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164 16 Shards of Freedom It has already been a year since I returned to Wooster from my New York sabbatical. Teaching commitments have prevailed, though I try to resurrect the writing now that the academic year has come to an end. On these summer days, I often waken with the sun. I think about writing, but I’m not yet ready. I retrieve the newspaper from the front porch; I pour my first mug of coffee. Before I sit down to the daily ritual of coffee and newspaper, I walk into the small front sunroom beside the porch. Looking out across the street at the trees and the still nearly empty college parking lot, I find the angle of the early light as it reaches over Kauke Hall and through the leafy branches of the large black walnut tree across the street. Most mornings I greet the sun by placing my crystal in its rays, deliberately splitting the light into multiple rainbows, radiant in their full spectra of colors. The summer ends—still no progress. I sigh deeply and return to the classroom, to my other work life in Kauke Hall, where I plunge into yet another academic year, watching the seasons go by. The year proceeds; the earth continues to turn. In winter, the sun often cannot penetrate the leaden clouds that shroud it. When it is visible, it rises late, stays low on the horizon, and angles through the side windows to the south for much of the day. After the winter solstice, it shifts almost indiscernibly toward the north, and by midsummer on clear days it again rises over the tower of Kauke Hall, shines through the walnut tree, and finds its way into the front windows, just past dawn. I continue to watch the sun, to marvel at the light, to split it into radiant colors by positioning the crystal in first one window and then another, finding even more locations that draw colors from the setting sun as well. I renew my sense of wonder at the crystal’s many facets, its heft and depth—my sense of wonder at the angle of S H A R D S OF F R E E D OM | 165 the sun and the complexity of light itself. I indulge in the secret pleasures of metaphor. But still I am slow to write. The story remains resistant; I grow tired of saying “I,” of trying to understand the rifts within me. Month gives way to month, season to season; time passes. We enter a new millennium: 2000. ONE MOR NING IN THE WINTER, I waken unusually early, even before the sun has risen, before I really need to be up in order to finish preparing for my morning class. The house seems strangely lit, and when I walk into the kitchen at the back of the house, I am greeted by a penetrating white light: a full moon hanging among the bare branches of the maple tree in back casts its eerie whiteness into a path across the floor. I recall Jane Eyre in her throes of agony after Rochester has shown her his mad wife in the attic: it is to a moon mother that she turns for advice. “My daughter, flee temptation,” the moon says. But I do not live in the nineteenth century; I do not so easily lock madness away in the attic, confined in someone else. Nor do I espouse a moral code that defines for me what counts as a temptation that one must flee. Let me then return to my first years in Wooster. I had no moon mother to direct me in that tumultuous time, and I still have no path toward certainty : the old models yield little guidance. But I need to keep groping for clarity. I T H I N K AG A I N of Adriane’s comment as she crawled onto my lap and patted my tear-streaked face, offering comfort: “Don’t worry, Mommy. I’ll keep the monsters away.” I know that I did rely on my daughters’ comfort, their reassurance. Already at age two and a half, Adriane had the capacity to love and protect, as did Kara at age six. But what if the monster is a version of oneself, the madness a simple extension of the ordinary? Who can provide protection then? I rarely considered myself monstrous during those early years when I worked hard to affirm my freedom, even...

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