welcoming back

Judging by this picture - and I'm sorry it's not a more flattering one, but it's the best that I took, and I felt self-conscious arriving late to the Gender Studies Welcome Back party, and missing most of the best bits - like my grad student from last semester, Patti Nelson, being announced as co-winner of the essay prize - and yet whipping out my camera just because the light was good - judging by this picture, Alice would have made a pretty good extempore preacher.  It's very strange, always, seeing one's partner Perform in Public - feeling a combination of nervousness (not necessary, at all) and pride at their accomplishment - it's not as though one actually thinks that they might start miaowing, or berating the follies of the administration, or be utterly tongue-tied and go bright red, or mispronounce people's names, or just plain run-out-screaming, or indeed that one thinks anything might go amiss at all, but I find that all my worst fears about public appearance get projected and multiplied.  Not that I have ever miaowed in public, although on my very last day in school, after the obligatory leaving interview with the High Mistress (head mistress, or head teacher, to the non-Paulinas among you), I did stick my head back around Mrs Munro's door and bleat, very loudly.  I always wondered what she made of that: it felt so good doing it.