my old, nerdy and quirky power couple

I think maybe I under estimated how busy I would be these days leading up to a PhD defense... it is still quite far off, but I find that I blink and days have gone by.

But recently something has made me take a step back. A professor in my department passed away. It was very sudden, and the hole left in the wake of her passing is larger than I would have expected. I did not know her well, but I know her husband.

I had always thought she was a little out there... very strange. But then again, we fellow Californians can always sense in each other that strangeness that comes from The Golden State roots we never lose, no matter where we end up settling down. I know I told a joke at her expense from time to time... mostly about how, when I became an old professor, I hoped that I would retain a sense of fashion that seemed to escape many faculty in the department, her included. Sometimes about how she never seemed to be able to keep it straight whether or not she knew me. Some days she would, others she wouldn't. Of course, they were jokes never meant in cruelty... and yet, now I feel bad. Guilt that that is mostly what I spoke about when I did talk about her, because there was a lot more to her than just her surface oddities that were easy to poke fun at.

But then again, I guess the things I admired were not her individually. As I said, I did not know her well as a person, but as the spouse of another faculty member in our department, I knew her as part of a couple I looked up to.

Off the top of my head, there are at least four married couples in the faculty of our department. Let me just say, the outward appearance of married faculty relationships can be incredibly odd. And maybe some of them ARE just plain odd. But a lot of times, I think it is the married couple doing their best to stay EXTREMELY professional in the work place to the point where it seems they are indifferent to spending time with their spouse. I can understand the importance of a professional facade when you are a big-wig professor managing grants and graduate students and a position at a research university... but being recently married to a purely academic creature myself, I am looking into my future with my husband at a life of academics as well. And so, the married faculty in my department are people that I look critically at, trying to gauge what my life may end up being like.

Let me just say, I hoped it would be similar to the relationship I saw between the late professor and her husband. At first glance, one would say their relationship was odd too. In summers I would see the two of them gardening around the department building, cutting back ivy growing up the walls and tidying up the planter boxes in front. When I would work late at night on the weekends, I'd see the doors to their offices (right next to each other of course) propped open, they would be in their respective offices working on whatever... they were apart, but together in their nearness. My understanding is that a lot of the research they did over the years was also collaborative. In fact, my office being the next door down from their offices and their graduate student offices, I am still unclear after 5 years, which graduate student worked for who. When they were the host for an invited speaker in the department, they worked feverishly together to give them an over the top, warm welcome. They even got the marching band and cheerleaders to come welcome a good friend and fellow professor who came to give a seminar at our department once. They were the only couple in the department I'd see regularly having lunch together, talking together in hallways, in general, outwardly showing that they enjoyed each others company.

Let me just say... I hope my husband and I can have such a marriage, years down the line when we are old tenured professors.

They didn't let departmental pressures suppress their preference to "hang out" together... and I have seen it happen. One of the married couples in our department were hired in my first year. In their first months at the department, I'd see them sit next to each other in seminars, go to lunch together... things one would expect a married couple to do. As the months rolled on, they no longer sat together and I would often see them eat lunch separately with other faculty members. But years into their marriage and into their jobs as tenured professors, my beacons of hope were still dutifully polite, but sweet with each other, day in and day out, even at work. And so, what might seem odd at first glance, I came to realize was genuine love and devotion to each other. They loved spending every moment together, they loved their jobs, they loved working together...

And so I guess I feel her loss more in the sense of, the loss of my power couple. I feel her loss in the pain I know her husband must be feeling. I know there is not much I can do but hope that he has people near him to comfort him in such a hard time. And to her memory, I will say, that I hope I am lucky enough to have such a close and wonderful marriage with my husband as I saw between the two of them.