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“Me make a mess.” These were the words my two-year-old son, Geo¤rey, said as he stood over the toilet with a feather duster in one hand and a tendollar bottle of Bausch & Lomb ReNu® Multi-Purpose Solution in the other on one bright, and otherwise cheery, Saturday in April. Three completely separate thoughts ran through my head. One, “That’s an absolutely brilliant example of alliteration. He’s obviously got the heart of a poet.” Two, “That’s just a ten-ounce bottle; why the hell is there so much water on the floor?” And three, “You’re not the only one, kid.” The first thought is a mixture of wishful thinking and literary analysis of which only a PhD candidate in English can conceive. A sort of “Of course my child is a poet. How could he not be!” jumbled up with the uncontrollable urge to view every incident of the day as a text to be analyzed. After long consideration (it’s taken me six years to come to grips with this), I don’t believe I was witnessing a fledgling Whitman in the earliest stages of his career (however, I do believe the soul of an artist resides in the inner recesses of my son’s chest). It’s more likely that I was witnessing the confession of a two-year-old who has been caught in the act. The second thought, and possibly most important question raised by this incident, will be answered a little later. As for the third thought, there were times during my grad school stretch that I believed that I had truly made a mess of my life. However, it was generally one of my children, and incidents like Geo¤rey and the toilet bowl, that brought clarity to the moment. Just over a year earlier, I had been a married junior high English teacher who was completing his MA degree. I had a home, a cat, and three wonderful children: Ericka, Katie, and the aforementioned Geo¤rey. And then something happened. In the spring semester of 2002 (as anyone in academia knows, it’s easiest to remember one’s life in terms of semesters) I Balancing Diapers and a Doctorate The Adventures of a Single Dad in Grad School char les ban e 196 03 Part 3_Manu 7/1/2010 5:30 PM Page 196 accepted an o¤er from Louisiana State University to enter the PhD program in English. Two weeks later, I was served with divorce papers from my soon-to-be ex-wife. Granted, it wasn’t a complete shock; we had been separated for a few months, but I honestly believed we were in the “we can work it out” phase of the relationship. I sat on the floor of my seventies-style (not retro, mind you; the décor simply had not been updated for thirty years) studio apartment, contemplating what to do with my life. A PhD was the dream, but I was a father of three. If I chose to let the o¤er lapse, I could continue teaching eighth-grade English or possibly land a job at the local community college, teaching five sections of composition. If I followed through with the PhD, I had to leave my children behind. They were not coming with me. So, I did what I generally did (and still do) when life presented me with a diªcult situation: I called my dad. My father was the first in the family to go to college. He had a BSE in math and science and master’s degrees in math, counseling, and administration . He had spent over thirty years of his life in the public school system. He understood the complexities of family and school life and did always seem to know the best solution to the problem. After a lengthy discussion, we decided that I had to pursue the degree and that we would just have to work out some sort of system for being with the kids on some sort of regular basis. Eventually, this regular basis would turn out to be every other weekend and school breaks. Geo¤rey, because he was not yet in school, could visit a little more often and stay for longer periods. And so, this is how I found myself in a 645-square-foot graduate student apartment on Nicholson Street in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The apartment was a three-bedroom, one-bath unit with a linen-closet...

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