That I am trapped in this particular irrelevancy is never more apparent to me than when I am home. Paralyzed by the neurotic lassitude engendered by meeting one's past at every turn, around every corner, inside every cupboard, I go aimlessly from room to room. I decide to meet it head-on and clean out a drawer, and I spread the contents on the bed. A bathing suit I wore the summer I was seventeen. A letter of rejection from The Nation, an aerial photograph of the site for a shopping center my father did not build in 1954. Three teacups hand-painted with cabbage roses and signed "E.M.," my grandmother's initials. There is no final solution for letters of rejection from The Nation and teacups hand-painted in 1900. Nor is there any answer to snapshots of one's grandfather as a young man on skis, surveying around Donner Pass in the year 1910. I smooth out the snapshot and look into his face, and do and do not see my own. I close the drawer, and have another cup of coffee with my mother. We get along very well, veterans of guerrilla war we never understood.
     Days pass. I see no one. I come to dread my husband's evening call, not only because he is full of news of what by now seems to me our remote life in Los Angeles, people he was seen, letters which require attention, but because he asks what I have been doing, suggests uneasily that I get out, drive to San Francisco or Berkeley. Instead I drive across the river to a family graveyard. It has been vandalized since my last visit and the monuments are broken, overturned in the dry grass. Because I once saw a rattlesnake in the grass I stay in the car and listen to a country-and-Western station. Later I drive with my father to a ranch he was in the foothills. The man who runs his cattle on it asks us to the roundup, a week from Sunday, and although I know that I will be in Los Angeles I say, in the oblique way my family talks, that I will come. Once home I mention the broken monuments in the graveyard. My mother shrugs.
     I go to visit my great-aunts. A few of them think now that I am my cousin, or their daughter who died young. We recall an anecdote about a relative last seen in 1948, and they ask if I still like living in New York City. I have lived in Los Angeles for three years, but I say that I do. The baby is offered a horehound drop, and I am slipped a dollar bill "to buy a treat." Questions trail off, answers are abandoned, the baby plays with the dust motes in a shaft of afternoon sun.
     It is time for the baby's birthday party: a white cake, strawberry-marshmallow ice cream, a bottle of champagne saved from another party. In the evening, after she has gone to sleep, I kneel beside the crib and touch her face, where it is pressed against the slats, with mine. She is an open and trusting child, unprepared for and unaccustomed to the ambushes of family life, and perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life. I would like to give her more. I would like to promise her that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother's teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differently now and I can promise her nothing like that. I give her a xylophone and a sundress from Madeira, and promise to tell her a funny story.


In high school, I took remedial English class – maybe it wasn’t remedial , exactly , but without my knowing it , I had signed up for some kind of English class for juvenile delinquents .
Well m is wasn’t supposed to be a class for juvenile delinquents , but somehow everybody but me knew that was who it was for ; maybe it was listed in the course catalog as being for those students in the commercial program , the general program , whatever it was called to distinguish it from the academic precollege preparation program .
But anyway , on the first day I figured out who this course was directed at : The student were surly and wore leather jackets , and the girls all had shag hairdos as opposed to straight and ironed , which was how the “nice” girls wore their hair .
Knowing me, I must have signed up for that class because it indicated that no work would be involved . And I was prepared for the worst , because somehow , having moved and switched schools so many times , I had been stuck in juvenile delinquent classes before .
The juvenile delinquent classes generally meant angry teachers and angry students who never read the books assigned and never spoke in class , which was no wonder because the teacher was generally contemptuous and sneering .
But this class ended up being different ; the main thing was that the teacher , Mr. Paul Steele , didn’t seem to know he was teaching students who weren’t supposed to be able to learn . He assigned the books , --by Sherwood Anderson , by Hemmingway , by Melville – and somehow by the date everyone had read them and was willing to talk about them .
Mr. Steele    was     a    little    distracted, a little    dreamy,    and    most    excellent. It    was    one of the few times up until that age I had a teacher    who spoke to me –and the rest    of    the class-with the honesty    of one adult    talking to others, without    pretense or condescension; there was no    wrong or right, just discussion.
    In college, I    had another    great    course-in    geology,a subject    for    which I had no    interest. Once again, I had    signed up for something    that looked    easy,a “gut” course    to fulfill    the    requirement.
But this guy- I believe his name    was    professor    sand, an    apt    name    for    a    geology    teacher –was    so    excited    and    in    love    with    rocks, with    everything    pertaining    to    the    formation    of    the    earth,that    to this    day    rocks    and    everything    pertaining    to    formation    of    the    earth    still    get    me    excited .


Oolitic    limestone,    feldspar, gypsum, iron    pyrite,    Manhattan    schist—the    names    were    like    descriptions    of    food ,almost    edible,    and    as    around    that    time    I    was    starting    to    become    interested    in    writing, the    enthusiasm    that    the    teacher    had    for    the    subject    was    transferred    to    me    into    an    enthusiasm    for    language.
And the names of the different periods-the Jurassic, the Pre-Cambrian-even though I can’t remember much about them, the words still hold mystery and richness.
At the end of the semester, there was a field trip up to the Catskills, to put into practice some of the techniques discussed in class. We were taken to a fossil bed of trilobities where, due to the particular condition of the sedimentary bed, only the trilobite bodies had been preserved over the millennia.
After a few minutes of listening to the professor’s explanation, I bent over and picked up a piece of rock with a small lump sticking out of it and took it over to him.
To me, all I had found was a rock with lump; but Professor Sand was totally amazed-I was the only one ever to find a fossilized trilobite completed with head.
Really, at that point there was little to stop me from becoming a geologist except for the fact that I knew I could never do anything involving numbers, weights or measurements, which I suspected would at some point have some bearing on the subject.
I remember another teacher, in graduate school, Francine du Plessix Gray, who taught a course called religion and Literature-another subject in which I had no interest. But the way she spoke was so beautiful, in an accent slightly French-tinged. And because she was so interested in her topic, the students became interested, and the seminars were alive and full of argument.
Of course, I had many other fine teachers along the way, but the ones who stand out in my mind were those who were most enthusiastic about what they were teaching.
Many subjects in which I initially thought I was interested were totally destroyed for me by the teacher’s dry, aloof, pompous, disengaged way of speaking.
But when the teacher was as excited about the topic-as if he or she was still a little kid, rushing in from the yard to tell a story-that was when the subject became alive for me.
U12
is cluttered with=is filled untidily with
is closed=becomes expressionless
to connect=be close to each other
hit upon=thought of accidentally
the romanticized version=the kind of parting characterized by emotional words and behavior
to establish her own identity=become independent as an individual
U13
at the top of their lungs=very loudly indeed
invariably=always and without any variation
graphically driven home to me=vividly understood by me
blurted out=suddenly said it out loud
by and large=as is true in most cases
developed=designed and gradually made applicable
U15
ahead=in advance
rocked with=was moving slowly and regularly in harmony with
taking his name in vain=using his name with disrespect/profaning his name
holding everything up so long=delaying the whole affair for a long time
broke into=started suddenly
quieted down=became quiet
U16
Timing elaborate meals around football games=Arranging time for well-prepared meals according to football game schedules
Thought him as=Regarded him as
Ushered in a succession of bittersweet memories=Started a series of experiences, both happy and unhappy ones, that occurred one after another
Put a lump in your throat and tears in your eyes=Aroused your strong emotion and made you cry
Gave way to=Were gradually replaced by
more of=To a greater degree