Body coiled, muscles tensed. That’s me, backed out of the garage, phone in hand, taking final stock before the hour drive south to Kalamazoo. I shoot a good morning text to my husband, halfway around the world, and, I hope, still in bed. 

I merge onto US 131, pushing 80. For a two- or three-mile stretch, I get caught up in the excitement of barrelling through town before the buildings fade and flatten—squashed by an almighty foot from middling high rise apartments and offices into super centers and suburban outlets. This never was a big city, but after Buenos Aires, it feels like no city. It’s oddly empty, eerie. People gathered at inconvenient intervals around parking lots and poorly-timed stop lights like there’s nowhere else to be. 

I leave the not city behind, and the land stretches out like tired legs on an ottoman. Out here, there’s time to think. There’s time to enjoy my untouched, too-hot coffee. The sun shines and I take joy in the freshly green trees.

It all comes down to an awful lot of hurry to talk about some very old texts. But that’s America. An insistent drum whose beating makes you forget the pounding of your pulse, the rhythm of your breath, and cadence of the seasons. Am I being too critical? Am I projecting my own frustrations onto an entire nation? As I park, I see a conference attendee running to his next session, tie tailing like a cartoon.

I, too, am late. But I settle for a stiff walk to the chapel basement, followed by tentative head-ducking and sign-searching to make sure I’m headed to my panel, not communion. Mercifully, I’m not alone. Nothing makes quicker friends than two strangers late for the same panel. 

My shoes are cheerfully green and astonishingly white. I bought them years ago, but they were a casualty of carrying my home in two checked bags already far beyond 50-pound limits. I’m so used to my worn-out tennis shoes, dust-colored and with a hole in the top. Or my imperturbably brown hiking boots that have seen more classrooms than hiking trails. The soles of my barely-worn sneakers squeak in quiet, happy chirps as I wend my way through the crowd, standing, seated, and sprawled on the floor, gathered like believers at the feet of the apostles. 

The mass is assembled in the name of pleasure in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And you can take pleasure any way you want. 

There are chuckles and knowing, nodding smiles. One woman doesn’t stop smiling for the entire hour and thirty minutes (minus, maybe, the ten I missed). I wonder at her, but I feel that same joy—pure, undiluted as the panelists forgo formal papers and instead do what we all crave: converse. Their humor, openness, and use of two- and three-syllable words invites us in. A long-haired man stands in the corner. He looks far too young to be in this room of greying hair and hunching backs. But he’s got his hand up with a question and a grin on his face. 

The drumming picks up again. I lost it for a blissful, contended moment, in the open windows and the cool spring breeze, the buoyant comments delivered in lilting tones by a gay panelist. Another panelist, my age, has been teaching Gawain for going on a decade while I bounce between degree programs, packing myself sandwiches to save on lunch money and asking permission to drive my mother’s car along the way. 

I don’t dwell on the drumming. I let it pass. Before you know it, the circle of fellowship has broken. Saran-wrapped sandwich in my bag, I swim against the mass heading toward lunch in the student center. A second mercy today: a cubbied table, long enough for four on a side, but vacant.  

Then four letters fall from the sky. It sets me on edge. A preamble to anything and, with only my imagination to fill in the blanks, everything.

Babe

Babe. That’s it. Babe. 

Babe … I love you. 

Babe … we need to talk. 

Babe … I made it to my mom’s house. 

Babe … I hope you have a good day at the conference. 

Babe?

The bus crashed and I fell. A third mercy: i’m ok. But the panic still surges through my veins. A guard dog, hearing a rustle in the night, can’t be easily coaxed to sleep again. There are children, babies, hurt. A driver, a culprit, who disappeared. A bus gone to deliver passengers to a hospital. 

Huddled over my devices, I don’t think twice as I text my family for prayers and, alone in this small corner of the 60th Annual International Conference on Medieval Studies, weep.

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