This anecdote belongs in the collection Nectar of the Ordinary. The exchange took place in August of 2006 between my college professor and me before he passed away a few days later. I hope it serves as a mediator between the infinite universal queries about love, however you define it, and your journey.
Thanks,
~a.q.s.
Celestial Sap: “Bud on Love”
How many loves in a lifetime?
I first thought of Bud’s words after a trip to the bookstore Barnes and Noble right around Valentines’ Day in February 2010. As soon as I entered, there was the following display of books.
I believe it speaks for itself. I did not mind the rows of poetry books, “love coupons” to spice your marriage, and compilation of quotes to shower one’s beloved. Sometimes another’s words say it better than what we are capable of articulating of our own feelings. I borrow too.
What bothered me was the plethora of books serving as guides on what is and isn’t love: let someone (who is a better authority than you) tell you what love is. I brushed aside my irritation upon the next thought which was that, maybe, some people do need to be told or at least be reminded what love “looks” like, “feels” like, “acts” like etc. given the sea of dysfunctional relationships. Right? Right. On the drive back to my parents’ farm I told my mother how was one to know which “guide” to follow. Every one spoke from their experiences–be it a holistic healer or the likes of Dr. Phil’s self-help. My own parents could not fathom ever loving anyone other than one another. Ever. One love. For life. One of my younger brothers believed, if you could love again then it was never really love with anyone before.
A few weeks thereafter I unearthed two yellow legal-ruled pages from an assemblage of loose leaf papers where I had jotted down the last exchange between my college professor and I before he passed away in 2006. His loss remains evergreen in my world so I only did a quick emotionless scan of what I had scrambled on the two pages. My handwriting a turbo hastiness heavy with tears. I folded the two pages back up but his message continued to rattle inside of me. Then a few weeks later I took the pages out again and held them close to me and cried. I had new questions since 2006 and there were no answers from him. Miserable at the absurdity: the pages held my and not his handwriting. Not that I had ever forgotten that last conversation nor could I ever leave behind any discussion that I had had with him. There was no need to have written any of it down but I was fretful with apprehension that day. I recalled that day…
**********************************************************************
My first love was Mr. Darcy. I knew it was love because prior to that I had never written a poem, let alone, a love poem. Okay so that is not entirely true as I do recall writing two sentence stanzas since I was eight: rain, rain, go away, I don’t want you to stay. There is proof in The Vault. I also knew it was love because I was afraid to say I loved Mr. Darcy and not because he was a fictional character from Jane Austen’s world renowned novel Pride and Prejudice. I do not recall the poem in its entirety and I cannot seem to find it either, not even in The Vault. However, what I recall clearly is that I learned how to use the dictionary and discovered her keeper, the thesaurus, for the first time with a purpose. I did not believe that my seventh grade vocabulary was sufficient for an ode to a man of Mr. Darcy’s caliber. Little did I know that two years later I would cry my eyes out for betraying him given I had developed an even more profound love for…drumroll…none other than the infamous Great Gatsby. Eventually I would outgrow the “fictional” character and in college fall in love all over again with F. Scott Fitzgerald till death did us part but he was already dead so it was okay when I fell in love again…this time with…Gabriel Garcia Marquez…until Navarre Scott Momaday…until I was left utterly confounded with “love” altogether: was it ever love if you could love again and again.
That’s what I am thinking about as I stare at shelves of books that belong to my college professor who is dying. Soon. Any day. It’s a blazing hot day in early August 2006 in Lawrence, Kansas and only three or four days ago I had returned to New York City from my first ever stay in South Africa. While I was waiting for my luggage at JFK I listened to three messages spanning three weeks from my professor; the last voice message was from a “nurse” on his behalf. As I hailed a cab outside the airport I was already booking another flight out to Kansas City because my literature mentor, friend, former college professor was dying. Bernard Hirsch or better known as Bud Hirsch or just Bud. I don’t ever recall calling him by either of those names in the entire time I had known him, at least not to him, only Professor Hirsch when mentioning him to others.
During the cab ride to my apartment I learned that a few weeks after I had departed for Africa in May of 2006 he was diagnosed with brain cancer and was informed that he would be lucky if he made it past June. He wanted to see me when I returned, not knowing if it was in July or August, so he had decided, he would tell me later, he “would last till past June, damnit.”
“What are you thinking about?” he asks faintly.
“Oh I didn’t know you were awake. Nothing. How are you feeling?”
“You are not meditating or dead. You can’t be thinking about nothing,” he chides and motions for me to come sit next to him.
I walk over from the shelves to the middle of the living room that is now his bedroom too. In the adjacent room, the kitchen, through the hallway, I can see the nurse sitting on the small dining table going through a copy of that day’s newspaper placed on top of piles of documents, mail, and other papers. The sunlight streaming in from the kitchen window makes her hair look more blond than it really is.
“I was kind of wondering if you–you know–like don’t die. I don’t want you to die,” my mouth trembled but my eyes were steady. I particularly recall this because I didn’t want to cry in front of him and feel sorry for him, myself, and the loss to humanity by his unexpected, untimely departure from this earth. He was barely 60.
“Great. Thanks. Would you like any fries with that?” he smiled his crooked smile.
I tried to laugh but it was a weak attempt. I was never a huge fan of his sense of humor anyway, until his quick wit would check mate my self-deprecation when it came to my writing and my frustrated attempts at understanding all that I just didn’t quite get yet. Then I would fill the room with uncontainable laughter.
I sit next to him; realizing the space on this “bed” where he is situated is not quite enough to place myself adjacent to him, I drag a chair to the awkward looking couch turned bed. Ever the gentleman he wants to make sure I am comfortable.
“How was your flight?”
I didn’t know which one he was talking about. I had just flown into Kansas City and then rented a car to drive to Lawrence that day. I realized I was still jet lagged and hadn’t even unpacked in New York City from my trip overseas.
“It was good.” Both flights–from Jo’burg to New York and then New York to Kansas City–had been without incident.
“There are some earrings of my wife you can have if you would like or that rug hanging on the wall that you are so fond of.” His late wife. Untimely death too. I would be making up facts if I stated how long prior to 2006. At least seven years or more. There are lots of details I wished I had paid better attention to regarding his past. They didn’t have any children of their own. It was her second marriage and she was the love of his life. His brother and the brother’s children lived in Louisiana, I think. He was originally from Illinois and had a mother who lived there still. I never got the earrings or the rug given whoever was in charge of his estate is unreachable despite my many attempts. When it came to him I knew his feelings and not many facts.
I got up to get some water, as if the walk to the kitchen would delay the avalanche of tears.
“I don’t know how to be here,” I finally said to him.
“That’s silly. You are already here.”
“I know. I just don’t know what to talk about. I have questions. But they are not real questions. I just want to gather answers you know. For the future. For things that I will probably one day have questions about and where will I find your cynical answers that make perfect sense.”
And the first tear fell. Boom.
I cried and wiped my tears but the more I tried to hold back the more impossible a feat it seemed. My fingers, defective windshield wipers, continued to rub my cheeks as soon a new stream of tears would roll.
“There is no need to cry. If you can’t accept change you can’t accept to live life, you wild colt you. And you have gotta live a lot of life still.”
I giggled and nodded looking around for tissue paper to blow my nose. He had always said I was a wild mustang but still a colt, mostly in reference to my writing. The first time he had called me that it was not to be taken as a compliment. A colt has to be careful, if the colt doesn’t learn to harness himself someone else will.
“Oh good God. I don’t know how I am going to do this without you,” I exhaled. This would be reckoning life’s curve balls.
“You already have all that you need to know and what you don’t keep looking,” he said and he tried to sit up.
I noticed he was getting sleepy. Panic engulfed me. I was leaving tomorrow and he would die soon thereafter. I grabbed a yellow legal-ruled pad and dug out a pen from my satchel.
Ready to take notes as if in his class for the first time.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Going to take notes.”
“Of what? My breathing?”
“No. Of questions in the future.”
“Yes, I forgot, you would already know what you would want to know in the future.”
I wrote that down.
“I just want to write down every thing you are saying. Even if it doesn’t make sense to you or to me.”
“Funny girl.”
I wrote that down. Except I couldn’t see what I had written through my tears.
“Tell me something,” I said.
“Tell you what,” he said barely audible; he was drowsy from the medications. The rowdy sun was setting, casting a silken, vibrant orange glow through the room.
The nurse came and checked something. She motioned for me to come to the kitchen. I followed.
“He will be needing to rest soon, you know. He doesn’t want you to see him like this for this long.” I see. I didn’t see. Why could I not stay here all night? Why did I have to stay in a hotel which his friend who was managing the estate had reserved for me? Why did he not want me here? I could just sleep on the sofa in the other room?
“I know. I will leave soon.”
I returned, feigning composure.
“I am hungry,” I announced as I sat next to him.
He told me he had read in the newspaper that this new Mexican restaurant had opened and I should check it out.
“Come see me tomorrow before you head back to the airport okay?”
“Of course.”
“Wake me up if I am asleep.”
“Of course.”
“Bud?”
He looked more awake, probably because my saying his first name sounded foreign even to him.
“Yes?”
“How come some people have only one love in their life?”
“I don’t know, Annie. People are people. I can’t give you any absolutes. If you asked me if the water is wet–I will more than likely answer, ‘probably.’ I don’t like absolutes and neither do you and you know that. So why are you asking a question that can’t be answered absolutely.”
We were back in the time when I would stay after his lecture trying to understand a theme, a character, a word, an idea.
“I don’t know,” I said. As I tried to stealthily write what he had just said.
“I will never give you absolutes.”
“Yeah, I know. Your courses weren’t challenging for nothing after all!” I replied.
“Some people have 80 loves in a lifetime, others have zero. Who knows how many loves a person is supposed to have? There are no absolutes when it comes to life and definitely none when it comes to love.”
I wrote it down.
“Security is settling for what you think you need. Often you find out that what you thought you needed you really don’t need at all.”
I wrote it down.
“I don’t need absolutes like some do, dear. But that is just me. It’s good for me. It works for me. I don’t know if it can or does help anyone else, including you.”
I blew my nose. I was all of a sudden ravenous for Mexican food.
“I will be back tomorrow. I am going to go get something to eat and go sleep.”
“That is the Navajo Yeii Spirit,” he pointed to the figure on the tapestry that I had always loved. He was not coherent. I touched the rug and felt the Ye’ii person.
I gathered my few belongings, looked for the rental car keys.
“Here is an absolute for you: If you have to ask is it love then it isn’t.”
That one absolute of his left all other questions regarding love partial to discovery, if you so dared to find out for yourself.
******************************************************************
If you would like to read more about Prof. Hirsch, you can read here. I recently discovered this new space while riding my cybermobile; it is simple and awesome. It is not my primary space to upload or post anything other than old stuff, hence I call it The Vault: Repository that doesn’t “seek refuge in some glorified ideal of the ‘literary life.’”
Related posts:
- Nigerian Cab Driver’s Message This true account belongs in the collection Nectar of the Ordinary....
- The End This true story belongs in the collection Nectar of the Ordinary. ...
- “how are you?”: Maya Angelou on “Telling Truth” In a recent conversation I said, “I allow whatever needs to...
every time i read something you write, i change for the better. how much better can it get?! lol
this is lovely girl. you were very lucky to have such a beautiful teacher to grace your path…and vice versa.
i might have to link to this blog and share it with the world…let me know if that’s ok lol.
@tish – Tish. Don’t see it as “better”…we are all trying to be more functional, that’s all!
I don’t know what “link this blog” means but that is so kind of you to share.
I am inspired by you as well. If we are not inspired or inspiring, what ARE we doing here…
Much gratitude,
~a.
…
professor hirsch and I met when I was 18 years old. still in high school. he agreed to meet with me over the phone–as I was eager to begin planning my college career. I was looking for change. immense change and I was certain ‘college’ was where I would find it.
I remember sitting in his office. he wore a white collared shirt and soft brown pants. I remember thinking he was small but man did he have fierce eyes.
he listened to me chatter on about my plans– to take this course and that course. He nodded frequently–slicing my words occasionally with wit–a recognizable wit, yet an unattainable wit to combat. So I just kept going…talking of plans, plans, plans.
He finally said,
listen–
allow yourself to be average in some courses and to excel in others. don’t push yourself to graduate before getting to know who you are. enjoy your days–you won’t get them back.
…
love.
dear.
friend.
always.
angel
Annie, such a beautiful post and statement on love and loss. I never had a Professor Hirsch who inspired me, but he helped mold you, and I have you. Thank you, Bud.
I’m quite certain your heart will draw so many open and loving hearts to your world. You will indeed have more than one in your lifetime.
Wow, Annie, wow!
An honest and rare account of love, being and friendship.
Thank you.
Sarah