My dear colleague, Savita Iyer, is leaving the Penn Stater magazine after 10 years as our senior editor. At her farewell reception, members of our campus community spoke in her honor, and besides being incredibly moving, the gathering made me reflect on how large an impact one person can have.
I came to the Penn Stater in August 2022, the most recent arrival of anyone on the magazine staff. My colleagues have spent more time with Savita than I have. Our in-office days haven’t often overlapped. We are at different stages of life; her children are graduated and off building incredible lives, and I’m solo-parenting a 13-year-old.
While some shared experiences tend to forge immediate connection—motherhood, womanhood, and writing, for example—those commonalities aren’t the only reason that Savita and I hit it off. She has an innate ability to make everyone feel seen. She is utterly present when she converses with you, wordlessly encouraging you to share more about yourself than you planned to, because her warm understanding is magnetic. The way she remembers details about dozens, hundreds, of other people’s lives is astounding. Tell Savita about a sick relative or a new writing project over a lazy summer lunch hour and, weeks later, she’ll ask for updates, calling your relative by name or recommending a book specifically relevant to your work.
This attentiveness, this commitment to uplifting and caring for others, feels simultaneously essential and impossible to sustain. I’m always dashing off to a soccer game, a meeting, an appointment, living in a whirlwind of obligations that seem more indicative of my identity than what, who, and how I love. I try to remember names and make notes to check in with people, and then my calendar swallows me whole and a month passes before I realize that, while I didn’t forget our annual eye exams, I’m late to congratulate a former co-worker on her promotion or send condolences after a friend’s post about losing her beloved pet.
What are we even doing most days?
Savita inspires a deeper capacity for care in everyone around her. Through her causes, relationships, and storytelling, she builds community wherever she goes. Without endeavoring to teach, she teaches. Savita reminds me to slow down and listen. To keep making art, even when it feels like creative pursuits are frivolous, ineffectual against the evils of the world—in fact, that’s when they’re most needed, because stories and art cultivate empathy. That the teen years will be over soon, and my already solid relationship with my son might deepen into that unique friendship that can emerge between adult children and the parents who nurtured their independence.
That we’re all worthy of being seen and accepted for who we really are.
Stacia M. Fleegal is the Penn Stater’s online editor.
