Geliebtes Madchen;
It really isn’t cricket/
That you should be made sicket/
By the tiny little “bug”/
That causes flu./
For it just is not the ticket/
And here’s hopin that you lick it/
Before it has the chance/
To get the best of you.
Actually, when I saw the vacant seat alongside Sylvia in the Ent 50 class and Sylvia told me only that you hadn’t come, my heart sank for I thought you might be seriously ill.
I explained the exam (or discussed it) after handing out the paper and then I passed around a number of things to be seen – some photographs (enlarged) to show the scales on butterfly and moth wings, pictures of carpenter ants and to show how different true ants are from termites, and then photos of our three types of termites in the Santa Clara Valley; also live termites collected partly by a student and partly by me to show that my prophecy that the first sunshine after the first good full rain would bring them out:
“a prophet who can show signs in the heavens has some chance of being believed”
And the termites never fail me!
Then when I glanced in “your” direction and saw a lowered head of black hair looking at one of the photos, I thought you had quietly slipped in and I felt relieved. However, “your” seat was so placed that “you” were largely hidden, and then – when “you” left so abruptly when the bell rant without so much as an acknowledgement of my query in the outline of the “epic” I submitted (for the very good reason that you hadn’t been there at all and Sylvia had taken your papers for you), I was sure there must really have been something badly wrong – otherwise “you” wouldn’t have left in such haste – and I was dismal again.
After the usual after-class questions – and a stop at the [?] storeroom to check with Betty Walker about the daily [page 2] mid-afternoon snack she brings me and which I hadn’t been able to find because the refrigerator where she puts the lunch (snack) had been moved out of the prep room adjoining Room 112, I got down to my office and called your number to get the score, only to get no response, so I felt worse, thinking maybe I’d missed contact for the whole week end. I always do notice you when you come into class or if you’re already there when I arrive, but today the timing for everything seemed to be off. As a matter of fact, if I followed any impulses and weren’t inhibited by the usual social taboos, I’d probably look at you the whole hour and direct my lecture to you. But, of course I don’t want to embarrass you nor draw undue attention to either of us, so I make as good a pretense of indifference as I can. And since you were my student assistant – and for a short while I could easily explain the brief extra notice often taken of you – at the close of class. But you might as well realize – as perhaps you already do – you’re pretty discerning – you still are the most compelling magnet I know in my present “circle” of those I especially love or esteem.
An hour after my first attempt at the phone – as I thought you may have gone shopping, no matter how badly you felt – I was rewarded by your voice and something of its usual warmth, even though you told me you were ill. I was overjoyed, because I felt as one of our English poets (Browning?) did when he wrote “God’s in his heaven/all’s right with the world”. Mixed with my joy at making contact and knowing that you’d take things easy enough to recover (probably) over the weekend, was a real pain at the pit of my stomach for it hurts me, really, when I hear you are ill. Here’s hoping, however, that by the time you read this, you will be your “old” self again (an ever young bit of springtime and fresh mountain air) and all set for your exam in European Civ. on Monday morning. My fingers are crossed and I fervently wish you the utmost of luck – and I hope that “learning by the cards“ will begin to pay off in this exam. I’ll be eager to hear how it impresses you and later how you really come out on it. Any improvement will show that [page 3] you’ve begun to move back up the ladder again.
Incidentally, on Thurs PM I went over to the Spartan Bookstore and bought me four paperbacks – Two of Havelock E. Ellis’s leading books on the psychology of sex, etc. – I’d read only short snatches of his writings before. I also got a book of 5 detailed “stories” (case histories in detail) by an American psychiatrist on types with which he feels Americans should be acquainted. And I got one on “gestalt psychology” that I’ve long needed to read about in detail.
On the way back I found Amadou Bande sitting on a bench looking through a folder he’d just purchased for his first examination in cultural anthropology that he’s taken by now – but I guess I told you about this. However, Betty Walker saw us and this PM commented on how interesting he looked. She also asked me to bring him with me next time I have dinner with her. So there’s one more contact that will help overcome his shyness and broaden his chance to learn English. Perhaps you’ll go with me to Betty’s some time. I’m sure you’d like her. She is one of the really open, friendly, thinking persons among our younger faculty.
And here it is – I’ve written five pages already (writing to you is among the easiest things I do – I hope you don’t mind) when I had intended starting with the little verse on the first page and then offering you a few of my entomological limericks to give you an extra laugh and help you to get well. Now, I’ll have to start the limericks on this sheet and finish them on a “next one” for lack of room here.
Scotch pegleg Mac Hilis (machilis, a jumping relative of the silverfish)
One day while out hikin/
O’er a moss-covered stone/
Did nibble some lichen (mac’s a vegetarian)/
“tis much better than hay”/
he was then heard to say/
for I’m very much likin’ this lichen.
--
There’s a gay young red legg’d grasshopper/
With an appetite man, that’s a whopper./
He eats night and day,/
[page 4] He’s funny that way,/
But so were his mom and popper.
--
A big strong long legg’d beetle/
Through the trunk of a thick oak did wheedle./
When asked how he did it,/
He smiled as he said it,/
“each day I bit off just a leetle”.
--
Pious-eyed is it the lovely green mantis/
But she don’t wear no shirt/
Nor no pantis./
And when time comes to sup,/
She’ll gobble anything up (she’s carnivorous)/
She’ll eat even her uncles/
And antis./
Well more, perhaps, anon. Like the famous early English diarist, the time has come for me to write “and so to bed”. In closing, however, let me make just one more remark. Your “acting” ability – as when you put on a show of feeling good, when actually you were feeling lousy – I’m well aware of, especially now, but when your voice sounds so genuine and sincere to me – when you’re talking to me I plead for the justification for believing, as I do, that it is true. You know how much you mean to me. And having found such a daughter- companion-equal – for you are all of those to me, don’t even let me wake up and discover that any part of it isn’t so. As I’ve said, I’ll declare again – I want to help you realize the best of all your dreams and ambitions in any way I can – and any contribution I make will have absolutely no strings attached, so long as you repay the effort at all my effort alone will have been worth all the gamble there is to it. But if you ever do decide to break my heart, please do it all at once so it will be devastating! Then I’ll be so demoralized that I’ll be able to jump off the bay bridge without ever having the chance to discern what hit me. Don’t let me die by inches in slow discovery. I don’t anticipate anything like this at all of course, you are too bright a light too great a joy to me – but maybe the contrast will make this reality more clear. Anyway, love and sweet dreams as always. Carl.
Dr. Carl Duncan and Patricia Whiting Collection (SJSU)
