Presidential election time is fast approaching, and heavily on my mind. A friend on social media recently wrote a post about how she felt disappointment with the current presidential nominee candidates. All of them. Not one party in particular, just all of them. She stated that she was considering abstaining from the vote unless a candidate came out of the wood work that offered a better choice for her. I feel her pain. Rarely in a presidential election or really any level of election for that matter, have I found a candidate that completely espouses every political, social, moral, theoretical or religious belief of mine. I normally choose a few issues I'm primarily concerned with, and vote for the candidate I find most likely to have an agenda similar.
That being said, sometimes a candidate is so terrifying. Sometimes the idea of their particular style of governance, their bigoted ideas are so frightening, I'd vote for the other candidate just to keep them out of office.
It's the lesser of two evils.
Many people disagree with me, and the idealist in me recognizes the validity of their arguments. Voting for the lesser of two evils fuels the fire of a broken two party system. Recognizing other parties or writing in candidates challenges that system, and in the long game may even change it (I've voted green party for crying out loud). The realist in me says, "This hateful, bastard is going to be the leader of the free world if we don't stop him."
I didn't respond to her post. I spent time thinking about it. Far be it from me to tell someone what to do with their lives, or their civic responsibilities. Far be it from me to tell someone how to vote.... But I'm going to anyway. I think you should vote. I'm not talking just to my FB friend here. I'm talking to you. I think you should vote in every damn election you have the opportunity to vote in. I think it's a privilege denied to many, a privilege people fought for, were beaten, arrested and killed to give you.
I also think that sometimes a candidate is so scary, so full of misogyny, racism, and xenophobia that you should vote for the other person. Even if the other person running doesn't embrace every political ideology that you do. I think you should vote for the other person because you have an obligation to this democracy, an obligation to help keep it from those that seek to or just, would, destroy it. I'm not saying this just because it's scary, I'm saying it because in order to preserve the most important foundation of this country, (We hold these truths to be self -evident that all men [women, transgender] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness), you might have to pick the lesser of two evils. If you don't, if you sit at home and abstain to make a point, most of us might not hear it, but we will hear the radical, bullying rally cry of those willing to vote for the scary guy.
I was reading Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, as you know, and it's so amazing. I notice that he describes over and over again the Linden trees in Paris, in Germany. I don't know what Linden trees are, or why this detail sticks out. I'm barely able to identify the most basic of trees, usually, and I often read mostly for plot and not symbolism. But for some reason, I notice the linden references, and briefly wonder about them, briefly wonder if they are like Proust's madeleines, some special key to memory:
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on change whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.
And no, I have not read all of Remembrance of Things Past. I tried. I couldn't do it. But I think Proust's point there--and why this passage has become cultural shorthand--is because memories are so often locked away for us in our material experience of the world rather than in a narrative form. They recover things for us we didn't know we had lost, or in the case of All the Light, things that are precious but soon to be lost. For Proust, cookies, for Walter Benjamin, books, for Doerr's book, lindens. For Doerr himself, pebbles. Smells are where my memories are. Lindens have a strong smell. Particular. Lush. I know this now because just days after I finished Doerr's book I was wandering the deeply satisfying aisles of the co-op. I had a few extra minutes and so meandered the self-care area, picking up bottles, weighing them, all those promises of responsible beauty and health, glowing skin, purity, rich plant pigments, musk. One set of beautiful bottles caught my eye and I went over to touch, to smell. Perfumes. Gorgeous, all of them.
One of them: Linden.
That smell put me right back on the sidewalk outside the restaurant where I worked in grad school in Claremont, California. Evening, after my shift. The nights must have been warming up, and summer was coming, and I was free and outside and young and totally full of possibility. Growing up, I rarely left the ten-block radius surrounding my house unaccompanied. So to be outside, at night, alone, independent...it was thrilling. It was leaving on an airplane by myself. It was packing up my car and moving to another state. It was me doing this, whatever you think about it. Don't get me wrong. My twenties were terrible too. They were filled with bad decisions and heartbreak and poorly handled responsibilities and inadvisable life choices. But they were also punctuated with glorious moments like this one, on the sidewalk, at the start of summer, looking up at the stars, breathing in linden, citrus, sage. I smelled my wrist again, there in the aisle of the grocery store. And: though I can't prove it, though I could be making this up, that smell also took me to my great-grandmother's backyard. Lilac does too, but linden...light filtering through shrubs and tall bushes. Lazy dust motes. Digging in the dirt. Her reading in an aluminum chair. I could have been six or seven? Was there really a linden tree there? Could there have been? Finally, this morning--I'm reading the most recent issue of Orion Magazine, an essay, worth reading in full, aptly titled "Naming Happiness":
One Saturday morning while we walked that waterside path, my mind straying, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Something random, or so it seemed, had trespassed into this highly ordered landscape. It was a falling leaf, riding a gentle, spiraling current to the ground, scuttling to a stop. It was yellow and freckled with brown. The edges curled upward. It looked sort of like an elfin canoe.
A linden leaf. Tilia america. I know this only because I looked it up.
I know any of this only because of Doerr, and that little detail that emerged from the power of that book, and then the chance happening upon the perfume bottle, and then this Orion essay, which deals with the importance of naming that which we do not usually think to name. Linden. There are questions I can't answer, details that remain locked away. Was I in love on that one evening in Claremont, or recovering from heartbreak? Was I alone? Did I have short or long hair? Was I going out to meet friends, or was I heading home? Did I recognize the sweetness of that moment? And in my grandmother's backyard. Was I happy? Did I understand why I was there with my grandmother and not at home? Did I sense already the need to flee? Here's what I do know: that smell reminds me that I was loved, early on. And later, that having the freedom to go is delicious. The experiences of being held and moving on--the twinned forces of my life, there in the buds of the linden tree.
Nolie walked in the door after school last week and she wouldn't make eye contact or say anything and we knew something had happened. That kid is usually talking a mile a minute and physically bouncing off the walls and she just went straight to her room for her half-hour of isolation and screen time.
I was on my way to yoga but I stopped in her room. "Do you want to talk about it?"
No.
"Okay. I understand. But we're going to talk about it later."
More silence.
Later, Addie goes to music class and so E. and I are home alone with Nolie and they are snuggling on the couch and I'm sitting nearby and we're just chatting. I ask her again what happened, and she shakes her head and says she doesn't want to talk about it.
Uh-oh. Big pain in there.
I tell her she has to. She can't keep it inside. Whatever she has to say we are here and it will be okay.
She buries her face into E.'s chest and begins.
On the bus ride home, Nolie always sits next to an older girl who she really, really likes. This girl (who seems to us also to be an awesome girl--cool style, big personality, quirky kid) has been great with Nolie in the past; she has complimented her on her outgoing personality and smarts. And Nolie, being the youngest kid, is also super-excited to be noticed and included by an older girl.
But apparently, on this day, the two of them started talking about bodies, and this girl (who happens to be tall and thin) remarked that not only did Addie and Nolie have different personalities, but they also had very different bodies, and that Addie's was tall and thin, and Nolie's was...
fill in the blank.
Nolie filled in the blank.
Or, rather, the Voice of Shite filled in the blank, with one word: fat. Your sister is tall and thin, and you are short and fat.
Nolie couldn't say the words, and she said her friend didn't say the words, but she knew how the blank got filled in. And how that blank got filled in turned my bright, wickedly funny, beautiful, smart girl into a dull penny convinced of her own worthlessness.
[Please note: we don't blame the girl, at all. This was more thoughtless than malicious. It happens.]
E. and I froze, looked at each other. E. hugged her tight, and I took a deep breath.
If this had happened a year or two ago, we most likely would have just showered Nolie with affection, told her she wasn't fat, told her how beautiful she was. And those things would be true.
But I have recently been receiving some education in the school of Body Positivity, and though I'm really new at this, and struggle with my own self-concept sometimes, and the Voice of Shite has his own way with me still, I knew there was a way to talk about this that didn't 1) deny the pain Nolie felt at this encounter, 2) didn't reinforce the idea that "fat" is something bad or shameful, but merely a descriptor like other physical descriptors, 3) might help Nolie see us the way we see her, which is to say she is beautiful, she is a light in our lives, she is a integral part of our family unit and identity, and 4) acknowledges that all of us look different on the outside and that is not a bad thing, that is instead a very, very good thing and it is part of what makes humanity so breathtaking and extraordinary.
Easy-peasy, right? Kill me now.
But not so hard, either. I had Angie and Amy's mantra going through my head--"All bodies are good bodies, all bodies are good bodies"--and said that first. Remember, Nolie? Remember how we believe that? That there are so many bodies in the world, and we think they all have worth, regardless of how they look, what they can or cannot do?
Nolie nodded a little, but still sniffed, and burrowed into E. a little deeper. The Voice of Shite still felt like it was telling the truth. Not mommy.
So then I reminded her about the Voice of Shite, and how for women especially the Voice of Shite is super clever, and makes us think he is telling the truth about ourselves, but actually he is always telling us lies. And you know how we can know that? Because the Voice of Shite feels bad. It constricts us, shrinks our heart space, robs us of our sense of self. The truth, on the other hand, feels like light and freedom. It makes it easier to breathe. It feels like love.
So which feels true, Nolie? That you are fat, and fat is bad? That if you don't look like Addie nobody loves you?
Or: All bodies are good bodies? That you are surrounded by love, that your body does amazing things every day, that you and Addie are different people with different lives and paths of possibility spool out in front of each of you in totally unique ways? And that your beauties are indeed different, but no less amazing because of that? And that beauty isn't the most important thing, anyway--that there are so many other ways to be of value in the world, that you are intrinsically of value regardless?
We agreed the second choice felt a lot more like the truth.
And there, before my very eyes, re-emerged my daughter. Instant transformation: giggling and doing headstands again, sure of herself and her body and her place in our lives. She's going to get yanked out of that safe space a bunch of times in her life, right? And I'm still learning what to say, how to model radical self acceptance and love, how to be in front of both of these girls and with myself. I've messed this up in the past. But this path feels like a much better way of doing things. This feels like the truth.
I was at the yoga studio a few weeks ago and ran into somebody I went to college with. He was talking to someone else but we made eye contact and nodded and he looked like he was going to say something to me but I blanked on who he was and looked away, so he dropped it. At least I think that's what happened--it all took about 1.8 seconds, so who knows. He left a minute later and by then I had thought of his name and remembered where I knew him from, and I dropped him a line on Facebook later to apologize for being weird. We weren't best friends or anything, but I didn't want to communicate that I didn't care, either.
This happens to me all the time since moving back here. On the one hand, I know it's just par for the course, and that it's impossible for everybody to remember everyone, especially after not seeing someone for twenty years. Awkward interactions are going to happen. So I try to cut myself some slack, and if I don't remember someone, I try to say so and have a good interaction anyway.
But in the back of my mind this forgetting thing causes a lot of anxiety. And it's mostly around the fact that there are these gaping holes in my memory where I seem to have lost whole chunks of my life, for no good reason I can tell. More importantly, I've lost memories of people, or time with people I really loved.
This loss is exacerbated by the fact that I have a lot of good friends and family who have what seem to me to be eerily precise memories for fantastic quantities of detail--names, faces, events, jokes, lyrics, movies. They remember their third grade classmates, or the neighbors they lived next to in junior high. They remember boyfriends and parties and hijinks and teachers and outfits. And they remember just way more than I do, both in terms of quality and quantity.
It's not like I have nothing. I have some very strong, very pointed memories from the first 35 years of my existence. It's just that there aren't very many of them.
What is going on here?
It's not that I'm dumb, right? I mean, I retain all sorts of crazy information for work and for writing projects. I'm good at some kinds of trivia. I recognize faces and voices (though if they are out of context, it's often very hard to place them). I also have a fairly impressive ability to take in and process an enormous amount of information and detail in a very short time frame. I'm a fast reader. I can process visual information like a boss. I get concepts. I have a decent intuition. I'm quick at a lot of things.
I just don't retain long-term.
If I'm not using information on a daily basis, it is very likely to not stay in my head. For example, I rarely need to mail things for work. Maybe once a semester. But whenever I do have to mail something, I have to ask our administrative assistant the procedure for doing it, because I've forgotten. The process is frighteningly simple, but when I try to reach into the recesses of my brain and remember how to do it, I can't. It freaks me out that I have lost the ability to do such a goofy thing. It is so embarrassing. I can laugh it off as Nutty Professor stuff, but it's something more, too.
I wish it was just how to send letters that was at stake. This is where the shame and sadness come in. Because I also lose whole chunks of friendships. Romantic relationships. Family experiences. I remember impressions and feelings, writ large: junior high=painful; high school=exhilarating; grad school=total confusion; delivering babies=awe; raising small children=boring. And so on. But the details are often just gone. Another negative side effect, I think, is that it becomes easy to forget WHAT A BIG FANTASTIC FUCKING LIFE I'VE GOT TO LEAD. I mean, really. It's been amazing. So what kind of jerk am I to forget?
Deep down, I worry that I'm missing these pieces of my life because I am narcissistic, and my narcissism prevents me from retaining details that aren't useful to my ego. But that explanation doesn't feel like the truth, or not the whole truth, anyway. Having these memory gaps is so excruciating because the people in my life are so important to me, and when I can't remember something that was important to them, or a connection we may have had, or even some way that I've hurt them, it's terrifying and sad.
I've also wondered if maybe I'm so future-focused that I don't fully take in the present moment? Do I set too many goals? Am I always just looking for the next big thing?
Maybe. But I feel like I live my life deeply, and often very much in the moment. I value friendship, and connection, and joy.
Nor do I think there is some childhood trauma that I can't recall that is making me lose these other parts of my life. My growing up wasn't perfect. Sometimes when I think really hard about those years, and try to put the story together, it doesn't make sense. I wonder if I inherited a tendency to leave out the unpleasant parts, and family dynamics enabled that, probably. But I don't think there's some unrecovered memory holding me back, either.
I guess I wonder if these things are lost because I have let them be lost. I don't go back through old pictures; I don't tell old stories. I have a canon of life events I remember, like everyone else, but maybe I have just rehearsed mine less.
That's probably why it has always been important to me to blog, here and elsewhere, and why I missed it a lot this last year, while I was finishing the other big writing projects I've been working on. I used to print yearly books up of the blogging I did, and I'm so glad--the girls have been reading them, and telling me back the stories that I wrote about a life we lived but that I had already forgotten. Maybe that's why I write. Maybe that's why we're all drawn to record--to post our pictures, say something funny on Facebook, whatever. To prove we were here, and are connected, and haven't forgotten.
*I had even forgotten the term "memory holes" was from Orwell's 1984. Oy.
We had the happiest holiday break....after such an intense, punishing fall, it was pretty much all E. and I could do to pull Christmas off and then spend very much time in our jammies. It took me the first week of break just to stop panicking. I didn't even know I was, to be honest, but then I would find myself standing up in the middle of hanging out with the kids or watching TV and feel like I'm supposed to be doing something only I can't remember what it is. Then I would sit back down, bewildered, and nervously check the apps on my phone. It was only last week that I really settled down into a slower rhythm--which, delicious!--and marveled at how little it can really take to fill a day if you let....time....slow....down.
Of course, when I asked the kids last night at dinner what they thought of break they both said they were bored and I said good, you are having a typical human-child experience in the United States of America and that boredom will lead you to greatness because you will want to flee my boring house and build your own daring and beautiful life on your own, as I did, and as all the generations before ours have. At which statement they rolled their eyes, picked their nose, and cleared the table.
Cretins.
Anyway, one of my tasks today was to reflect on how I might transition back into work tomorrow with some semblance of grace. We are going up to Idaho City to soak at The Springs this afternoon--one last little bit of sumptuous luxury before the great hamster wheel of work and school starts back up tomorrow--but before we go, and at the risk of adding to the millions of New Year's listicles out there, I wanted to give you some little gifts that won't require much of your time or money but which might help you ease back into your own post-holiday routine with a little sparkle and joy.
Here we go, in No Particular Order.
1. We watched a lot of the last season of The Voice (on Hulu) over the break. Which reminded me of how much I love Pharrell Williams, who is the moral compass of that show and is an ARTIST. You might be annoyed by having to hear "Happy" on the radio all the time, but check out N*E*R*D if you haven't already. So amazing. Anyway, I looked him up on the inter webs again and I've been watching this video pretty much every day. It takes my breath away. It is my anthem for 2016.
Plus, he wears jeans with an Adidas logo on his butt. Awesome.
2. Do yourself a favor and sign up for this. It's free, and it changed my life this year, could change yours.
3. You probably already readAll The Light We Cannot See, I was late to it, but it is taking my breath away right this very moment. Go to your public library and check it out, get on the waitlist, borrow a friend's copy. Just read it.
4. Speaking of self love, if you're on Facebook and aren't signed up already, why not ask to be admitted to the Boise Rad Fat Collective? Even if you aren't fat? Or even if you are fat but are afraid and ashamed that you are? Or if you'd just like to stop being at war with your body, regardless of what it looks like? Or if you want to stand in solidarity with your sisters and brothers who struggle with body shaming? Or if you want to learn more about thin privilege? Or if you want to understand what it really means to "love yourself," a phrase which has always mystified me but that now no longer rings empty?
If you need a little taste of what body positivity (and bravery and feminism) look and feel like, you can always check this out:
In fact, if you haven't seen it yet, take two minutes, get your kids and loved ones, and watch it or the longer version together.
And as someone who has for most of her life given herself lots of dietary rules to live by and for many years hasn't been able to sense what her body is feeling until recently, and who had lots of negative self-talk always going on in the background, often without even realizing it, I also give you 100% permission to not diet, to not count calories, and to seek out things that feel good instead of things that make you feel guilty or ashamed. I got a Fitbit for Christmas and I love it because I love data and metrics and movement. But the first thing I did was disable the pounds tracker and calorie counter. Because fuck that noise.
5. If you happen to have a little cash, and you're like me and love habits, rituals, daily practices, and badass female mysticism, you could consider dropping some dollars on one of Danielle LaPorte's daily planners (and while you're at it you could sign up for her free periodic emails, which I also love). I used to be like planners, what? That's what Google calendar is for! But then I read up on them and I love this so hard. A great way to start your day.
6. Podcasts. Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts. If you're into podcasts yet, can I recommend them heartily? They are great for listening to when you're out walking or hiking, and I especially love how they have transformed how I feel about doing chores. There are podcasts for every dang thing, but the ones I love are
Serial (duh)
Reply All
Start Up
Mystery Show
Surprisingly Awesome
This American Life
NPR Politics Podcast
The Beautiful Writer's Podcast
Big Magic
Dear Sugars
But there are thousands more that you could try out, almost always for free, provided you have a way to stream on your phone or laptop.
7. This is kind of a small, dorky thing, but two little self-care practices that I love when I'm feeling stressed out are to a) put a pot of boiling water in the stove with some essential oils (I like Rosemary) and stick your face over it for a few minutes. Super soothing. Unless you're claustrophobic. Then maybe not. Or, again, if you have cash to drop, b) order a tuning fork in Ohm. Bang it against your hand and then hold it to your ear. I'm someone who is super-rocked by sensory stimulation all the time, and I find these two things really grounding.
8. Even if you don't like to draw or think you can't draw, check out Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals from the library and mess around with it. Nolie and I went out and took pictures of funny ice shapes and piles of rotting leaves and then drew animals based on them. Super fun, and it will remind you that you can create something and not just always consume what other people have made.
9. And then there's this. This won't take just two minutes, unfortunately. This might take some time. It might elude you for a while. But I think it's the most important thing to think about if you want something in your life to shift.
It's this: Find some way to develop a sense of reverence in your life. For me, it's been going to St. Michael's Episcopalian church every Sunday, even though I'm not Episcopalian (or haven't been, anyway), I hate getting up in the mornings, and I have generally had a healthy distrust of Christian religions. But you know what? It is awesome. That place is filled with love. They have a serious heart for social justice there. I crave the rituals and responses like the earth craves water. For whatever reason, spending that hour there on Sunday mornings has made every other part of my life better.
Butthere's lots of ways to get at reverence--religion or spirituality is just a more direct path, in my view. You can ask: what inspires awe for you? What kinds of rituals do you have? When do you connect with something larger than yourself? When do you find yourself at one with other humans? When do you feel at peace, and how can you make that happen more? Do you need to do something new, or recommit to something that's always been in front of you?
I have a sneaking suspicion that reverence is the key to happiness, so this is worth thinking about.
10. And finally. If you're still with me. Sign up to get these little nuggets of inspiration delivered to your inbox every day. I read them every morning. Some I like, some I love, some are transformative, like this poem:
Beannacht: A Blessing for the New Year
John O'Donohue
For Josie
On the day when The weight deadens On your shoulders And you stumble, May the clay dance To balance you.
And when your eyes Freeze behind The grey window And the ghost of loss Gets in to you, May a flock of colours, Indigo, red, green, And azure blue, Come to awaken in you A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays In the currach of thought And a stain of ocean Blackens beneath you, May there come across the waters A path of yellow moonlight To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours, May the clarity of light be yours, May the fluency of the ocean be yours, May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow Wind work these words Of love around you, An invisible cloak To mind your life.
Isn't that a great blessing? I wish it for you. I hope you wish it for yourself. Happy New Year.
This is the first December I can remember in my professional life where I haven't been scrambling to prep for spring classes. Some of my colleagues don't have this problem--they teach the same two (or three, four, or five) classes every semester, and they have developed systems so that those classes kind of run on autopilot. They pull out their notes or files or whatever and don't need to do a ton of preparation for them to run smoothly.
I'm much more of a jackass about the whole thing and am usually rewriting my syllabi (sometimes even revising them wholesale at the last minute). I add in new readings and even occasionally things I haven't read, which is super stressful but also a great way to have an interesting experience with your students where you're reading and learning along with them.
But the reason I'm not doing any of that right now is because I took on some extra work this past fall so that I could get what's called a "buy-out" from teaching this spring. I'm doing some administrative work instead, and also ramping up some research efforts.
This is weird and hard to explain to people without sounding defensive or whiny or clueless about the privilege involved in being a professor. Things are further complicated by the fact that I teach in a graduate program rather than in an undergraduate one (for now, anyway) and also that in the back of my mind is always this whole constellation of events, trends, and disasters happening in the swampy bog that is higher education and which feeds in to the exact reasons for why I'm not teaching in the spring even though in everyone's mind that's what we pay you for.
See? Defensive.
You can read much more eloquent scholars than me talk about all this stuff. But I'll just offer a few brief outlines here.
1) Lots of people are really worried about professors who have tenure, because they have probably had a crappy old checked-out professor who was protected by tenure even though they weren't really doing their job anymore. Sometimes that's a problem. Nobody likes the idea of somebody getting paid for work they're not doing or doing well.
But really? Most professors these days aren't even on the tenure-track. We can use the Orwellian term and call them "contingent" faculty, but really they are better called "exploited" faculty. They teach the bulk of undergraduate classes at most universities and even though they often have PhDs and loads of student loan debt they often make less than $20,000 a year, don't receive benefits, are treated as ghosts on the campus(es) where they teach.
And, for the record, tenure itself is increasingly under attack. So it's not really a guarantee of anything anymore, in lots of places.
2) At the same time we have seen the rise of the adjunct class of professors, we have also seen public funding of higher education decimated. Thanks to the cries of smaller government and just a general overall devaluing of providing public goods to the public at affordable prices (and probably also quite a bit of anti-intellectualism) and maybe also because higher education has not always been as quick to change as the "market" would like, most universities without huge endowments like, say, Harvard, struggle to make ends meet. We are constantly threatened with massive and cyclical budget cuts and reminded that our jobs are vulnerable. Few other professions--those requiring advanced schooling, preparation, and geographic promiscuity--face such uncertainty.
3) So universities are forced to make ends meet by a) raising tuition and b) requiring faculty to bring in what are called "research dollars."
4) Therefore, increasingly, those who can afford to go to college a) take out crippling student loans to pay for it and b) demand a sweet "customer service" type experience, where they have sick dorm rooms outfitted with big screens and climbing walls. Universities are thus forced to pour tons of money into pimping out the residential student experience in order to recruit students, whose dollars they need, and must further pressure faculty to secure external research dollars, in order to pay for climbing walls and lazy rivers for floating freshmen.
5) So now you have a system where students often (but not always) want a slick customer-service-type experience, are often being taught by exploited, overworked adjunct faculty and/or the occasional cranky tenured old guy who is working way longer than he wanted to because he needs retirement money like everyone else.
6) Then occasionally those of us who are mid-career also teach, though mostly we are spending our time on many, many committees--which often are important for the health of the university, but are also sometimes used to keep faculty busy, I think. Mostly we spend our time trying to be "research productive." Increasingly this means seeking funding from the federal government or private foundations or donors or businesses who will give the university a percentage of what we bring in. It means we are trying to find ways to supplement our increasingly non-competitive salaries vis-a-vis other professions that also require extensive schooling and debt accrual.
[The thought of not being able to save or borrow enough money to send my own children to college some day gives me fits, and we are solidly middle class].
7) And if we are in a program or a position that also requires our students to be successful--like, say, we work in a small school that values faculty-to-student contact or wants students to finish PhDs of their own--we also spend a lot of time meeting with students and countless (and I mean countless) hours advising.
8) Finally, we always have to be aware of our "national and international reputation." This means frequently presenting at conferences, publishing papers in journals, writing books, reviewing other people's articles, books, and promotion documents, and so on.
All of this is not to say that my job isn't fantastic. It is. I feel lucky most days to get to do this work. It is dynamic and stimulating and I get to meet amazing people, learn fascinating things, and challenge myself to be both excellent and on the cusp of failure all the time.
But it is to say that when you ask me isn't it great to have summer off? Or what I'm going to do with all my time now that I'm not teaching? Or how great is it that they can't fire me now that I have tenure?
When we moved from Denver last year, not only did we leave behind a tribe of amazing friends, well-paying jobs, and all the benefits of living in a mid- to large-sized city, we also left behind our big old house in the suburbs. We had 2,400 square feet and a huge yard. We had a two-car garage. We had three bedrooms and both E. and I had a really good sized office space for our very own selves. The kitchen was huge, and it extended out into an open dining space (with a actual, real, two-story tree growing up through the floor, spreading its branches out above our dining room table) and leading into a good-sized living room.
There were many great things about that house. E. in particular still mourns that house, and while the girl's memories of it are now hazy, every once in a while they wish they had a big backyard.
But here's the thing. When I think about that house, I feel a little sad. And it's not sad from missing it. I remember myself sitting in our ginormous master bedroom, looking out the sliding glass doors at the gorgeous old-growth trees in the backyard, and praying for something to change. My job might have been well paying, but I was also miserable. Our marriage seemed fine on the surface but underneath simmered loads of resentment and unspoken anger and secrets and fear. I felt so goddamned lonely.
It's not that I didn't have happy moments there--I did. And it's not that the house itself made me unhappy. Of course it didn't. And we were so lucky to live there, really. I'm sure some of you think I sound like a privileged twit. All I'm saying is that, in my mind, I associate having all that space with also having a whole lot of emptiness.
Now we live in a much smaller house, by many American standards. I'm not sure what the actual square footage is (because real estate=sham), but I would guess the livable space here is just a little more than half what it was in the old house. Addie's bedroom is in the basement, the bathrooms are tiny and filled with questionable tile choices (when there is tile at all), we call the cooking space the "frankenkitchen" because it's been cobbled together by whatever pieces someone found at the side of the road, and our office spaces look like this:
Eric at his wee little desk, tucked away in the corner of our wee little living room. I asked him to sit up straight for this picture so we could capture the wee-ness of the surroundings. Wee laptop, wee lamp, giant man.
I get the "big" office space, which is actually an entry way closet that got sealed off. Again, we had to search for wee furniture that would fit these spaces.
The house is a hundred years old. When you add in even a little bit of clutter, you can feel it, so you have to remain vigilant against the invasion of stuff. It has giant holes in the back of the house where some weekend warrior closed in the back porch to give us a laundry room/bathroom but didn't think to insulate.
But when I think of this house? I think: happy. Don't get me wrong; our first year here was one of the most difficult of my life. E. and the kids took a really long time to settle in and I felt pessimistic and wracked with guilt and terrified about finances all the time. There are days (weeks?) where we are all home together or where E. is home doing homework/working/whatever and I just want everyone the fuck out of my SPACE. The few days where I have had the house to myself have been heavenly and I want MORE solitude.
Here is what's great about the tight living space, though:
Closeness. We see each other, a lot. We have to work through conflicts, rather than fleeing to our own corners. We cuddle and spend time together and, yes, annoy each other some. But on the whole, I think we are much closer as a family, and have developed some much needed communication skills we didn't have before.
Yard. We don't have a big yard. We don't have a big yard! We don't spend hours doing yard work on the weekends. And we live two blocks from an awesome park. I am personally convinced of the awesomeness of this. The kids are warming up to it. But I spend way more time outside than I used to because to me it feels like the whole neighborhood is our backyard.
Cleaning. God, the cleaning. With that big old house, there used to be so much fighting and gnashing of teeth (mine). But here, I see light at the end of the tunnel. The kids are finally starting to help out with chores, and between that and the fact that there is just not that much to clean, I feel like I have some small portion of my life back.
Stuff. E. still side-eyes the bags of stuff that go out the door to the thrift store (or getting sold on Poshmark!), but I also know there is way less stuff that is coming in. We still have a pretty loaded house (um, four Americans) but I feel a clearer sense of what we do and don't need. We don't have a Costco membership, because we literally have no space to store sixteen rolls of paper towels. A Costco-sized package of paper towels would be our undoing, I'm telling you. And we only buy food that we will actually eat during the week. That took some getting used to because in the back of my mind I am always pretty sure we are two days away from the apocalypse. But less room to store 32 cans of sauerkraut means we don't buy it to begin with. So, less waste. And it also forces me to trust that we are okay even without backups for our backups. No need to have six things of deodorant to survive the end days.
And, the best thing of all: our location. This has nothing to do with the house itself, I guess, but getting to live in a neighborhood where we can walk both to the foothills and downtown feels like the best part of it all. It's essentially what we are paying for by living in this overpriced froufrou neighborhood. Just ask the tax man.
Maybe there will come a point where I want to live out in the burbs again and have all the square feet. I would bet E. will always want that. But I have a soft spot for this kooky little corner house and how it symbolizes a turn from a life that felt empty and a little shallow to a life that feels much more real and connected.
