What stays the same

The fashions and length of skirts, pants, hats, coats with which we clothe our bodies change: decollates are in; decollates are sinful. Bustles are in (to be sat almost upon); bustles are ridiculous. Behavior remains. Elizabeth Barrett took to her sick bed to avoid Papa Barrett’s oppression, as did Florence Nightingale when faced with the endless calling and calling cards that made up a proper Victorian woman’s social life. From their sick couches, they birthed health reform, poetry, and eventually Penini Browning. Sickness can be fruitful.

This is a lesson that our students learn by osmosis, since they haven’t cracked open the textbooks. Gregor has “flu like symptoms,” which is why he was not able to attend class, though he has not yet morphed into a dung beetle. Sally’s grandfather died last week, which was why she couldn’t read the 4-page story (a cliff hanger which evoked intense class discussion) that we are covering today.

Sickness can have positive benefits and it is part of being human. We harbor our sick days, and exult in mental health holidays. We pay health premiums so we can be sick without becoming bankrupt. Through those illnesses, though, we need to work at learning, to work at our chosen work. We need to bring forth something besides excuses: perhaps assistance to those Crimean sufferers, perhaps exquisite joy in Italy that gave Mr. B and us the Sonnets. Between the feigned or real sickness and their results, we need something or someone to evoke what we could be. Perhaps the joy of health and learning isn’t enough; perhaps, if he does not come to the sick bed, we need to go in search of being well and Robert Browning.