Gratefulness

White Azaleas

I had a wonderful professor in college who was also the Dean of English and she played a pivotal role in my decision to major in English literature. On the first day of our Medieval English class she read us a poem in old English. The spelling and pronunciation of the words were totally foreign to me but I was mesmerized by her melodic voice. Her wealth of knowledge was like a magnet drawing me to take as many of her classes as possible.

One day, she told me to see her after class. I didn't give it much thought as she liked to see students individually about their essays. I was so surprised when she said she wanted to recommend me for a summer exchange program to study Shakespeare at Cambridge University. I was dumb struck and very flattered. The decision to go was made then and there.

We actually lived on the campus, in Trinity college and our meals were served by students volunteering for the summer. The mess hall was exactly like Hogwart's. We had classes in the morning and after lunch. By four o' clock, tea would be served in the courtyard. After that we were free to roam about. I was drawn to the cluster of book shops selling old books and maps. I loved the musty air and the dust that trailed the book from the moment you took it off the shelf to the final puff swirling in the afternoon light when you opened the creaking pages.

The program included excursions to Stratford to see the place where the bard had lived and to London to watch a play by the Royal Shakespeare Company. We saw the comedy "Much Ado about Nothing". The highlight though was attending class every day where quite a few of us had a crush on our professor. Mind you, our class was supposed to be an intensive study of Romeo and Juliet. Our professor was a born story teller and would venture off with stories in the middle of discussing a thematic scheme of the play. We implored him to read us something in old English every day and he accepted with a broad grin.

This was many years ago, but to this day, I continue to feel blessed and grateful for having the Dean as my mentor. She was one harsh grader and she would always say to us, "critique your work as if I was grading it". Her training was military but appreciated in afterthought. I have been contributing articles to a tourism website recently. One prerequisite is an excellent command of the English language. As I write, a familiar voice from the distant past materialize to guide me through, "Is this a run on sentence, is this redundant, is this metaphor balanced or is this pun intended?"

Her parting words when I left school was a quote from Emerson. I finally knew what it meant.
~Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.