8:29 a.m. - 2005-09-01
Change
I may have written about this before, but I am having a tiny, tiny brain this week. Spouse is entering his 15th year of teaching at his university this year. We had just been married when he started, and I remember a group of faculty and their spouses who were very kind to us, invited us to dinner, and watched out for spouse the first year. The younger faculty, not so much.
Most of that group of older faculty retired this summer - apparently there was some kind of golden handshake they all took advantage of, and I feel that void, even though I don't often see them. This spring, spouse was involved in hiring a new faculty member for a new class in video games design (kind of cool.) And now that this person has been hired, we have invited him and his fiancee for dinner in a few weeks and invited a few other faculty members.
This is significant for me in two ways: First, for me, it signals a shift in the dynamic for spouse on campus - he has now become the senior faculty watching out for the younger faculty, and that is kind of cool; second - the new faculty's fiancee is a vegetarian - not that there is anything wrong with that, but it puts a severe crimp in what I was going to make for dinner since the day they asked to come to dinner is a hell day for me at work, so I wanted to make something I could do ahead of time. I am clearly not well-versed in vegetarian recipes that will satisfy 10 people. I am flummoxed. Also, I must clean, clean, clean our house which is full of paper again. But that, as they say, is small potatoes.
I am so overwhelmed by the news from New Orleans. I cannot fathom what I would do if I were in that situation. So we say prayers and make donations. It has made me think about how we define ourselves if we have no home.
But mostly I think about those people who have become separated from those they love. How will they find each other?
a hui hou marama
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