Song of Roger and Eileen

“You seem to engage better with students than faculty. Is that fair to say?” That was the assessment of my outgoing associate director of the Buffalo Center on his last day a few weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. He’s right of course, but that doesn’t mean I don’t engage well with faculty. It simply means that I have more student friends than faculty friends. But the colleagues who are my friends are some of my closest friends: St. Mary of Virginia, Scout, Milton to name a few. I seem to know immediately when I’ve met one of these colleagues who is going to be a longtime friend, and it happened here in Boston, most serendipitously, with Roger and Eileen.

Roger has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. I love physicists. They are some of the best thinkers on the planet, so much so that they are also critical of the very method they use. C. S. Lewis once said that when the theologians get to where they are going, they will find the physicists already there. I first met Roger when we were both wide-eyed and new at Prestigious University here in Boston. It was an orientation meeting for part-time instructors. We were both full-time, but we were so eager to get involved we decided to attend the part-timers’ orientation. I remember him wearing a tie, and I was in a jacket wondering if I should have worn a tie. The dean introduced us, and somehow we both knew that we were going to be friends at that moment. His office was around the corner from mine, so we had a lot of opportunities to interact. Roger is a mathematician and approaches problems in an orderly way that is born of the scientific method. But he’s also incredibly creative and open to new ways of looking at things. I am not a mathematician and approach problems in an aesthetic, philosophical, or literary way, but I can also practice the scientific method and appreciate it for what it can do, especially in terms of technology. Only a week or so into my job at PU, I knew I was becoming friends with one of the most brilliant people I had ever met. This was going to be fun. Then, one day Roger came around the corner and said “Can I ask you a favor?” I said, “Sure, what’s up?” He said, without any hint of irony, “Can you tell me how to work my voice mail?” I knew then that we were an excellent complement to each other. We came to have lunch every week at the home of the Stolen Lame Beer Glass, and our discussions ranged from grading (I hate it; Roger loves it) to teaching (we both love it and are good at it) to administration (he’s so good at it he doesn’t do it anymore). We both came to rely on these weekly meetings for their therapeutic value as well as their genuine fun. There was much laughter and silliness, and I loved punching philosophical holes in Roger’s elegantly constructed theories, while Roger loved forcing me to answer questions without resorting to metaphors or other literary maneuvers. I remember having a real problem early on and telling Roger about it. His response was “Let’s meet at the pub, and you can explain again how I don’t exist.”

Eileen I met later, at new faculty orientation, I believe, when we had a lovely evening in the presidential suite at PU and ended up looking at the lights of the city and contemplating our good fortune. Eileen is equally brilliant and is one of the best writers I know. She is the author of an important biography of a major British writer, and she knows about everything from history to maps. Eileen likes to present a tough exterior, and I have no doubt she can kick your ass, but I also know that she is kind and generous and full of light. She is, at times, mother, sister, colleague, friend, and confidant to me, and I trust her judgement. Our first real interaction was when I asked her to teach a course with me in the online program I administered at PU. She was both terrified and intrigued, and I knew her innate curiosity would win out. It did, and she ended up being one of the best teachers in the program and still maintains contact with some of the students she taught, even though they never met. Eileen is a dedicated reader of this blog as well, and when she and Roger visited me in Coolville, she would point as we drove around and say things like “Oh, is that the coffee shop?” or “Is that where you saw the coyote?” Roger didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, but I felt like I was leading her on a tour of my life which she had known only through this blog, and I guess that’s exactly what I was doing after all. Tonight she asks me about the difficulties I’ve been alluding to of late here, and I tell her everything. She has seen all of this coming and gives me her usual wise perspective on it all. They are both tired and have to work tomorrow, but they stay up later than they should to take care of their wayfaring friend.

After midnight in Boston, and I lie on their pull-out couch in their new apartment. I feel loved and welcome here, and as Eileen is found of saying, I’m family to them. I hear the T go by outside, an old and familiar sound that evokes memories of excitement and bone-chilling cold all wrapped together. Tomorrow I will see St. Judy, and if Lane and Mary were here, I could walk up to their place. A feeling of contentment rises in me as I consider how this city and my friends here have come to mean so much to me, and I wonder how I got so lucky. It is a place of great pain and sorrow, and Boston doesn’t apologize for any of it. She’s a hard city, one that can be rude and cold, but she is also seductive and will pull you in before you know it. Patty Griffin knows both the pain and seduction.

Boston
Patty Griffin

I went back to Boston
Back to the city you’re lost in
I went back to the place without you, facing the stone

. . .

Went walking in Boston
Over a bridge I used to walk on
I was looking for my heart
That I’d flung into that sea of stone, stone

. . .

You came all that way
Looking for the sky
And got a slap in the face
You had a desperate need to be loved
You just got put in that place
You better know your place, boy

Some things try and try
And they never fly
And they never fly
You reach up from the waves
And find that you’re only waving goodbye
Only waving
You’re only waving
You’re only waving
You’re only waving goodbye
Goodbye

Things never flew for me here, and I do seem to be always waving goodbye, but with friends like Roger, Eileen, Judy, Kay, Mary, Lane, and others, I think I’ll also still be waving hello, as I did tonight in Logan Airport when I saw my friend Roger waiting for me with a smile.