Dear Lynn

First, let me reassure you that this is not another request for a letter. The last time I wrote you, to check in on you, my ulterior motive was to get another letter from you. I have been coasting off your letters for years and, though I have never actually read them, I know they have frequently made the difference in my acceptance to schools or my being hired. I have been told this on more than one occasion. But, no, I'm not asking for a letter.

Nor is this another attempt to see how you are doing. I know now that even when you did tell me how you were doing, you were often disguising the true extent of your pain or discomfort, putting up a brave face, and confronting the world on your own terms, as I've always known you to do. The only difference this time is that the world bit back, and the world now looks petty in comparison to your dignity and courage.

I know you would pretend to resist this exercise in sentiment, though it was never hard to see that you were really rather a soft touch. But for us, your students, you would often hide your smiles, tempering your passions into lesson plans, group activities, rhetorical devices. It took me a while to figure out that you were loving every minute of those workshops, those basement rooms full of enthusiastic but petrified graduate students who looked to you to show them the way. And you never failed us, even the ones like me who came into your orbit full of cynical self-congratulatory smugness, willing to teach anything as long as it helped cover tuition, but not really invested in teaching.

That attitude of mine lasted about a week, as I recall. By then, you had won me over. You had won all of us over, and our highest goal was then to earn your trust and respect and love. In fact, you won me over so completely that I stayed, years past my sell date, so that I could stay near you, watch you coach last year's top students into assistant directors, watch your eyes light up when you talked about the new grad students, hear you vehemently defend our interests and offices to the higher echelons of the department or the university.

And then, as you became a friend and colleague, instead of my teacher (though you will always be my teacher), I stayed for the pig parties, for the glint of amusement in your eye as I presented another provocative invitation to the new grad students, for the feelings of contentment and safety I felt in your backyard, roasting another swine and watching the celebratory antics of those who knew what the new grad students would be in for during the next few months.

We all loved you, and we all claimed, amongst ourselves, to have your special approval, like clumsy bishops seeking the hand of the Pope. I know I was your favorite because you gave me Star Trek toys as surprise gifts, because we got tattooed on the same day, because you kept allowing me to reapply for the AD position. And you knew you were my favorite because I let you do things that convinced the others that they were your favorites, when I knew all along that it was me, that it could only be me. You made us all feel like that.

And because we shared an academically illicit love for things like the Trek universe, I know you will appreciate here an allusion to the episode where Picard is reunited with his beloved professor from Starfleet Academy. The professor has information about an exciting archeological find, something that might change the way the peoples of the galaxy think about their origins and common ancestors. But Picard has other obligations, and he turns down his professor. As much as it pains him to do so, he now has larger responsibilities, and cannot relinquish his command to follow his professor on what ends up becoming that professor's final journey.

I am no Picard. Professionally speaking, I am hardly even a Riker. But I can't follow you anymore, much as I might like to learn what you may be learning now. Riker was afraid of the Big Chair, and there was no bigger chair than the one behind your desk, which you piloted as gracefully and commandingly as if it were a ship. I would follow you anywhere, but I would never dare sit in that chair.

There are many moments, but here is one: On the day I received notification of my funding for PhD studies, you were the first person I told. I wasn't sure if I had actually been accepted, but as soon as I showed you the notice, you leaped from that chair and yelled. Then you grabbed me and we ran to Christine's office and the three of us stood together in the hallway and you laughed and cheered. I remember that as one of the happiest days of my life, not necessarily because I had any idea of what I was getting into, but because I had made you happy and proud and I had paid you back, in some fashion, for the hours and months and years you had invested in a know-it-all grad student who wanted nothing to do with teaching.

This year marks my tenth of doing just that. I would not be doing what I do now without you. I would not be the same person without you. I would not have come to meet many of my most beloved friends without you. You have shaped my life, and the lives of dozens, maybe hundreds, of others, and we are spread out across the country, seeking your approval.

I recently told someone that I never walked into a class without thinking of you, but that's not entirely true. Like you, I hide things. But I never walk out of a class without thinking of you and how you might have done it better or, rather, shown me how to do it better. And you showed me, and Patrick, and Lynne, and Robin, and all of us.

More important than anything you taught me was that you trusted me. You threw a load at me to see what I could do with it, never expressing the slightest doubt that I would handle it, and handle it brilliantly. I don't know, really, how I handled it, but you never made me feel like I couldn't or was unworthy of bearing it.

And now you have thrown us another load, an unbearable load, with the same confidence and trust and hidden joy that you had in us from the beginning. And, again, we can only hope to be worthy of it. Worthy of you and all the time you invested in us.

Thank you, Lynn. Thank you and goodbye. I love you.

Billy Preston, 1946-2006

About a Cat

"Bisco," supposedly, is a Spanish term meaning "cross-eyed," which the kitten my brother brought home one day certainly was. His early life was one of daily torment administered by our older cat, who saw Bisco as an intruder. Bisco found a hiding place in the torn upholstery beneath our family sofa, and we would often have to fish him out of the couch's interior.

Though this was perhaps not an ideal beginning in a new home, Bisco eventually came to outlive the older cat. In fact, he outlived a great many things and preceeded many more components of my life, including college and marriage. Other than family members, there are few people I have stayed close to for as long as Bisco has been around. We certainly came to know him as well, or better than, any human: his yowls, the curious way his eyes would transform before he went on one of his manic attacks--biting feet and running across furniture, his insistence on being escorted to his food dish before eating.

In later years, he was shuffled around a bit as our family scattered apart. For a time, he was under my "care" at the same time I was going to school and working full-time. It was during this period that he lost most of his remaining teeth. But he survived this indignity, as well as the stress of changing living conditions every six months or so with my mother as she struggled to find a home. In the end, he belonged to her more than anyone, but my brother and I freely claimed him as our own whenever we saw him. His personality, his attitude, his expressions were as recognizable to us as any human's.

Though often surly, he was well-loved. I often compared his personality traits to my own. In an e-mail to some friends, I once wrote:

". . .my cat is so deranged that I'm sure he would bite me (albeit with a toothless mouth) if I ever tried to put anything on him. My cat is old and crazy and doesn't have any time for anyone who doesn't have an open can of food in hand. My cat doesn't even bother to chase birds or mice anymore. He just immobilizes them with a look of complete contempt and disdain, as if to say, 'It's not worth my time to deal with you, you douchebag bird.' My cat is a thankless self-absorbed bastard, and I think I would put him in a home if we weren't so much alike."

Bisco was a constant source of amusement and an occasional source of unconditional, mutual love. He was more reliable company than most people I know, and shared my uneasiness with strangers.

He was put down yesterday after 22 years. 22 years! Human/animal age comparisons are usually spotty, but even this credible-looking chart only plots cat age up to 19 years (86 years to you). I've known that cat longer than pretty much anyone I hang with now.

I feel about pets (dogs and cats) the way some people feel about children (usually their own): it seems inexplicable to me that one would want to live without them. In a way, it also seems selfish. I've had pets since I was a child, and Bisco was my last. Life without them, him, seems needlessly empty and sad, like an unplayed instrument.

I once read a great story by Connie Willis titled "The Last of the Winnebagos." It's been a while since I read it, so the plot details are spotty in my memory, but I vividly remember one of the background details of the story. In the near-future world in which the story takes place, dogs have become extinct due to a virus. Most of the characters in the story carry around photos of dogs and cats they had as children, before the virus struck. Near the end of the story, two of the characters exchange a few lines that go without explanation, but the context of the conversation is immediately clear. The first line of the conversation is, "I miss them."

I miss all of my pets: the dog that jumped from the back of a camper onto a busy highway, the dog who was taken to the shelter because we couldn't take him where we were going, the cat that vanished one day and never returned, the cat that left white fur all over my records, the dog that was killed in front of my house, the cat that bit my foot and yowled outside the door and who survived any number of transitions that would have destroyed a lesser animal. Maybe you know what I'm talking about. Maybe you miss them, too.

Go 'side, Bisco. Go play.