debts

When L wrote his letter of complaint against Dr. S the department head stayed out of it. L's complaint was sent around the school's admin and students. Students allied with him. Admin & faculty all remained silent. Months later someone in a dean's office asked him about filing a complaint with the school's form & process. But L had already left the program and moved on to other pursuits.

Today, a good six months later, the department head asks me for a few minutes to talk. She says it will be helpful for her. I'm anticipating that it's something to do with L. He still has the letter up on a website somewhere. But surely she wouldn't try to get to him through me. That's so... gauche. (Do people still say that?) So then I thought maybe I'd done or said something about the Center that she wanted to reign in. But I'm very careful of what I say, to whom, and how, since L dropped out. For all we've spent on this place one of us had better come out of it with a degree. I decided to just listen to what she'd say, whatever she might say about me or L or Dr. S or my current studies or any of it.

A little while after lunch, she stopped by the bitty student life office where I work. I turned down the music and offered her a seat. (Funny to think of the students that drop by here to vent about faculty, admin, & programs. Now to have the opposite, just odd, maybe useful in some way?) She asked if we could switch off the overhead fluorescent light for the smaller softer lamp. She suffers with migraines. Then, with tears, told me that it had been hard for her when all that stuff was going on with L. And she was just on the outside of it. She didn't want me to feel like I had to say anything but she wanted to tell me that she acknowledged that it must be hard for me to stick it out here.

At one point in her offering I started to laugh a little (speaking of gauche). The cynical honey-you-don't-know-the-half-of-it laugh. The angry words I'm biting back since you told me that you wanted to talk today. The angry names that sputter out when others gossip about you to me while they sit in the same chair you're in now.

Was she making amends? Whose benefit was today's confession for? Do I tell L? or maybe this is one of the things that is just mine. Whatever her reasons, and as much as I want to believe in her I still want to hold her suspect, there is something about showing up at the door of the one you owe a debt, a debt that you can't repay because it is that large and still growing, and saying,

Wait a second. She didn't own her or the school's IOUs in this scenario. She just said that she sees me & one of my struggles here. There's no resolution here. Maybe it's a recognition along the way. And a (serendipitous) nudge to me, to take stock of who I owe, and to do for them as was not done for L or for me here, and be grateful for the forgiveness of my offenses.

I thanked the dept head for her thoughts and for taking the time. Offered her a napkin (we never have tissue), it wasn't soft but it was clean. On her way out she said, "I hope that you are finding what you want and need here." I smiled, kind of, and said, "Oh, I'm patching it together." Mostly I'm growing a stubborn streak that flexes like a tough girl against the too tight Sunday best of grace under pressure.