The Things I Carry With Me

The 2009 CofC Convocation Committee put out a 'call for essays' from faculty that would reflect the theme of this year's convocation, based on the book The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. This was mine:


THINGS I CARRY WITH ME

I Carry with me Generations of French, French-Canadian and Canadian Indian ancestors,
Who taught my grandfather his sacrilegious profanities,
Who taught my grandmother and mother to make tortieres
(French-Canadian Meat Pies).
Who taught The Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary in Canuck French.
Who taught my father to sing ‘O! Canada!’ before he could speak.
And in so doing, taught me as well.

I Carry with me a Century of Stories told in French and spoken over tables that held,

Pinochle Cards and Cribbage Boards,
Bread and Beer,
Oatmeal and Crepes for breakfast.

I Carry with me a Remembrance of Catholicism; No more than a childhood memory now.

Of incense and swirling Vestments,
Of impossible Ave Marias wafting down from choir lofts as from Heaven.
Of simple faith like my grandmother’s who, if disappointed in a saint’s
response to her prayer, would turn their plastered, painted faces to
the Wall.

I Carry with me dozens of teachers whose classroom magic rivaled Houdini’s;

Miss Dalton who played Dylan for me,
Dr. Mellor who made a 16 year-old love Moby Dick (impossible),
Mr. Healey who made me write a story about a head of cabbage,
Richard Niebuhr who bared his great soul in every class,
Ralph Potter who placed Aristotle before me,
And Elisabeth who placed courage before me.

I Carry with me a thousands angers, betrayals and broken promises,

That came to me much too late, or at just the right time,
That became creative and enticing Questions.
OR, did the Questions come first and then the anger?

I Carry with me those Questions that never end,

Why does it rain equally upon the Just and the Unjust?
What Tenet, Law, Doctrine, Practice, Ritual?
And Whom do they Serve?
From what place and time and context?
From whose world view and what assumption?
On what turtle does that turtle rest?

But I Carry FROM this place also.

I Carry From this place, Gratitude,

Of which I cannot speak; of the sheer Luck or Gift to do in this place what
I love like no other thing.
Of the classroom, laboratory of experiment, of Ideas,
Of my best self, There.
Of those Questions that haunt my Dreams and Wakings,

I Carry From this place the many gifts my students present to me Every day,

Humor that stops me in mid-lecture and sets me laughing Out Loud.
Daring that poses the Questions too; more courageous than the bravest
of warriors.
Shared Learning that happens in stunning, crystallized moments of
sudden Knowing

I Carry From this place the Hope that they are, sitting there at their desks, Thinking.

~~ Louise M. Doire
July, 2009