Peeking in Other People's Windows

Responsibility is not a static thing.

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Royce Hall, UCLA, Photo by little dragon on Unsplash

I had the dream again last night. In it, I am searching for professor Dickey. He of the fun ties and distracting love of Shakespeare. I am always in a warren of a building, wooden stairs, thick wooden desks holding reading lamps hooded in green glass, dented and scraped hardwood floors, walls covered in bookshelves, dust hiding in dark corners. I know the number of his office, but cannot seem to get to the right wing, the right hallway. Sometimes the dream cuts to me roaming outside student housing, peering in uncurtained windows, sampling lives that aren't mine. I wonder in my sleep state, if I opened the door and walked in, Could I be a different person?

In my waking memory, professor Dickey is the only teacher who seemed moved and concerned at the news of my mother. Perhaps he is the only one to whom I told the truth that spring morning of my junior year in 1996.

My mother had gone to Sedona for a long Easter weekend with a friend. She was hoping to find some rest, some guidance on what to do, where she had gone wrong, if she could change trajectories at this late date. Of course, she hadn't said any of that to me, but my mother had one foot out the door of her life for as long as I could remember. As if peace were something she would stumble upon out in the desert, or be handed in the cupped hands of a stranger with a clear voice, not something she'd have to mold out of her own clipped edges and salted regrets.

I told professor Dickey I'd been getting only her answering machine over the weekend, and this morning, when I called her office, my mother hadn't shown up to work.

Standing in front of his desk, I tried to filter out the other students coming in, the rustle of shoes on hard linoleum floors, the clunk and tumble of the rollerblades on the cute boy who skated everywhere-and told me one morning that the sex he'd had the night before was Kodachrome, not black and white-the perfume and crushing giggles of the women-girls, the seductive stink of the men-boys.

A light sweat had begun between my thighs, under my tan corduroy mini skirt, and I had forgotten to shake baby powder into my favorite shoes, the stacked-heel, oxblood red penny loafers. I could feel my bare feet sticking to their leather insoles and I explained to my professor, as I switched my weight from one foot to the other, trying to find some air, that as the only child of a single mother, I was the one who would go look for her. Responsibility is not a static thing, when it calls, there is no set of rules to follow, just the slim idea that maybe this time, if we show up, it might change us.

When it was all over, after I went to Sedona and flew in a helicopter, after I yelled at a sheriff and talked to a news station, after they finally found my mother, alive and mostly well, after I flew back with her and told her on the plane to stop interrupting my studying now that we were okay because I had midterms coming up, I went back to school, took my exams and began my next class with professor Dickey.

I was learning, with Shakespeare, he had to be come at sideways. The trick was to slip into the language, not translate it, to float through the words, not grab on to them as if they were a life ring and the play an ocean with no shore. Professor Dickey taught me how to love something I didn't fully understand, at age 22. He taught me to trust the story and to listen for what was in between the lines.

This Easter, exactly 30 years later, my mother and I talked in detail, for the first time since she was rescued, about that week. She didn't know I was the one who figured out she was missing, the one who decided to start a search. I didn't know she and her friend had gotten stuck in the mud, the flash blizzard obscuring their view, and if they had not been stuck, would have driven off the cliff, the invisible road washed out from an earlier storm a half mile ahead.

How easy it is to think we know where we are going, only to find we are peeking in other people's windows, wondering how we got where we are, how they got where they are, not recognizing we are all always in the same place, looking for peace, hoping for love, wanting only to see and be seen in return.

The year I graduated, the spring after we found my mother, I asked professor Dickey for a letter of recommendation for grad school applications. In the letter, which I have kept and read once every decade or so, he said I had grace. At 22 I had no idea who I was or how to be human with anything other than numbness and a misunderstood idea that the thing was to keep moving forward, regardless of intention or direction. But someone kind thought I had grace and that stuck with me.

I came across the letter again recently, while looking for my passport–it feels important to have a working passport these days-and I found the letter comforting, buoyant. If I had grace then, maybe I still have grace now.

And if I still have it, what to do with it? What does Grace require of me? If I ask her, it sounds something like this: Do not think too hard about what you have or have not done. Or what you think you should do next. Listen in the quiet spaces between breaths, notice the wavering stems of sagey wildflowers in the late afternoon wind, wonder at the heartbreakingly beautiful pattern on the underside shell of the turtle you saved yesterday. These are the things that will guide you back to your heart, the only place you ever need to be.

Maybe, if I can believe professor Dickey and believe I have always had all the grace I need, I can stop searching and sit in the wonder of already being found.

🌈Did you know you can also show your appreciation for my writing by becoming a paid subscriber?

May is my birthday month! I turn 52 and have a goal of 52 new paid subscribers by my bday, May 30. So, to sweeten the deal and get us there, I’m offering 20% off!

Pay my month = only $1

➡️Pay for the year = only $32

If you’ve ever just loved a post of mine (or more!) think about giving me the best birthday present ever and subscribing for a year.

💥For everyone who becomes a paid subscriber, I will work your name into a post, and tag your Substack publication if you have one.

🌟If you prefer not to be mentioned, leave me a note when you subscribe.🌟

I am also always so excited to see a comment come in. To know that something I said resonated enough to elicit a response. It’s hard to explain what a huge gift that is. ✨So if you feel moved to say anything, please do. I will always respond.✨

With so much love,

xo

j

PS: Forgive me for the stock photo of Royce Hall. I did go to UCLA and professor Dickey still teaches there. But I am in California right now, about 1,700 miles away from my photos. When I get home, I’ll look for a photo of me at graduation.

PPS: For now, here is the sweet turtle I rescued who made her way into this piece.

This is her (I don’t know honestly) in the bag I had in my car when another woman and I found her crossing the road, far, far from her pond behind my house. I picked her up gently by the shell and she pulled all her legs and head in and then tipped over when I put her in the bag. I figured she’d rather be on her back than be picked up again. But I did have to take a picture of the breathtaking beauty of her shell.