Pattie McCarthy

dear Molly—

I woke at 5.45am & it’s 6.05am & I am having a shot of espresso in partial darkness. even the dogs are still asleep. Kevin & Emmett are already awake at 6.05am. I have a second shot of espresso after waking Asher at 6.15am. I drink orange juice & eat a banana. I wake Fionn at 6.45am & get dressed for work. time disappears here while I gather my work stuff. I make tea to go.

I leave for work at 7.15ish & arrive at Temple around 7.50am. When I get to my office, I make another cup of tea & check emails. there are a lot of them. I read poems written by my brilliant students. I grade some homeworks (on Harryette Mullen’s Trimmings). I talk to G. about academic business & life. I meet with a student, A., about a potential independent study in the fall (perhaps Irish literature & censorship / political protest). I leave to teach at 9.50am.

from 10.00 - 10.50am I : teach Contemporary Poetry. it is our second day of discussion of Tonya Foster’s “New Orleans Bibliography.” in class, everyone looks up a word in “New Orleans Bibliography” that they didn’t know or that intrigued them & we discuss how this opens up their readings of the poem. it is a super good time.

from 10.50 - 11.00am I : walk around the block & blink in the sun & think through the class that’s just ended & think through the next class. the weather has improved a great deal since I arrived at work.

from 11.00-11.45am I : eat lunch (a chicken sandwich made for me by Kevin; making lunch for someone to take to work is a pure act of love), comment on poems, make tea, waste time on twitter, & write this to you, Molly. Molly, despite everything on my to-do list at 11.35 I decide to close my eyes for a minute. I stay very still with my eyes closed until the automatic overhead light in my office clicks off. I leave to teach my next class at 11.50am.

from 12.00 - 12.50pm I : teach Senior Capstone in Creative Writing: Poetry. we discuss, among other things, George Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris — I am going to have them exhaust a place in pairs. remarkably, we have perfect attendance on the Friday afternoon before spring break. Molly, I wonder if this exercise is exhausting the day or exhausting me. I keep thinking that so much

of what I am doing today is writing (not writing) & I cannot write twice at once. the rest of what I do today at work is talking, & I cannot talk & write at once.

from 12.50 - 1.05pm I : walk to the coffeeshop & buy a latte. nearly everyone in Richie’s has a suitcase, as it is the Friday afternoon before break.

from 1.05 - 2.00pm I : re-read poems by E. & F. & take notes before my meetings with them. the poems are brilliant. I feel refreshed by my iced mocha latte & these poems.

from 2.00 - 3.00pm I : talk to F. on zoom about her thesis. from 3.00 - 4.00pm I : talk to E. in person about their thesis.

at 4.05pm I : leave the office, get outside & remember I told G. I’d lock the department before I left, so I go back upstairs to close up. then I begin my commute home—

from 4.15ish to I don’t know, 5?pm I : commute home. my phone serves up “Seventeen Going Under” by Sam Bender— which was I think my most-listened-to song in a recent year (I swear I wasn’t having a breakdown). it occurs to me that Emmett, my oldest, is now 17 years old so I have a minor crisis about “what is time” on my way home.

from 5ish - 5.45pm I : arrive home, unpack, check in with children & spouse, sit down with the dogs, waste time on social media, send one (1) work email, receive my Penguin of the Day (my daughter Fionn draws me a penguin on a post-it every day), change into a ratty sweater, drink a whole seltzer.

from 5.45 - 6.15pm I : eat dinner with my spouse & 3 children. Kevin made a curry. Asher & I are especially delighted because we have been longing for curry. at dinner : 1. my kids make fun of how I mispronounce the word “linear”; 2. Fionn gives a thorough report on her day, going period by period with a narrative for every class, the highlight of which is that she & her friend Quinn won the badminton tournament in PE; 3. Fionn rejects every piece of kale in her soup & places it on my plate.

at 6.15pm : Kevin & Fionn leave to pick up three of her friends & go to the middle school play (Shrek Jr).

at 6.30pm I : leave for soccer with Asher. Emmett is talking to his friends. the dogs are asleep. from 6.30 - 6.55pm I : drive to Conshohocken with Asher.

6.55 - 8.00pm I : am at goalkeeper training & write this to you, Molly. one of the loveliest gestures in sports is when a goalkeeper does a high dive to the side, making an arc in the air with their arms outstretched. there is probably a term for this. it’s like they are a parabola. I am watching Asher do this.

8.00 - 8.23pm I : drive home from goalkeeper training with Asher. we talk about 1. Leicester City Football Club; 2. memes; 3. music that is good & music that is bad. we decide to listen to songs that we agree are good & these include Kneecap’s “Better Way to Live” & Estelle’s “American Boy.”

8.25pm I : arrive home, change into soft clothes, make a hot cocoa, start to run out of words for the day.

9.00pm : Kevin & Fionn get home from the play. we are debriefed on the performances. we decide to watch the new episode of Vera. as a family we do enjoy a murder mystery. everyone is arriving home & scooping ice cream & talking at once.

10.30ishpm : everyone but me fell asleep, at least for a minute, during the tv show. really out of words now. thank you & good night, Molly.

Pattie McCarthy is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Wifthing (Apogee Press, 2021), and over a dozen chapbooks, most recently three tides (Bloof Books, 2022) and extraordinary tides (Omnidawn, 2023). She is a nontenure track professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she teaches literature and creative writing. You can find her on insta @pattiemccarthy