because I do get to chat with people I wish I could see more often. And, I get to read a poem or two aloud. Not my own, but that's all right: I take pleasure in relaying a piece of writing I love, however imperfectly I may do that.

In each year's open house, there's a theme for the readings. Last year, it was "social justice," for which I read two selections from The Spoon River Anthology. This year's theme is "home."

I've looked at a few poems and a selection of prose. Since each of us is limited to three or four minutes, I can't read them all. Each one of them feels as fresh as it did to me the first time I read it, which is always a good sign. However, I do find myself having a response I had never before anticipated.

I realize now that, oddly, the concept of "home" has always been rather abstract for me. Or, at least, I don't relate to it in the same way as other people might.

Now, I can say that I come from a relatively stable family. At times, I've wished that my father had been more present, at least emotionally, than he was. He has expressed that same wish in recent years. I tell him to forget about the past; now is the time to be the kind of grandfather, father and husband he wishes he had been. Mom and I agree that he's "gotten better." Even when my relationship with him was at its most strained, I respected him for one thing: He treated my maternal grandmother well. She always said as much; so does Mom.

At least Mom was always available in any way you define that word. For a few weeks before my surgery, and until I returned to work, I talked to her every day, sometimes more than once. When I was living in Paris--in the days before the Internet and cheap calling plans--we talked and wrote to each other every week. And through my life, I've talked with her about one situation or another I've faced. She may not know the particulars, but she knows my emotional makeup. Not very many other people could understand it.

So why am I talking about my parents, again? Well, really, when I think of "home," at least as I knew it early in my life, what else was there, really? I've forgotten most of the objects we did and didn't have in the places where we lived, none of which was as wonderful or terrible as I thought they were.

What I do remember are the some physical spaces and sensations: the almost warrenlike rooms of the apartment in which we lived in Brooklyn, the narrow stairs that led from the brick front porch to the door that opened into the wide dining room and kitchen of the house to which we moved, just a few blocks away from the apartment, and the strangely raspy grass that surrounded the house in which we lived next, in New Jersey. Those might be the memories of a home, but they are not home, or even pieces of it.

After leaving my parents, home became wherever I happened to lay my head that night. Although, looking back, I realize that I got a pretty good education at Rutgers, it is the time in my life I would least like to repeat. Even when I had stimulating classes or met interesting people, I felt as out of place as I did in a locker room or military barracks.

For a time, I felt as if I "belonged" in Paris, although I never could have claimed it as my home. That's still a stronger connection than I would feel to any neighborhood--and any dwelling--in which I'd live for the next two decades or so. It didn't matter how "good" the neighborhood or "nice" my apartment was: I simply never felt I could claim it as my home.

When you feel like an alien in your own body, what could possibly feel like home?

It's no surprise to me now that the block on which I now live has become a home. Millie, John and Tami adopted me, if you will. My place isn't the most elegant, and some parts of this neighborhood, which was largely industrial until recently, are rather ugly. But they've grown on me. At least the parks, the river and the Noguchi Museum are within a one-block radius of my apartment. And even more important are the people and the fact that I can now inhabit my self.

Yes, it's wonderful to come home. Now to choose which version of it to read at the open house. I have another week, I think, to do that.

Tranny Serendipity

Is there such a thing as Tranny Serendipity?

If there is, I expereinced it today.

Getting dressed for work...I'd just pulled a jewel-necked top over my teenaged-girl breasts and middle-aged woman's body. Its hue--a cross between magenta and fuschia--brought out the violet zags and shapes in a jigsaw-printed tiered ruffle skirt that was a kaleidoscope in purple, coral, brown and a sort of dove-gray color. I've worn it before and gotten compliments on it. I was deciding what to wear over the top.

A knock at my door. The landlady: She said she'd bought a shirt that didn't really fit her, but it was too late to return it. Would I like to try it on? Certainly.

I don't know whether she'd intended to wear it as a regular shirt, but it fit me perfectly as an overshirt. Its purple crinkled silk-like fabric brought the outfit together! And, it changed my mind about the shoes I would wear: Instead of my gold faux-lizard wedge sandals, I slid my feet into my purple peep-toe bowtie pumps--and perfectly balanced the shirt my landlady had just given me.

On my way to work, I went for a badly-needed manicure. (My nails were starting to look like driftwood.) I chose a shade of mauve that had a tint of lilac. Two strangers, as well as two of my students, complimented me. And my landlady said, "Wow! When you get dressed, you look better than I do."

Some landlady, huh? First she completes my outfit. Then she makes me blush. And she didn't even raise my rent. Hmm....

She has two young sons. Did she want a daughter? Is that why she was dressing me up? Well, I must say, she does have taste.

Today I really wanted to look good--or at least as good as I can look. In class, we were talking about gender in relation to some of the poetry and stories we've been reading. Teaching that class has been a very emotional experience for me, and it seems that every night, at least one of the students strikes some nerve of mine with a comment about one or another of the readings.

Tonight I wrote the words "Male," "Female," "Masculine," "Feminine," "Boy," "Girl," "Man" and "Woman" on the blackboard, and asked students to spend a few minutes writing about what those words evoke for them. Some of the responses were what I expected: "masculine" and the other male words evoked strength and dominance; the ones about femininity evoked emotion and nurturing.

One student, Angie, said that to her, "woman" made her think of expectations, roles, sacrifice and submission. And, "asking for permission," she added.

On the other hand, men are allowed to feel a certain confidence that allows them simply to proceed, she said. An example of this can be found in Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (the one that begins with, Let not to the marriage of true minds). According to Angie, only a man could have written the poem's final couplet: If this be error and upon me proved/I have never writ, nor no man ever loved.

As great a poet as he is, those lines proved that he was still thinking like a man, Angie said.

One thing that makes all of this so interesting to me, aside from my own life experiences and interest in poetry, is the exchange she and I last week. Yes, she's the one who winked conspiratorially as she said that if her husband, who was waiting for her, found out she was hanging out with me, he'd accuse her of being a lesbian.

Here's a conversation I'd love to have with her: How does she reconcile her religious beliefs with views that are even more feminist than those of a lot of women who call themselves feminists? And, I'd like to hear more about something she mentioned to me: She's trying to keep her daughter, who's in her early adolescence, away from cosmetic formulae and procedures. When her daughter was about to shave her legs, Angie talked her out of it--for the time being, anyway. Angie herself doesn't wear make-up--not that she needs to. I wonder how her husband feels about that, and how she reconciles it with the notion of being submissive to the man's wishes.

Is there some sort of intellectual serendipity that brings you, when you least expect them, the answers to vexing questions ?

Like this: Charlie's licking my arm. Should I stop writing this and play with him? OK, that's not so vexing. I know what I'm going to do. And I don't know what will turn up next. Will it come at an opportune moment?

A little serendipity of any kind is a good and helpful thing. I think the fact that I am about to have my surgery is the result of a whole series of bigger and smaller serendipities.