Gifts from students, faculty I’ve mentored, and family have always encouraged and sustained me. When I retired and brought them home together, I recognized anew that they still do and bring lasting joy. They still put beauty in my life day by day.
Most of them have a special story, and I have picked a few to share. They reveal my private, non-working pleasures, and those who gave them to me show how well they knew me. Please feel free to send comments for me to post about them. And remember to watch for something beautiful every day. Contact: pkrb@auburn.edu
One of my most talented graduate students collected angels, and she gave me one at the time she named her baby Gabriel. It is a beautiful nut or candy dish.These pieces mark two milestones. The bracelet was a gift from students in the first class I taught as a real assistant professor (Rollins College). They were in a required, not highly popular Brit.Lit. I class. Most had waited until their senior year to take it and were known as a rowdy bunch. So I got the class. They styled themselves as “my yahoos,” and I loved them and they loved me (I think). The pendant was from a few students in my first NEH Seminar, taught in a former cell in the old Public Record Office on Chancery Lane, London. We were careful not to let the stone door close.These bookmarks celebrate important events. From graduate students, years after they graduated: A remarkable portrait of Eliza Haywood, a woman novelist I brought to wide attention, and an encouraging, leather retirement gift.A closer look at Eliza Haywood, a woman novelist I brought to wide attention, and her beautiful dress.A student who wrote a brilliant dissertation on the early career of Dorothy Parker, gave me this beautiful necklace on the date she received her degree.A brick window box beside of our house is a space for experiments with beautiful plants often found by my husband.. In addition to dusty miller and impatiens, there is the rare, blooming aloe plant. I always had a student worker, and this cup was the gift of one of the very best. In her interview, she explained that her experience working at Chuckie Cheese was good preparation for my job. It was. She also worked for the Instructional Media Group lab that reported to my husband. Like this cup, she was creative and unpredictable.
A recently retired friend took a class in making plates like this for parties. And she gave me one of her first.Many of the gift vases suggest that the giver knew the kinds of flowers I grew, loved, and put in the vases.When I moved to Auburn University with its long growing season, I had a huge office with three big windows. One had perfect morning sun. I began to bring flowers in, and so my students and I felt refreshed, A few gave me beautiful, perfectly shaped vases. These two are still favorites and were given to me by Ph.D. students who trusted me to mentor them although their dissertations were directed by colleagues.In a vase my granddaughter bought in New Zealand when she was briefly living there, are pansies, the flowers my son identified as symbols of friendship.An unusual and favorite vase from my engineer son-in-law.The jade necklace that my jabot always wanted.A single jonquil from one of the bulbs I brought from my mother‘s home when she died.Ever think of toothbrushes as Christmas gifts? They have obviously made very good ones.A cute-as-a-button spring vase given from my engineer, world health granddaughter with perfect flowers picked from the yard.For easy care, we converted flowerbeds intonative plants that need almost no care. This is a Fatsia Japonica, an evergreen plant in bloom that looks tropical, but does well in cold weather. A former student yard helper, who now has his own landscaping business planted ten to go with the two or three I had.Every birthday one of my best friends sends a different kind of gift that she is right to know I will love.A coaster from a set expresses how I always want to be true to myself, and this gift from one of my most creative and free spirited, NEH fellows has always had special meaning for me.This much loved and used book was the gift of my second NEH seminar members. They all signed it.
