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One week left as Department Head, seven days left
in a 35-year career. It’s clearing out day,
the day I’ve set aside for getting my office
ready for someone else.
I start with the file cabinets. So much information,
so painstakingly filed. What to keep? Nothing! It
all goes into the recycle bins. Next the books.
What to keep? Nothing. All boxed off to the library.
Now the computer. I erase all the files, disconnect
it.
That was the easy part. Next come the mementos
covering one wall. Should I keep them? A friend’s
voice comes to mind: “Your daughters will
want them one day,” she says. One day? I think
she means ‘one day when I’m gone.’
Is that day so near?
There’s a drawing done by a local artist.
It depicts one human and a variety of animals sitting
at a round table. Ah, those heady days when I thought
that environmental issues could be solved by bringing
all the partners to the table, government and industry
officials, local residents, hunters, ranchers, indigenous
people and environmentalists to speak for the critters
and their habitat. Ten years, one new park, a hundred
failures, one drawing – those were the outcomes.
Pity the critters. Perhaps I should burn it.
Several mementos are teaching awards. The most
precious are those given by the students and the
one national level honor. I don’t know whether
any of it mattered. I do know that I’m always
embarrassed when I run into a middle-aged man or
woman who holds out a hand and says, “You
probably don’t remember me, but I had you
for a class when I was at university.” The
person always looks much older than I feel. I take
the proffered hand, shake it, say something like:
“I don’t – I hope it did you some
good.”
I consider the plants. Friends gifted me with plants
and planters in celebration of moving in. One plant
is long dead. I can’t really say when it died
… it may have happened suddenly, during one
of those interminable meetings where egos reign
and little is accomplished. Or perhaps it died a
slow death as it became clear that we would never
be a close knit group of associates working in support
of one another. In the end, we were simply people
moving past one another on our way to someplace
else.
Then there’s the philodendron. It started
out as a twisted sprig. As it grew, it continually
fell over and I had to tape it to a support stick.
I always thought of it as being about optimism,
about becoming. For some reason, I grew fond of
this hapless plant that lived on despite my neglect.
I’ll give it to someone who will take good
care of it.
There is one painting I will keep. Done by a Chinese
artist, it depicts a cliff interlaced with trees
and a waterfall. Whenever I was away from this office,
I was most often in the wilderness, walking, riding
a horse or paddling a canoe. It served as a reminder
that there are other places, other ways of being.
On the desk are two photos. One is of my wife and
two daughters, arms entwined. When I moved in, they
were close and oh so young, but the teen years and
drugs wreaked considerable damage. I imagine that
they will recover one day, will once again embrace
each other, but not one day soon, and possibly not
soon enough for me to know.
Another image is of my mother and father standing
near a large oak tree. My mother, an orphan just
married at age 20, smiles and looks towards my father,
some 10 years older than her. Her hand reaches out,
just touches his sleeve. A shy Dane, he looks away
from the camera, away from her.
I look out of the window, away from the near empty
office, toward the mountains.
In the reflection, I see my father’s son.
a long winter--
yet how quickly
the snow melts
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