You're No Number

[This guest post is written by my friend and department colleague, Dr. Scott Randby, who teaches and writes about mathematics.]

I can prove many things about the number e. I can prove e exists. I can't prove anything about you. Did you exist? I can't see it now. I can take my pain and discard it. There is no way to discard e.

e is 2.71828.... and it never changes. What are you? You took the head-on collision with oblivion that is impossible for e. Unless the entirety of reality ends, e will be present and shining. But e isn't God. And the joke played on you---the atheist who admired believers for their ability to believe nonsense---is that the fantasy called God was forced on you at the end. e was there too, but what did you know about that?

I have affection for e. I can trust e to be as it is without reservation. My affection for you was misplaced. My mistake was to create a false friendship. I can't do that with e. e imposes its truth on everything, and its truth cannot be altered by my wishful thinking.

e is a limit. Were you aware of your limits? The chaos you created will soon fade to zero. That is your limit. The limit that makes e is not a trivial zero. We can use e to create beauty and pleasure. With e, we can see beyond our limits. We can see beyond your limit too, but you aren't necessary for that perception.

I understand e. I doubt if I ever understood anything about you, and I know you didn't know e.

I can't reject e, but I can reject you. I can forget your name and everything we ever discussed. Those memories can be wiped away, and they will be someday. Sure, I can forget e, but e will still remain, and remembering e is simply a matter of going through the proofs about it. No proof will ever reconstruct my memories of you, and that is my relief.

To Designated Survivors

I. For the President: You been chosen to survive. The president is giving the State of the Union and all of the very most important will be there. Should our enemy decide to blow up the building, someone needs to be at the ready. Nuclear codes in the briefcase. Security detail. Access codes and the keys to the White House. You’re the one. Not special enough to be required at the speech, but apparently special enough to become the most powerful leader in the world at a time of crisis. You take this as a compliment. Your daughter is so proud.

 II. For the Baby: You have also been chosen to survive. The doctor sits beside you and your partner, hands you your baby. Six weeks old. He is about to die. Five days ago, in a conference room and lots of lab coats, a long wooden table, they started to map out for you what was happening and though they could not confirm the disease precisely, they could confirm it was fatal. The scribbles on the whiteboard make less and less sense the more and more you try. The doctor suggests you have some decisions to make, but really you don’t. Or rather, the decision to have to make is so simple: how and when to survive this.

You have to make a decision. Then, you make it. But you never make peace with it.

III. For Your Partner: Finally, you, too, have been chosen. She says the doctor has good news. She will take a leave from work until she is better. Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. Next summer, you'll buy a boat and the kids will learn to sail. You have worked so hard on your life together and now, after decades, it’s starting to pay off. You go to dinner and she looks happy or relieved, if there’s a difference. She does not survive the night and you bury her a week later.

Sometimes the designated survivor has warning, a notice or a note. But then, sometimes, “Tag.” And you’re it. The nuclear option has been deployed. The devastation is complete, but you are the chosen one. You move into this house. People will call you strong. They will say they could never do what you are doing. As if there is a choice. Strength is not the carrying on despite the weight of grief in the midst of chaos. Just the opposite: we endure this sudden weightlessness, the unsettling and violent calm.

To The First Time My Husband Met My Mother

[Thanks so much for reading! This letter marks one year. I will keep writing, but less frequently. Please stay tuned!]

We weren’t dating yet. Just friends. He had somehow gotten past my loud remarks in every class and sometimes, we’d go to lunch before class at the Greek diner. Turkey burgers and milkshakes.

And my mom was coming to visit. A long weekend. I had no idea what we would do. West Lafayette, Indiana is smaller than you’d imagine, if you even thought to try to imagine it. I loved my tiny house and my roommate. My professors. The work I was doing. But you can’t tour that. I had no idea how we would fill up the days.

She comes to campus with me in the morning and I’ve got a class. We are walking to the union and agree to meet up later, and she will join me for the class I teach: Intro to Creative Writing. I walk one way and she walks another. She’ll grab some coffee. People watch.

Keith has seen us talking and knows it must be my mom. When I take leave of her, he waits a bit and then approaches her and gets her attention.

“Te? Te Byrne?”

She recognizes her name, of course, but not this guy. Beard. Pony tail.

Given the rarity of her name, she must know him.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

He keeps it up for a few more seconds and then, he tells her. He saw us. He’s a friend of mine. Just wanted to say hi.

She tells me about it later. He’s so funny. She was trying to figure it out. Who could this be? She was laughing.

We wouldn't start dating for another year. But it starts so small. The way he loves a word. The way he is always up for a hike. The way he made my mom laugh so that, whatever we did the rest of the weekend, she was already having a good time.

To Honesty, Brutal and Otherwise

Little lies are kind. Harmless. I don’t begrudge when someone tells one to me, about me. I’ve said my share: It’s so good to see you. No thanks, I’m not hungry. Of course I remembered!

I’m thinking of the moment when I started to say something this afternoon. And then I stopped. No one was about to be hurt. The question was genuine and she was waiting, patiently.

I’m going to have to say it. And she will not be shocked or hurt or in any way troubled. But I will. 

We all keep secrets, most we don’t even know we are keeping. We’ve never thought to reveal that part of ourselves, not out of shame or fear, but more happenstance. We never had the occasion. Never been asked that question.

We tell so many stories about ourselves, we know what happens we say it. When I say I was born in New Orleans, people find that interesting. We will talk about food and heat and hurricanes, even though I remember none of it. When I say I have a degree in writing, people think I’m checking their grammar. I’m not. They think I love fiction; I don’t. I know how the next few minutes is going to go.

After my first son died and I had my second, people would chat in line at the check-out or in the doctor’s office. “Do you have others?” “Is he your only?”

The first time, I fumbled. I didn’t expect it, didn’t realize that was a question people asked when they saw other people with babies. I said no, I had another; he died. I didn’t know it was a secret. I knew it would be troublesome. I was pretty sure that one of us would cry. Probably me. 

Brutally honest. One of us is about to get hurt. I don’t know how to stop it. You are going to have to forgive me if it’s you.

To Shakespeare and the Things You Got Wrong

William, may I call you William? May I call you Bill?

Bill, you got a lot right. Compared to say, Tennessee Williams or Joan Didon, I can’t deny the depth of your work. Most of us find our thing and run with it. King writes horror fiction. Faulkner steeped in all that south. Langston Hughes, beautiful, necessary, but still no one had the range you did.

But--and we have to be honest here--you got a lot wrong. This is not easy to admit and it’s not meant to overshadow all the truths you revealed, all the heartbreak you endured, all the doubts you suffered to get your work to the public.

I will take issue with only a few:

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I realize that business schools with advanced degrees in marketing did not exist back then, but human nature, combined with language, does prove that a rose, named something else, will not smell as sweet as that which we call “rose.” If a beautiful rose, plump, yellow and sweet, was labeled “city shoe slime,” it would struggle to find its audience. Likewise, we can take something foul-smelling, rename it (preferably in French, say, l’eau des roses rouge) and watch them line up. You have underestimated the power of the mind, the need to believe what we think.

“There are more things in earth and heaven, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I forgive this one, assuming you didn’t actually know philosophers because if you did, you would know that they can think of so many more things than what exists in all of earth and heaven. And heaven’s heaven. Philosophy, anyone’s philosophy, is born of this world, this earth, but refuses to be confined, takes, as its very purpose, defining and then undefining and redefining. Maybe you knew one or two, but you never went to a cocktail party with several of them. Philosophers with a slight buzz and a constant supply of shrimp are a terrifying fun.

“All the world’s a stage.” An occupational hazard for a playwright, but all the world is not a stage. All the world is mostly backstage. The props thrown about between scenes. Actors smoking to calm their nerves. Everyone is naked and there is no privacy. Chaos. Fights. Infidelities. The stage is polished, rehearsed, mapped and, well-lit. About .25% of the world is a stage. The rest is passing time waiting for our lines.

“‘Tis better to have loved and lost.” Clearly, you never loved. And lost. A baby in your arms. And then you bury him.

“To be or not to be, that is the question.” I quibble here with “the.” “The question.” As if there are no other questions. To survive this pain or not. To live through it or not. To decide, this one day, if a next is worth having? I will grant you it is “a question.” It is not “THE question.” Here are some other questions, which I would argue, are more important than yours: are there people who love me? Whose hands have I touched that when I close my eyes, I can still feel? Bill, when you asked this question, I think you could hear your daughter’s voice saying, “Be. Please. Always be.”

To Chance

I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. I can’t imagine what that means for the smallest--the dog hops up beside me on the couch, the bananas ripen on the counter--and for the biggest things--the babies who die, the fires that burn down houses with the families sleeping upstairs--things in our lives.

We can make a reason. We can find a reason. But a reason, from a god or gods, a lesson of sorts that without this incident we would never know and then surely our lives would be less complete? I cannot.

Chance horrifies. All this pain and suffering for nothing? And all the joys out of nowhere? I grew up thousands of miles from my husband. We met at Purdue, which I almost didn’t go to were it not for a brief encounter with a professor from my first choice school. He said go to the school that gives you the most money. Indiana it was. 

And my husband admits it was not love at first sight. I understand. I’m not Midwestern and lack the classic Midwestern reserve and stoicism. I can be, to some, abrasive. But somehow, he grew to either ignore it or embrace it. So I might trace all the way back and say some force guided me north and not west. Some higher being softened his view, his heart. It all came together so perfectly, yes? As if we were made for each other. At very least, Fate played a part.

Sometimes the chances are so slim, incalculable even, that surely, something else was in play. Call it what you will, my friend says, anything but chance. We are debating this again, knowing neither of us will change our minds. We’ve done this so many times, by now it is a friendly dance, one we enjoy. We are not alone, she says. Outside of us, there is so much more we can’t know, and yet every day, we can see it working in our lives, she says.

I don’t disagree with her. Behind me, the young man at the counter grinds coffee beans for a customer. The scent punctuates the air. My friend pulls her hair behind her ear. I’m just grateful she is here with me.

To The Old Guy In The Car at the Stoplight

March. Driving home, the sun is low enough and bright enough that we put on our sunglasses. Our beer is cheap and our car is used, but at this point in our life, without shame, we spend serious money on sunglasses.

We’re alone in the car and turn the music up. Whatever we like best--the bass, the drum, the high notes--fills the car, then the road, then our life. The song takes over, and for a moment, we are 23 and we just got paid. We’re adults now and work hard, but we have not yet settled down. 

We play the drums on the steering wheel; we sing backup and then we sing lead. We have a full band behind us and then, suddenly, we’re alone on stage. Unplugged. We are rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country and western and punk. We are the Walt Whitman of post-modern, not a title we claim, but one we cannot deny.

If only there was a way to channel this musical genius, if only the world was ready for this crazy daze. 

The sun. The car. Our glasses. So sweet, it’s almost unbearable. 

Almost.

At the stoplight, the old man in the Corolla next to us has his window down and he’s trying to tell us something. We know what it is. We know what he wants. Smile a little.

Not today, old man. Today, we are not as old as we think.

To Forms Not Yet Liberated

You have to wait with profound patience.

Two lovers, one head tossed back, the other places an ear on the shoulder, their fingers pressed against each others’. Thousands of years in this granite. Michelago, in the quarry, studying the stones, passed right over you. Never heard your sighs. Never even brought his hand against the rock to feel your back, the curve of your neck.

Angry gods trapped with devils underfoot, snakes writhing, waiting to be released, the stone feeling tighter every century. You used to be angry at impossible humans, forever thinking they didn’t need you, they could do better, but now you feel pity for them. But you are still angry; you want to feel the summer rain, you want to hear leaves turning colors. You want a child to walk by and glide her tiny palm across your foot. You imagine it every day.

They are waiting all around us: in tree trunks, boulders, pieces of jade and onyx. Some so large they cannot be housed and some so tiny they could be mistaken for a coin. Some are there, just beneath the surface, easy to get to and elegant, but many live deep in the marrows, the sculptor working for years to find you.

We must support the artists who find and free the figures. In the course of our humanity, we will not free them all, but we must try. The forms are our function, the beauty, released from all the extra weight and trouble, revealed from every angle.

To the Rest Cure

So simple, right?

Fatigue. Nerves. Lack of appetite. The Rest Cure heals.

You have to stay in bed. You cannot talk to your family and you cannot talk to your friends. For three days, this will seem hard. You will hear their voices and see their faces. You will remember the way they sighed. You will want to tell them about the cranky nurse, the dry bread, the water that tastes...just...different.

But, by the fourth day, you feel lighter. Maybe that nurse wasn’t so cranky and the water today is almost sweet. The sheets smell good and today you will sit on the lawn. Under a blanket. In the sun. You feel the sun on your eyelids. When was the last time you felt the sun on your eyelids?

You have weeks to go. Can you feel the difference? 

And here’s the most important thing to know: everyone survived in your absence. Your husband, your kids, your parents, the neighbors--all fine. 

Because here’s why they love you: not for what you do, not for what you say, not for the dinners you cook or the time spent cleaning after others. 

They love you because they can see you. Or they know they will see you again. 

It’s that simple.

To Crying

Happy crying: I wasn’t keen on weddings, especially not my own. A dress? An aisle? No thank you. My friend talks me into it and eventually, I see her point. Families get together. Let them meet, she says. Let them celebrate! Ok. I give in. 

And for most of the day, I’m fine. It’s a party. But then, I have to speak. We have each selected poems to read. I get through the first two words and then, I cry. Overwhelmed. This day is big and beautiful. May. Summer is new. The freshness of the grass stuns us all. You think you know love, and then…

Movie crying: Hollywood has a knack. Lassie. Old Yeller. Marley. Please, stop with the dogs. Everyone knows the dog is just the family baby. We need a new movie rating: DG. Dog Gone. The dog dies. You need to know this going in.

Grief: I walk into class. It’s the first class I’ve faced since you died. Like every other day, my students are friendly and ask me how my weekend was. I pause. All weekend, I wanted to wake up from this bad dream. I know it’s going to take weeks, months, years before I can connect what I know and how I feel. I can lie now. I can say fine. And truly, if I say that, I will get through the next few minutes better than if I am honest.

But I have to be honest. I lost a very good friend this weekend, I say. You are my first class since I heard he died and so I have to say this. I cry and they fall silent. Awkward. Painful.

I don’t care. 

I do care. We are all in this together. We have to cry together. Because we cry enough alone.

To The Summer Cookouts

I’m just gonna open this bottle and set out a couple of glasses. I’m gonna set out some nachos and we are going to forget we care about our health.

This time, I promise not to complain about John Updike and how much I cannot stand the suburban angst that seems so popular. I will put aside my comments about music from the 70’s by white people that literally no one can dance to.  It won’t even be hard. I have a big mouth and I have a lot of opinions, but even I realize now is not the time.

In a poetry class, I remember Jack Myers telling us the story of his brother-in-law sitting next to him by the pool at a backyard cookout. They were reclining in lounge chairs and he had on mirror sunglasses and as they talked, this guy would punctuate his comments with phrases like, “But what are ya gonna do? Huh? What are ya gonna do?” Jack watched the clouds move across the lenses of his glasses. 

I never knew if it was defeat or relief.

Or both.

Now, we will never know. I have always thought any age is too young to die when the person who dies is someone you love. 8 days, 8 years, 80 years.

I have no space for your absence.

Drink up, my friend. The grading and the laundry and stories-not-yet-written can wait.

Today is unseasonably warm. 

The distance we have to bridge has never been smaller.

To The Tinkerbell Effect

Tinkerbell, near death, can only be saved if we, the audience, will her to live, save her with our faith in her. We clap and she revives and rises. Peter Pan could not be happier. The children, relieved.

We have done our duty and saved a fake fairy. It feels good.

Now, I see it everywhere: the faith that something is the case makes it the case.

Jewelry is Tinkerbell. That diamond has value because we believe it, Yes, it’s rare, but even rare only matters because we believe it matters. Give the wine a French name, slap a fancy label on it, and suddenly it’s sublime. This is no Two Buck Chuck, which may be fine for a summer barbecue. This is 50th anniversary wine. This says you have arrived. The finer things. Yes.

We live in the fairy world; Tinkerbells everywhere, sitting on our shoulders, curled in the crook our of necks, so convincing. What would the world be without Tinkerbells? 

Lawless. Artless. Empty.

She’s real. The construct matters, has weight and meaning. The diamond in your watch glints. The wine smooths your day. You don’t have to want to believe. You do.

Believing is seeing. Believing makes it so. Believing creates.

What else is there? The author begs you to have faith, bring her to life. You could say no. But you never do.

To The Books We Don't t Know We Write

You were reading a bad novel. “I can write this shit,” you said.

“No,” I said. You had enough to deal with. I was thinking that the last thing you need to guilt yourself with or pressure yourself with is writing the Great American Novel. Next summer, by the pool, you can get back to it.

“No. It’s better to read someone else’s book,” I said. Let them do the work. Let them sit down at the typewriter and bleed. 

Let someone else sit down and grate themselves raw. Let them reach down into the darkest part of themselves and bang it out on to the page. Let someone else reveal a secret even if no one else can see it. This is not a test of character or patience or talent or even discipline.

This is not a test. And we cannot fail.

We all write our lives, our stories, even when we don’t. I have recipe cards from my grandmother, one title “Rue.” She knew better, that the word in French is “Roux.” But one day, after I asked her to send me all her recipes, she sat down with a black ball point pen and a 3x5 index card and began:

     Rue

     ⅓ c. Oil 

     ⅓ c. Flour

In French, “Rue” is street. 

My grandfather kept calendars, years and years of calendars with the smallest details of his day marked in each square. His handwriting barely changing over the years. 

We all write every day and we all have a book by the end. Maybe not a best seller. And no one will make a movie out of it. 

But someone will read it. And they will know how much you had to bleed to get it down. How much we all suffer to get it down. They will be grateful you wrote as much as you did. They will put it all together. The meaning is made later, by the reader. They might think it’s shit. I doubt it.

To All the Things I Don’t Know About You

I don’t know the name of the dog who slept in your bed as a child. I don’t know the street you grew up on, but I know the town. I don’t know if you think breakfast is the most important meal of the day or if you would rather just wait until lunch. I do know you drink coffee.

I’ve never known who you voted for in all the past elections, though I do know your politics are complicated. I think I know what kind of car you drive, but not if you buy new or used. I do know you laughed when I said I don’t believe in car payments, not unless I have to. I don’t know why that’s funny.

I don’t know what you do when it’s 3:00 am and you can’t sleep. I don’t know if you believe in a soul, but I do think all souls are restless. I don’t know if you have ever been out of the country, but I do know you would love Ireland. Everyone loves Ireland. It’s a rule.

You hate rules. I know that. Especially the ones that apply to you.

I don’t know your secrets, but I think I know your hopes. We can hide our secrets so much better than we can hide our hopes. 

I don’t know what you did last Tuesday. I don’t know what you said to the man at the checkout at the grocery store. I don’t know what station you have preset on your car radio. I don’t know if you listen to the radio or just plug in your own music.

I know what you want me to know.

Everything else is just a guess.

From Some Type of Heaven

Forget what you’ve seen in Renaissance murals and church windows. All those fat baby angels and lords with long white beards and shockingly muscular bodies for their age. 

If you hear someone who has been revived talking about a beautiful golden light, know it was just the refraction from my single malt scotch. Neat. In a crystal glass. 

Heaven is nothing like our dreams. If it was, it would not be heaven.

You will love it here. Gumbo? Every day for lunch. A beach with Wifi and Netflix? Right this way. Heaven smells like sandalwood or lavender or the crook of your baby boy’s neck. This heaven is made for you. This heaven has been waiting for you.

And, not coincidentally, it is right next to the heavens of all the people you know and love. Your mother, who died when you were a teenager. Your uncle, her brother, who gave you a hard time and you loved him for it. From where you sit, you can reach over touch the neighbor who died seven years ago in storm; he is still telling bad jokes. The newly dead: David Bowie. Your friend who died suddenly last fall in her sleep.

The best of all your lives. This is some type of heaven.

And you are a most unlikely angel.