Opportunity, Knocking her Over and Out and Uncertain

Recently, Opportunity presented itself to the Matron in the form of a possible new job: Dean.

That's right folks. The Matron has been lost a little in a gridlock, a schemata, a spreadsheet of possibility.

Dean Matron. Dr. Dean Matron. Maybe someday PRESIDENT Dr. Dean Matron (she will never let go of a title).

These all have a lovely, nearly poetic ring. Makes her misty, just considering. And consider she has been, knowing not only that she has a real shot at this particular fiefdom.

But.

As she drifted through her future, Reality -- a fast runner -- quickly caught up with Opportunity.

Yes, she'd make more money. She would converse, hourly, with like-minded people who also hold many academic degrees and know how to construct complex sentences, as opposed to teaching students HOW to construct sentences. And not complex ones.

She would be In Charge! A person of authority. The job? A stepping stone to higher administration . . .you see, she may very well enjoy being President or Queen of a College.

But.

Instead of working 190 days a year, per current faculty contract, she'd be working year-round. All summer with two weeks of vacation like everybody else.

She'd be gone from 8-6, minimum.

There would be limited time for writing.

She would spend most of her intellectual energy working to benefit an institution.

Most of all -- she who goes to campus just two mornings a week - -would lose the hourly freedom that currently defines her life. She can log into her online class and teach until midnight, and spend the afternoon at the dog park if she chooses.

Okay, mostly she drives kids in the afternoons. But the dog park thing sounded a little more daring. But she volunteers in Merrick's classroom, tests new recipes in peace, strolls around the house ALONE for more than twenty minutes and can clean four closest in under an hour in the middle of the day. And read. Yes -- she often does work until midnight. But so far, she's been liking this groove of life.

So.

The Matron made up her mind: she was not applying.

Until . . . a colleague or two called and urged her on. Go forward! Deanship be thine! Then, the competition began. So and So was applying?! Surely, the Matron had her beat! What! Colleague Q considering? A crisis, indeed.

Matron to John: "I should do it. X and B think I'd be great at it. I should."

John: "You have super soft skin and a great body. Will you get naked right now if I ask you?"

Between 9 am and 3 pm? Dream on, darling.

John: "Point made. Just because someone asks you to do something and you'd be good at it, doesn't mean you have to do it."

Oh.

The Matron pondered that bit of wisdom. John asked again, just in case his theory could be disproved. Sorry again, honey.

Later, Merrick asked his mother what was on her mind.

Merrick: "Mom? Why awe you so sewious?"

Matron: "I'm thinking about applying for a new job. Dean. Dean of the college."

Merrick: "The king?"

Matron: "Sort of."

Merrick (overjoyed): "DO IT DO IT!"

Matron: "But I'd leave in the morning when you go to school and I wouldn't come home until dinner or maybe later."

Merrick: "Weally?"

Matron: "Yup. I'd make more money but the trade off is that I'll be gone."

Merrick: "Will they make you do it?"

Matron: "Nobody will make me. I could choose."

Merrick: "To be gone all day just to be boss of a whole bunch of people?"

When you put it that way, darling. . . . those men in her life? Pretty darn smart. But still. Opportunity has a way of seducing . . .

Sigh.

Monday, Meditation

Saturday morning, the Matron startled awake at 4:18 am, half an hour before her alarm.

Because in a fit of insanity, she signed up for a half day sesshin at her local Zen Center -- silent meditation from 6 am to noon.

At 4:25 she decided not to even attempt those extra 20 minutes of sleep. She was AWAKE. At 4:50 am, slurping down coffee and a muffin, she realized that she must immediately return to her warm, cozy bed and abandon this ridiculous idea of SIX hours of meditation. That whole 'awake' thing last just about long enough for food and coffee.

Friday, this conversation had ensued.

He Who Cannot Be Named (16 year old son HWCBN for new readers): "Mom? You're going to meditate for six hours?"

Matron: "Yup!"

HWCBN: "How long have you meditated at one shot before?"

Matron: "Forty minutes."

Pause.

HWCBN: "Good luck with that."

This conversation replayed itself that bleak, black morning. Indeed, only pride propelled her forward. She had signed up, rallied the children, promised herself -- committed. The day was arranged around her absence. Merrick had hugged her good-night, all pluck and encouragement for her interior journey.

Merrick: "Mom? If you fall asleep and dwop over, twy not to get huwt."

Thanks, sweetheart.

And so from 6 am to noon, the Matron sat on a pillow. There was a small ceremony, a silent meditative breakfast, a highly anticipated bathroom break or two (bathroom! Like a party!). In sum, she sat just over four hours total.

That time--four hours, which would be 240 minutes?

Flew by.

Shockingly, for much of that time her mind held only a mantra -- a brief phrase and breath truly took hold. But for another slice of that time, her past -- images, scenes, conversations, bright lights of life frozen -- scrolled unbidden and uncontrolled across her defenseless psyche.

What a show!

It was . . . humbling.

Past humiliations arose. Moments of guilt. Vignettes of wrong-doing, mistakes made. A luminous moment or two, but mostly pain and sorrow finding a path they'd missed and making the most of it. The stories presenting themselves weren't the familiar crew, but a brand new bunch.

A little girl in plaid and braids, the adorable-as-all-get-out kind you see in picture books and movies -- already afraid.

Oddly, inexplicably, she didn't feel sad during this onslaught of imagery -- just a spectator. Inquisitive and open, as a forgotten past -- one largely constructed of minutiae, little things that don't seem to carry much weight -- moved toward her.

Oh -- and she's pretty sure she did doze off here and there. No worries, Merrick honey. She didn't drop over.

Today, she can't even remember exactly what happened or what secrets shook themselves out. Really. Four hours of this and she can barely remember what happened.

But she feels . . . better. Different. Something shifted during those quiet hours. She is not of the belief that life experience can be exorcised from the body or that catharsis is a cure. There is no remedy for what we take in because it is who we are. Consider just how much one person incorporates in a single day! From the moment we wake until sleep -- and maybe even then -- the brain never stops synthesizing detail after detail after drama and sight, sound and smell.

She imagines the brain packaging and storing the onslaught of input -- categorizing each second like a file to be plucked out again when needed. Imagine the expanse of this input! Wake, pull back covers, feel cool air, dog snout on leg, clock humming, cool wooden floor, crisp window -- this is just the first five seconds! Who among us can notice the crack and spit of every second?! Most of this we never even retrieve or when we do, it's like breath -- we don't even notice it.

But Saturday, she noticed her breath--and the shock of senses that came with it.

The funny thing is? All she feels is: better. And she didn't even know she felt bad.

She's Just a Girl Who Can't Say No (to Blogging)

Surprise!

No. Your senses have not taken leave. Here they are: words. The Matron's.

She actually didn't intend to take an extended hiatus. One day evolved into another, and then another. Christmas revealed its true nature as a month-long festival of financial over-indulgence topped off by cleaning, cooking, entertaining and debate: what does one give to the postal carrier? Especially one with whom you have a special relationship.

John: "Do you really have to give the recycling guy a holiday book, bake cookies for the teacher, and leave tea and chocolate for the garbage man?"

Matron: "Why? Do you think a bottle of wine is better?"

John: "Only if it's for me, at this very minute."

Then there was the veil of suffering. The Matron was grounded in the reality of the body's demise. Her friend continues the battle. Her stepmother -- a saga about which the Matron didn't blog -- scraped by a staggering health crisis with her life intact but changed.

But . . in an odd way these things didn't bother the Matron. She experienced, but did not rail against them. Long ago, she had the singular momentary wisdom to learn something from her mother-in-law.

Mother-in-Law: "Why, I go to a funeral a week. That's your social life when your friends all start dying."

And-- like that-- the Matron understood that one day, she too would step to the precipice of age.

However, understanding that something is simply the 'natural order of things' doesn't make it easy.

Then there was The Play. The Matron wrote one. Did she mention she wrote a play? Wrapped it up in the last six weeks? For an actual theatre company, a play that might see the stage -- and there's another one in the works that is a certainty.

Writing a play also provided the Matron with a fun little fantasy. She loves living in her head that way. Fantasy:

Cashier at grocery store: "And what do you do for a living?"

Matron: "Me? Oh, I'm a playwright."

Chills!

Of course, the fantasy omitted the teaching job and also centered around the fact that the Matron was AT the grocery store in the first place to buy a LOTTERY ticket, which she of course WON (this is a fantasy after all) -- which immediately required detailed dissection of how she would distribute, spend and indulge in her $389 million payout. The Matron is pretty generous in fantasyland, so she needed a lot. 3 - 8 - 9 million. That's a forty minute fantasy, folks.

Anyway, that lottery thing didn't work out in real life.

At least, real life has been rich and nuanced, replete with rewards that have nothing to do with money but much with relationships and self-reflection (not knowledge - that would be a stretch - it's all still a great big query). So the Matron guesses that's where her piggy bank is -- in people. And that sucker is stuffed. The children, the dogs, the friends, students, family -- why, the Matron could write a novel.

Instead she shall return to the regular blog post to strut her narrative stuff.

She's back.

Dark

The Matron should be attending to the nearly seven thousand pieces of student work for which she is responsible. Certainly, now would be the time for a deft discussion of the perils of the community college educator: meaning lots of students and therefore, lots of student work. Of course, most of this work is already recorded and, in honesty, thanks to online teaching technology, a portion of it automated. But she likes saying "nearly seven thousand."

Yet she feels oddly calm, even in the thick of those final papers.

Remember the name of this blog? Minnesota Matron.

The season of bright lights, eggnog and cheer (feigned and real) falls in the thick of winter night. It's the worst kind of winter. Snow has yet to fully descend; when she does, there are sweeping buckets of lace and ice that sparkles by day and shimmers, a ghost, at night. Snow softens the landscape but December is largely, simply: night.

This year, the Matron has donned the season. Three weeks ago, she returned to the Buddhist sangha she frequented a few years back for their noon meditation: four days a week. She has been sitting on a pillow, lost, for thirty minutes, seven days a week -- four of those among like-minded people. Consistent meditation rewires the brain; that's not snappy prose but scientific fact.

Her particular cellular tune-up means that she can no longer sweat the small stuff. Her work ethic is slow and steady instead of frenetic. She's sitting with the children and talking on the phone more often. Wondering, really, how you're doing when she's asked. The smallest encounter can send memories one, two, three decades past into her immediate present. Not in a bad way, just a picture she looks into and says: that is who I am. Not all of this is pretty.

The rewired brain is not melancholy - -not at all. It simply sees truth beyond the clock and the checkbook, beyond the accomplishments one can whip out at cocktail parties. Maybe this is a function of biology, of facing the impending next decade. Maybe it's something else.

And every day as she heads to the Zen center for meditation or drives to a school or rushes out to get kale at the co-op or take the doggies to the dog park, she drives past her neighbor's house.

Inside, her friend is facing death -- not as the Matron has been in a 'one day please not too soon' sort of fashion, but in illness driven, crisis reality: death is coming for me. It is on its way.

Driven by love, all the Matron can do is watch. And realize that this, waiting, is actually the full extent of human power over death.

The blue light of Christmas, brittle night and black sky -- sitting on that pillow, lost, every day -- a child actively preparing to embark upon a life separate from hers -- the insipid television and rush for money -- everything is sharper.

Finally, she is looking at people and understanding what it means to say "this is what really matters."

The Twenty Year Marriage and Four Year Blog

The past couple of months, the Matron has felt her heart swell with nostalgia of those early, heady days of blogging.

She couldn't get enough! A post a day? Of course! Magnificent, well-thought out creatures worthy of paid publication and accolades? Darling, that's just for starters. Every day she looked forward to her hour with the computer, secretly composing stories in her spare time instead of focusing on mundane tasks like rearing children and earning a buck.

The blogs needs were met, and then some.

Sort of like sex in a new marriage and then not-so-new, marriage. Hot and heavy turns steady turns scheduled. Not always, but in long marriages there are eras, not months.

So dear little blog, she promises that things will get better. She will fondle and coo. Post more. Feed you robust words with lust and think of you again with longing, instead of one more entity requiring her care.

You too, John. She promises.

The Matron is finishing up the semester for the record books. She is working full time. Did she say this before? When the grades are all entered, she will have evaluated about 6,520 pieces of student work in sixteen weeks.

And she's still typing.

So dear little cold abandoned and shivering blog, take heart. Don't despair. The slow silent era reminds her that, like a good marriage, she's in it for the long haul. You are not forgotten just an afterthought for a little while.

She won't continue the marriage metaphors but let's just say her husband may be shivering curbside with the blog. Hang in there honey.

Every era has its beginning and end. She's ready to write that "happily ever after" any day now!

Fun with Hormones

The Matron is sitting at the kitchen table. Laptop open. TV on. Tea simmering. The rest of the house is busy: John and Merrick are building a fire, HWCBN is engaged in some online war, the dogs mine for treats and love.

The Matron is alone with her psyche until John and Merrick walk into the room.

Merrick: "Mom? What's the mattew?"

John: "What's wrong sweetie?"

Matron, taken aback: "Why, nothing. I'm just thinking."

Merrick: "It must be pwetty awfuuul." ( he still talks that way, Buddha bless him)

John: "Nothing can be that bad!"

Matron, doubly taken aback: "Actually, I'm trying to think of something funny to blog about. I'm sitting, here, thinking funny."

John's turn to be taken aback: "Good God."

Merrick: "Weally?"

Matron: "Really. I just can't think of anything funny to blog about. It's time for levity in the blogosphere."

John: "Well . . . maybe you should watch Modern Family or something instead of CSI?"

Matron: "That's funny."

Merrick: "How come you say something is funny when you look like you'we going to hit somebody?"

Matron: "It would appear that my life is completely devoid of humor. I find nothing whatsoever funny."

John, tentatively: "Actually, that's funny."

Merrick: "I'm funny! You have me."

Matron: "Did you clean your room?"

Merrick: "Mom. That's not funny."

Matron: "See? Life. Completely. Devoid. Of humor."

John: "Can I just say again . . . that really is funny."

Matron: "In a dark sort of way, granted."

Merrick: "I know, I know! It's funny you sitting here awguing about blogging about funny!"

Matron: "Not really."

John, assessing with 20 years of wisdom behind him: "PMS jokes? Sound funny?"

Matron (snappy): "Now why would that be funny?!"

John to Merrick: "Remember that emergency fire drill stuff we practiced? Time to do it now, very carefully out of the kitchen and away from Mama."

Merrick immediately drops to his belly on the floor and starts writhing toward the door.

John: "Husband in training."

That, the Matron found funny.

Calling It Like It Is

The Matron is enlisting this woman to work on the Herman Cain campaign.

Seriously, read that link. Read it now. Nobody can say it better.

The Matron's lighter touch continues to evade her. Yes, Satan's Familiar refines his fetid habits (mostly involving routing out excretions of any sort for dessert) and the big guy, as all 80 lb coon hounds are prone to do, knocks over toddlers with his tail. Her busy actor is fully deploying the emotional range available to all newly minted teenagers. Let's just say nobody here really needs to step into the theater for drama (the Matron thought she'd drop that in there to keep you hooked for an upcoming Stage Mother). He Who Cannot Be Named (HWCBN) lives the mysterious life of a young man poised on adulthood: his own. Merrick is, well, eight. With a perpetual sling shot and nerf gun by his side. All this by way of saying that levity does indeed exist in her world, always.

She's simply not there.

Instead, the Matron is one more angry person on the planet. Note that gender was not invoked. Because the vast majority of men, who do not rape, kill, torture, maim, kidnap, prostitute and capture women should also be very, very angry at those who do. We should have a whole lotta anger revvin' up the place.

Guys? Some of your ilk are giving the breed a bad name.

Here's the thing -- while there is justified moral outrage surrounding what she calls The Penn State Silence, there is umbrage and suspicion when sexually harassed women speak. The victims are being questioned, called to task: what do they have to gain? why now? who's paying the lawyer?

When asked "why" she was coming forward, Sharon Bialek replied that it was "the right thing to do."

Not doing the right thing at Penn State is a moral crime (yes!) but doing the right thing regarding Cain is cagey. Just read this ABC report on Sharon Bialek for the tenor surrounding these women. From headline to first paragraphs, this reads like a rap sheet. The photo selected? Why, she's pretty darn happy about her new found place in the media sun.

Now, the Matron knows exactly what you're thinking: raping children cannot be equated with sexual harassment. True. She even put it in colorful italics for emphasis. There is a fundamental difference between the psychological and sexual torture to which those young boys were subjected and the pain, however sharp, of sexual harassment.

Yet these two events -- big stories that enthrall a nation -- do share a fundamental quality: male violence. The Matron is just now establishing an official continuum for male violence called the MVC or Male Violence Continuum. Sexual harassment is on one end, the rape of children on another. But that continuum is a stream of the same impulse: male violence.

Yes, women harass, steal, torture and kill. Let's get that out of the way. But here, the Matron is addressing the majority. Americans like majorities. We have the Moral Majority on the right and now the new Occupy claim to the 99% of us on the left. Big groups rock. They get our attention, hold sway, demand notice. So . . . she's looking to the thick part of the violence pack and she sees testicles.

Yours truly did a little google search and then a more refined search in the education and government fields for "male violence." Here's what she got: domestic violence, gun violence, youth violence, gang violence, Central American militia violence, war violence against women, violence against women, men who murder their families, and intimate partner violence.

Ding, ding, ding! Anyone hear 'men' in there? But not one web page explicitly used the word 'men.'

This came up, too.

Ask why men commit most violent crimes -- no, wait, just POINT OUT that men commit most violent crimes and you are a feminist bitch determined to derail half the human race. Wow. That's a whole lot of power in these feminist hands.

And the Matron, 'bitter feminist' that she is, does indeed hope to reduce men who rape, kill, torture, kidnap, maim and prostitute to middling puddles of poo on the carpet.

Guys? Once again (sigh, this always happens -- such a burden on her) you have the Matron to thank. Because the majority of victims of male violence are other men. See? Those rotten eggs are sullying the entire basket. Men and women alike have much to gain by noticing that masculinity and violence are intricately connected. Because men get mugged, raped, kidnapped, tortured and prostituted too.

Hey! There's that darn white elephant in the room!

Pointing out that men commit the majority of violent crimes -- from trying to shove a woman's head into his crotch to raping a girlfriend or boyfriend -- isn't a feminist plot to dethrone the phallus as ultimate signifier or in anyway dehumanize men.

It's just the truth.