“So all else having failed, they naturally formed a committee”. She finished reading the page and thumped the book down on the table. She stretched her arms high over her head and announced to her husband, ‘And that my dear, is the problem with most situations in this old world’. She was just warming up, and he knew it.
He glanced up at her from over the rim of his glasses and nodded. She sighed and sat back against the cushions, dropping her arms into her lap. She yawned and then began to talk. ‘Do you remember that school librarian from a few years back? The one who was so incredibly cranky all the time?’ He watched her from the edge of his newspaper. ‘Yes, what about her?’ Leaning forward with a conspiratorial look, her eyes gleaming, she said, ‘Well, I always suspected that what she really wanted was a library full of books and empty of children’. He put the paper down, took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead. ‘Well, who wouldn’t actually, truth be told? Some of your kids…?’ His voice trailed off, not wanting to dredge up ‘work talk’. She grinned, ‘No, no, you’re right in that case. Anyone would have been cranky. Permanently’. She looked at him and he smiled back, both of them quietly recalling older conversations with colleagues about failed urban education policies, the history of race in Rochester and the intractable Board of Education which drove everyone mad. But those were discussions for other times. Not today.
She continued, ‘But guess what I found out about her after she retired?’ He played along, listening in hopes that the conversation would eventually land somewhere and preferably quickly. He stretched out one leg, then the other. ‘What did you find out about her?’ She propped up an errant cushion. She waved her right arm to add emphasis as she spoke. ‘She had a degree in school committee structure!’ He was silent. ‘Don’t you see?’ She surged on, making her point. ‘She went to school to learn how to organize and lead school committees and somehow ended up working in the library. Absurd! A library! An elementary library contains books AND children and to be honest she did not really want to work with children. She wanted perfect book shelving and the power to be able to give directions to her committees about running schools. The children were a sorry secondary afterthought, attached to the school. There were no committees for her, just real live children!’
‘Ah’ he said. He shook his head and looked out the window. She ran her fingers through her hair, stood up and moved the ottoman away from the couch edge. She paused a brief moment before picking up the coffee mugs and empty pastry plates. The aroma of the orange chocolate brew lingered over the edges of the glassware, and she took a deep breath. ‘Lovely’ she exclaimed. The smell followed her as she headed into the kitchen. One pink linen napkin fell off the plate and onto the floor. She sighed, bending down to retrieve it and spoke again as she stood up. ‘I find it really funny’ she said.
‘What?’ he raised his voice because he had returned to his newspaper as she exited the room. ‘I said’ she began again, ‘It’s funny; not funny as in strange but funny as in humorous’. She turned toward the sink, shaking the napkin gently over the stainless steel. ‘I mean, the whole thing, the whole district…it’s what I just read about now. The response to deep abiding failure, is always the same. Form a committee. Imagine obtaining a degree in school committee structure? When did a committee ever really accomplish anything?’ She snorted in derision.
Her husband came into the kitchen. “You know what I think is really true?’ She turned to look at him. He approached her and as he opened his arms to embrace her, he said simply, ‘I think you think it’s funny, not because it is funny but because at a deeper level, you yourself are very sad. That’s what I think’. She stepped back slightly from him and looked at him intently. ‘Yes’ she said simply. She looked out the window. ‘I am sad. I feel the same way I do when it snows in the month of April. It’s long term betrayal, something which can’t be shaken’. She sighed. ‘It’s the same way I felt when I saw a classmate’s obituary. He was only 54 years old. I remembered he would not share his Green Hornet coloring book with me in kindergarten. That’s all I remembered. His photo moved me. He looked so old, so completely unrecognizable to me in that picture and that made me sad. Someone who is only 54 years old should still be recognizable’.
‘Yes’ he responded gently. ‘It’s the sort of sad I feel when I awaken and know that I missed hearing the early morning rain. It’s a sad shame to miss the rain’. Then, as if to reassure her, he said, ‘It’s as bad as forming a committee’.
690 Saint Paul 