New life leaves legacy behind
My mother is scared she will
become her mother.
That woman, my grandmother,
died when my mother was 6. My
mother was sent to a birthday party on
the day of the funeral. My mother has
six years of memories, which she
shared with me like bedtime stories.
My mother’s mother baking
cakes, playing tennis, smoking
long cigarettes. My mother’s
mother, a perfect figure with
colorized pink cheeks and a stiff,
starched apron. A face lifted from
the yellowed pages of 40-year-old
Life magazines, posing and
smiling with a tub of cure-all-ills
margarine. Forever young and
pretty. Perfect. Dead.
All her stories end with the word
“cancer.” And for as long as I can
remember, my mother has been sure
that her story, too, will end with that
word.
My mother’s mother died when
she was 39. My mother never thought
she would greet 40. And when she
did, she cried in confusion.
All those years spent preparing
for a tearful goodbye from a hospital
bedside, where her children would
be allowed to stand.
All those moments of truth to
ensure we’d never feel we missed
our chance to tell her how we felt, to
make our peace.
My mother is scared that my
sister and I will become her.
As long as I can remember:
“Rainbow isn’t going to get married,
are you honey?” And I would shake
my head, no, no, not me, Mom, I’m
too smart for that.
My sister never learned. Thus, my
mother worried over every crush and
prophesied all the bad decisions and
wrong turns and tearful nights alone.
Men can protect themselves, she
would say, but I worry about my girls.
When I brought home a perfectly
nice young man with perfectly nice
intentions, my mother’s eyes filled
with sadness. She looked at me with
my face plus 19 years and said, or
did I just hear it, “Why didn’t you
Rainbow Rowell
“I am scared that I will
become my mother. That
I will become my
mother's mother. Iam
scared that there is no
become, that there is
only is and am."
learn from my mistakes?”
Her mistakes. I know them well.
She’s told them like parables. How
she found herself walking along paths
where a woman shouldn’t be at night,
by herself, so far from home.
And the moral of this story is
this: that I should succeed where she
has failed, that I should be strong
where she was weak.
I am scared that I will become
my mother. That I will become my
mother’s mother. I am scared that
there is no become, that there is only
is and am.
Because I blink away tears from
my mother’s eyes, and I scream with
her mouth. I wear her figure and
answer the phone with her voice.
Because I stand in the kitchen, and
my brother says, “Hey, Mom,” and
we share a confused moment over
the sink.
Because my grandmother peers
from a picture in a worn photo
album, a war bride watching me
with eyes like Anne Frank’s.
Because I feel her breath clotting
my breasts and stamping me with a
„ . <?3 *
too-soon expiration date.
I watch for them in me. My
grandmother’s death, my mother’s
life — I wait for them to conquer
mine. My life.
Like my own mother waiting for
the cancer that she’s sure will come, I
wait for her mistakes to stumble me.
When I turned 19,1 stood in my
dormitory room and stared at our face
in the mirror. I was amazed and
confused and, above all, relieved that
I had somehow missed die wrong turn
I’d been watching for. I’m not
pregnant, I realized, and I’m not
alone. I’m a college freshman, here on
scholarship, and I’m still me.
So far.
And when I turned 22,1 mar
veled again. That I hadn’t married
the wrong man, that I didn’t hold my
second child. That my life was still
mine. A college junior, still on
scholarship.
In two weeks, I will receive a
college degree, something these two
women never did. Surely, I’ve come
far enough. Surely, it’s too late to
get caught in their loops, to be
snagged by their lives.
Surely, the wrong turns now, the
tragedies and crushing realities will
be my own.
Rainbow doesn’t want kids, do
you honey? This world is no place
for children, she would say, there’s
so much pain.
And I would shake my head, no,
no—but now, I don’t know. I think
someday I would like a son. Or
daughter.
I would like to share with them
everything I have and know.
Everything I am. And I am me. And
I am mother and my mother’s
mother, just as I am my father and
his parents.
I would like to share that legacy
with them, those unborn clean
slates, without damning them to it.
At least, I would like to try.
Rowell is a senior news-editorial, adver
tising and English major and the Daily
Nebraskan managing editor.
Birthday a time to assess J
I am 31 today. That is, today is
my birthday. I’m a Sagittarius.
Sometime today I’ll stop over at
one bar or another and get my free
beer. I’ll call the astrology hotline and
get my forecast for the coming year,
forgetting it entirely within minutes.
I’ll start the list which, battered,
marked-through and greatly revised,
will become my New Year’s
Resolutions by the end of the month.
And tonight when I get home I’ll
find a message blinking on my
phone — my mother and father
singing happy birthday, my mother
missing me.
I may watch TV.
I’ll read, possibly scribble in a
notebook, and fall asleep a year older.
Turning 30 was a milestone of
some kind I suppose, and maybe I
distrust milestones: signs calmly
stating “You Are Here” with an
arrow pointing to a tiny, tiny dot.
But I recognize that something in
me has changed: I regret that I am not
farther along on my life’s path by
now. Friends my age are teachers,
professionals, small business owners.
Two men I went to high school with
are physicians in practice.
And I? What have I done so far
with my life?
Though I am not the oldest
undergraduate at UNL, I’m in the
club. And as much as I enjoy
working at the DN, I have to feel the
pond gets a little smaller every year.
So if I have to justify the way I’ve
spent my life thus far, let me enumer
ate my negative accomplishments:
I haven’t made a bad marriage. I
have yet to bring unwanted children
into the world.
By doing nothing I have spared
the world a bad novel or two,
rescued hundreds of students from
mediocre instruction and aborted
one more middle manager in the
womb of commerce.
I have not sold my brain for my
breakfast.
And my refusal to do so has,
however imperceptibly, gummed the
works of the great, blunt juggernaut
Mark Baldridge
“So, what do I do next?
Where do I go from
here?”
that is America.
I am not particularly proud of
this record of inachievement but
there it is — my best excuse for
being alive.
Until now.
Now I feel new urge — a desire
to accomplish something, to put my
hand to the plow. It’s probably the
ticking of my own biological clock.
I know it is.
I’m “enjoying” a burst of creative
energy, the strength of my 30s. It
will never come again and I have
nothing to channel it into more
significant than this—the opinion
page of the Daily Nebraskan.
To me that seems just plain
wasteful.
And temporary; I won’t be
running this page much longer.
So, what do I do next? Where do
I go from here?
I need to get some thinking done.
I feel like I might have something
to say, a voice to add to the great
dialogue of humankind, whispering to
itself in the dark end of one millen
nium and the dawning of the next.
I suspect I’m on the verge of
being able to shape the ideas on
which to base the rest of my career.
My career?
And what career is that?
Ah, there’s the rub. Because I
didn’t start my career in time, the
time comes to do the work I should
be doing and there’s no call for me
to do it.
I’m stuck in a different groove
than my peers. I run along a
different evolutionary track; neither
fish nor fowl.
And it appalls me that no one
told me in my youth what I risked by
slipping so far out of sync.
When I thought it was all about
money and making a living I made
my life decisions. I’d do it again.
But I had no idea what was at
stake. That it was really about the
arc of a life — that I risked barter
ing my intellectual birthright for 10
years of slack.
I reassure myself with the idea
that my experiences have made me
stronger — given me a depth I
would not have had without them,
but I don’t really believe it. I’d have
had “experiences” one way or
another — some of them much
deeper than what’s available to
those, like myself, who have slipped
so easily along the surface of life.
And so I face the fact that if my
20s are going to be of any use to me,
it will have been in their squandering.
Perhaps there is something to be
learned from senseless waste, after all.
Maybe I value things differently.
Maybe it is only as you flush
something valuable down the toilet
that you realize its worth.
And if that’s so, maybe I still have
a chance to speak to those young men
in their 20s —* the slackers.
Listen, I’m not going to say don’t
do it. I’m not going to say “get a
real job.”
Heck, it was good enough for me.
What I am saying is, watch
carefully as you fludi your 20s away.
Know what it is you will be missing at
31. Not youth, not energy, but a slew
of possible futures—gone.
Are you listening?
I tell you... kids today.
Baldridge Is a senior English major and
the Dally Nebraskan Opinion page editor.
guest
Mary G. McGarvey
Old code of conduct
hurts NU’s integrity
On Dec. 5 the UNL Faculty
Women’s Caucus will ask the
Academic Senate to support
several changes to the current
procedures for dealing with
violations of the Student Code of
Conduct.
The genesis of this proposal
was, of course, the recent
controversy surrounding
Lawrence Phillips.
As the Phillips case developed
it became painfully obvious that
UNL has no official policy for
dealing with students involved in
violent criminal behavior.
The current code of conduct
and disciplinary procedures are
very specific in regard to on
campus violations of university
rules. On the other hand, when a
student is involved in off-campus
criminal behavior, the vice
chancellor for student affairs and
the judicial officer may or may
not decide the offense is within
the university’s jurisdiction, they
may or may not review the case,
and they may or may not impose
sanctions.
Confidentiality rules ensure
that, in most cases, there is no
record of how, why or even
whether a particular case was
considered. It is small wonder
that, in the Phillips case, some
believe that a gifted athlete was
given special consideration and
others believe that he was unfairlj
singled out. Some believe that a
crime of violence against women
was trivialized while others
believe the sanctions were,
politically motivated.
We have proposed that
students who commit violent
crimes should lose the privilege
of representing the university in
intercollegiate events or any other
official capacity, those facing
formal charges should be sus
pended from participation
pending resolution of the charges
and these cases should be heard
by the University Judicial Board,
a committee of faculty and
student peers.
The proposal does represent a
major change in UNL administra
tive procedures, but the underly
ing principles are not new and
certainly not radical.
First, the University of
Nebraska has a responsibility to
condemn violent behavior — not
to condone, promote or excuse it.
Second, all students represent
ing UNL have a special obliga
tion to uphold the image and
integrity of the university.
Finally, the integrity of the
process requires a uniform code
administered by an impartial
review board of faculty and
students.
All organizations have the
right and responsibility to
maintain and protect their
reputation. Some have expressed
fears that our proposal violates
the “presumption of innocence.”
The presumption of innocence,
however, only applies to criminal
proceedings, not to civil or
administrative processes.
For exariipte, th^ciirTent
Athletic Department Manual 1
states: “By suspending the
student-athlete, the department
and the university are in no way
prejudging the situation; rather
such action is taken in order to
protect the intercollegiate
athletics program and, specifi
cally, the student-athlete’s team
from negative media attention.”
We believe the action should
be taken, not to avoid “negative
media attention,” but to protect
the reputation and integrity of the
university.
Perhaps the biggest confusion
surrounding our proposal is the
idea that by suspending students
from their official roles as
university representatives we are
singling out some students for
“punishment” and letting others
> off scot-free.
Suspension in these cases is
not intended as “punishment” for
an offense. The university is
simply protecting its reputation.
Those found guilty will be
punished by the criminal justice
system.
The principle that students
representing UNL have a special
obligation is well established. For
example, the current UNL
Student Athlete Handbook states
“when you participate in intercol
legiate athletics competition, you
are representing the university
and all the people who support
us. As an intercollegiate athletics
participant, you will be in the
public eye, and your personal
conduct should reflect favorably
upon yourself, your team and the
university.”
Our proposal simply extends
this principle to all students that
represent UNL in intercollegiate
r events, not just athletes. Not
surprisingly, some student
representatives in ASUN are
uncomfortable with extending this
principle.
University policies on criminal
convictions should be adminis
tered uniformly across student
organizations and not be confused
with infractions of team rules.
Consider for example the
football team’s point system as
reported in the DN. This system
is: 1 -missing a class, 2-missing a
icam meeting, j-missmga
practice, 4-conviction of a
misdemeanor, and 5-conviction of
a felony. Losing five points
results in suspension from the
team. Ordinarily, two five point
violations result in dismissal.
One cannot help doing some
arithmetic. Is a misdemeanor plus
one missed class equal to a
felony? Are two missed practices
worse than a felony?
The answer, of course, is that
criminal convictions do not
belong on the same list as
infractions of team rules. Do
other organizations have similar
rules? Under the current system,
who knows?
Our proposal contains one
significant change in current
procedures. We place administra
tive oversight in the hands of the
judicial board, whereas the
current policy gives complete
discretion to coaches and admin
istrators.
Our proposal has been
criticized as being too specific,
too vague and unworkable. These
arguments are simply rationales
for doing nothing.
The status quo puts UNL in
the position of .continuing to
condone andexcuse violent
criminal behavior.
Six years ago, the faculty at
the University of Oklahoma
endorsed a policy similar to but
more stringent than our proposal.
What do we at UNL fear?
McGarvey is chair of the Facnlty
Women’s Caacus aad an associate pro
fessor of economics.
*