February 14, 2006

Dear Colleague,

    The last time I had a roommate was when I shared a room with my brother, and I was about seventeen years old. At seventeen, I went to college and ever since I have lived alone. Friends, worried about my isolation, urged that I adopt a pet--a dog or a cat. I said no, that I couldn't cope, and that the nearest thing I could cope with would be a pet rock. At a more revealing level of my psychology was my contention that if I couldn't have human company I would rather do without any company. To show my sensitivity toward animals, I might add--not too sincerely--that I didn't want a dog because I didn't want it to know that it was second best, a mere substitute for the real thing.

    So, surprise! As of January 14, I have a roommate. He is Kevin Warnke, UW graduate in political science and African Studies, and a Peace Corpsman who has just returned from a two-year stint in Kenya, teaching deaf children sign language. I am amazed at the small changes I have to make to adapt to Kevin's needs (closet space, a knife sharp enough to cut vegetables, and making sure I don't stay too long in the bathroom in the morning, and such like) and the big psychological rewards, foremost among which is a greater sense of engagement with life. Of course, I have always tried to engage students in the classroom, and, especially after retirement, in cafes and restaurants on a most satisfying, one-to-one basis. But I see them, and they see me, as disembodied intellectuals rather than also as flesh-and-blood human beings. With Kevin, we meet as intellectuals but also as people who make their beds and brush their teeth, creating as we go about our business, a background of human sounds that is curiously reassuring.

    A student once asked me whether I considered my career a success. I replied no, because I failed in two criteria: one was to wear black tie at a formal academic occasion and the other was to have my secretary say to the phone, "Sorry, Mr. Tuan is in conference." Well, I still don't have a black tie in the drawer waiting to be used, but Kevin pretends to be my secretary. He answers the phone, which surprises and impresses the few people who have called me. In my autobiography, I say that one of the pleasures I miss living alone is that of sharing "cookies and milk" with someone before retiring for the night. Well, I now know what that is like too, and it's great!

    On February 10, Kevin and I had dinner at the Firefly. On February 11, as I passed Kevin, who was eating his breakfast, I handed him a small packet of chocolates and jokingly said, "A Valentine gift, courtesy of Starbucks, and, by the way, last night's dinner was our Valentine dinner." How deviously I said this. Compare it with seven-year-old Joshua Sack's Valentine message to me twenty years ago. He wrote, without any attempt at qualification or nuance, "I love you." I still have the card and I see it everyday on the bulletin board of my Science Hall office. As we grow older, we no doubt become more skilled and even wiser. But we also become emotional cowards.    

Happy Valentine!

Yi-Fu