The First Year Without Sarah

Yesterday was another fog for me, but I did wake up briefly from my Covid Nap to check in on whether Max was making any progress obtaining Paxlovid for himself. For some reason, actually I have no earthly idea why, we are referring to Paxlovid as Paslovitch, as if the anti-viral drug were a Soviet-era emigree or chess master or minor composer.

I immediately sought out Paslovitch when I tested positive for Covid-19, but Max is much more skeptical of his credentials. He views Paslovitch as arriviste and a bit of a bounder, perhaps even moving in anarchist circles. I told Max that in New York City, (according to my brother), Paslovitch is automatically dispatched to your home by bicycle messenger, you don’t even have to go out to pick him up. Max was far from impressed by Paslovitch’s Manhattan social standing.

Paslovitch is just one of many imaginary characters who have lived in or passed through our house over the years. There’s Mr. Dumas, my Ninth Grade math teacher, who lives permanently in the basement. He was part of Sarah’s bedtime/medication routine for years. He was hard-of-hearing (let’s just call it deaf), and he was a throwback to my pre-compulsive era when I tuned out a lot in school. To Sarah’s delight, Mr. Dumas would badger me about assignments not done, and tests not made up. “Ms. B–! Ms B~~!” Max would impersonate, in a voice somewhere between Smeagol and Miss Piggy. “I have not received your Algebra homework! Where is your Algebra homework?” “I’m not turning in my homework from Ninth Grade, Mr. Dumas! Go away!” Sarah loved this routine of me foiling the crusty math teacher, and his skulking back to the basement to wait one more day for my undone homework.

What finally made me ‘get it together’ academically? My first year of college/university was, frankly, a bit of a shit show, personally and emotionally. I had not gotten very good grades in high school and was lucky I had been accepted to one good college. I was very young, newly 17, since it was the tail end of an era in which kids were pushed to succeed at the earliest age possible instead of being given ‘the gift of time’ the way they are now, which makes so much sense.

At any rate the fall I left for Earlham, my parents had sold our family house, and then told us they were separating about 2 weeks before I left for school and each parent moved into his or her own small apartment. I don’t remember feeling much of anything at all although now I feel tremendous pain for myself, and I think of how carefully I would have prepared Sarah for any kind of similar change in her life.

That first year at school I had a series of health issues and a bad depression. I had come to school thinking I wanted to study Japanese language and culture but I decided that wasn’t for me. I started a Human Development course that was very rigourous; we each had to do a case study of an actual young child, keeping a log of the child’s behavior and analyzing it via the various models we were learning.

I remember my case subject was a three year-old boy, very bright and charming, who had an infant brother. I would observe him sometimes and also babysit him sometimes too. He had a preference for a little storybook to be read to him called “Busby” or something like that about a city bus and its adventures, sort of a Thomas the Tank Engine precursor. There was a particular page where Busby spoke about the newer model of city bus, saying “I can do anything those new buses do; I’m just as good as they are.” The little boy would often spend a moment lingering on this page when I read it. In the analysis section of my log, I wrote something like “Perhaps [subject] is reflecting on potential feelings of displacement or jealousy about arrival of infant brother.” The professor wrote “Good” in the margin and underlined it several times.

I don’t mean to suggest this one moment of feedback was a wake-up call for me and I just put my nose to the grindstone, but I do remember my life outlook changing around that time, as far as academics were concerned. I really started pushing myself and seeing how far I could stretch, and it was enjoyable.