Dr. Dragon

Dear Dr. Dragon:

You are cognizant of my reluctance to take complimentary or encouraging remarks seriously, especially if they emanate from individuals who have something to gain from the rhetorical gambit in question. I suspect that this is, in part, the result of a somewhat unorthodox, patchwork Irish Catholic upbringing, and in part the consequence of having read one too many complimentary messages from grade grubbers of questionable sincerity.

Leaving my petty neuroses aside, I owe you a gigantic debt of gratitude. When you learned that I was unwell, and that I was not entirely sure what was wrong or why, you offered consolation, practical advice fortified by your extensive medical knowledge and nursing expertise and routine infusions of mischievous, misanthropic wit. You had nothing to gain from your efforts; indeed, we were not especially well acquainted, as I had only crossed paths with you in the flesh on a handful of occasions. You have a madly busy and complex life of your own, as a mother, a spouse, a professor and a scholar. Despite the fact that many are always clamoring for your attention and sage counsel, you devoted significant time and energy to keeping my nerdy spirits up and my hypochondriacal anxiety at bay. Had it not been for your kindness, I could well have succumbed to despair many times.

When my MS diagnosis was confirmed, you continued to offer me invaluable advice and insight that a lay person could not have supplied. You read drafts of the first few poems and stories I decided to make public, chiefly because I did not know how much time I had left to write, with sensitivity and wisdom, and you made trenchant comments and corrections that could only have resulted from painstaking review, which as we both know, costs time. You joined me in gently mocking the vice and folly of the other humans and in celebrating the small triumphs and tragedies we both experience in the classroom.

You have also revealed yourself to possess what I can only characterize as a narrator’s mind (you have scoffed at my attempts to encourage you to write fiction or poetry of your own, but I am undaunted). What I mean is that you have an unusual and admirable capacity to take a seemingly mundane menagerie of phenomena and organize them into an amusing, arresting or even agonizing story. To cite only two examples of this mind at work, recall your battle with a bat that invaded your cabin one night, and the evening when, with a sort of lunatic courage and philanthropic altruism (both leitmotifs of the narrative of your life insofar as I am sufficiently acquainted with its nuances to identify those ideas or images that reoccur within it at regular intervals) you plucked a lost, Indigenous man from the roadside and transported him safely home. Sure, he appeared to be a few enchiladas short of a fiesta, an enigmatic figure who was equal parts trickster and shaman, but you risked darker possibilities and rescued him from an unhappy fate. You have done me this favor, figuratively, many times.

As for the bat, lesser humans would have fled the place in terror or enlisted professional assistance to subdue and expel the leather-winged invader, but net in hand, you caught him and released him into his inky kingdom with aplomb. Courage is not the opposite of fear, as Aristotle argues, but a matter of doing what is right or good while feeling and acknowledging fear. Of courage, you are a living exemplar in the private pantheon of my imagination.

Of mockery, ridicule, irony and grotesque, you are also a mistress. As someone who has devoted a great deal of time and mental exertion to fathoming the secrets of satire as a literary mode, I find the fact that you swim in it as strongly and stylishly as a salmon in a river quite stunning. Whether you are making light of the smug egotism of a certain, mutual acquaintance or giggling at the absurd serendipity of joining a friend named Kim Mitchell for a drink on a patio complete with lanterns, your way of reading reality and relishing its silliness and strange symmetries has sustained my faith in our species and made me laugh loud and long on more occasions than I can readily enumerate.

Like a dragon, you have unleashed your fiery scorn on any who have disparaged, mocked or insulted me as I have moved through the labyrinth of multiple sclerosis. You have borne me aloft on wings of wit and wisdom many times. There is no better way elegantly to distill my love and gratitude than Luce Irigaray’s line, which you taught me, along with so much else: my love to you, Dr. Dragon!

Yours,

DJR