A Car Is Born...Again: Running on empty, but still running from A to B

When I made the brilliant move of enrolling in a master’s degree program that would require me to leave what was--if nothing else--a stable teaching job, I moved to Hyde Park so that I could be close to campus.  Anyone who's been to the Hyde Park neighborhood knows how hard it is to park there and has at some point embarked on the epic journey of discovering, battling for, and hopefully squeezing into that elusive parking space (which, for me, was always on a curvy, impossible-to-back-into street). 

Because Adam and I both had our own cars, having to find two spaces at various times during the day became more of a hassle than it was worth, especially after I went out to my car  one morning, only to find that my little Chevy (whom I call "Sassie") had been broken into, driven to God knows where, and then parked in a different spot down the block.  At that point, we knew that having two cars with nowhere to put them was not going to work, and as mine was apparently the highly sought after commodity of joy-riding hooligans, mine would have to be the one to go--somewhere.

Being the outrageously generous soul that I am, I decided to “lend” my prized possession to a “friend” (try as you might to make me, I’ll never divulge the rapscallion’s identity!).  In exchange for maintaining the vehicle, keeping it up to high-performance driving standards, and paying the insurance each month, he would have a car for the duration of my graduate school career--approximately one year.  To me, it was a win-win situation:  I was saving money on storage and didn’t have to worry about its being defiled, or worse yet, stolen by good-for-nothing street thugs, and I was helping out a “friend” who was transportation-ally challenged. 

Of course, there was a plethora of people who discouraged me from doing this.  I was told, more than once, that I was being naive and that some tragedy of biblical proportions would ultimately befall me.  

As it turns out, they were right.  (God, I HATE when that happens!!)

Upon graduating in June of 2008, I climbed down from that ivory tower and inhaled the fresh air of real world stuff, as my head was finally cleared out of the academic fluff that had cluttered it.  One by one, I watched theories and theses float out of my mind and into the air like blown away dandelion spores--poof!  Now back to earth.

My thoughts immediately turned to finding a job and retrieving my car from the rapscallion.  At first I had no idea just how bad it was going to be.  For most of that year I had been under the impression that my friend had been taking decent care of the car, paying the insurance, etc.  Much to my dismay, though, I found out that he’d been doing just the opposite, and that poor little Sassie had been rendered un-driveable, practically left for dead.  The lousy rapscallion had even left the poor girl on "E." 

So with virtually no gas in her tank and no oil in her engine, Sassie went into my sister’s garage where it remained until just recently, when our other car began to show signs of old age.  We decided, immediately, that we should try to salvage old Sassie because prior to the rapscallion’s recklessness, my car was solid and ran quite well.  Adam and his friend--both handy with loud, spinning tools that frighten me--were eager to see if they could resuscitate the old girl.  Surely enough, on a cold October morning, full of car exhaust fumes and dreams, Adam and his buddy revved up old Sassie and off she went!  She was purring like a kitten after spending more than a year, cold and alone, shivering through dark, blustery winters.  

Now, although she still needs some finishing touches, old Sassie is on her way to reclaiming her former greatness as a solid, reliable, no-frills vehicle that got me from A to B.  

*   *   *

It's funny, you know--how we get from A to B.  In the age of cell phones, SUVs and satellite TV, we're left with no shortage of ways to accomplish necessary tasks. It seems that everything is always within our reach, whether we're reaching out or trying to reach a destination. Without a car, I felt vulnerable, as though without one, I wouldn't be able to accomplish anything.  

I wound up taking a lot of public transportation for those things I had to accomplish--visiting my parents, my friends, or going to the grocery store.   

Or, I would simply walk.  I remember feeling grouchy at the thought of having to trudge down the street, lugging cumbersome bags full of food as I boarded a sticky CTA bus--who DOES that, anymore?  I went through the "why me?" stage of whining until I had a moment--not to be too dramatic--when I watched the Chicago Marathon firsthand.

The route ran right down Halsted, so on my regular morning run, I was able to stop by and watch as the sea of humanity poured into my neighborhood.  While every runner inspired me, the one who choked me up was a young gentleman running--fast--on prosthetic legs.  I'm sure he wouldn't ask for pity or praise for what he was doing.  In fact, he probably wouldn't even like being singled out.  But to me, he is absolutely singular in his determination to reach a goal.  "Why can't I be like that?"  I wondered.

I watched the young man run and as he sped past I clapped as loudly as I could, trying to hold back tears. I thought to myself, "Shut up and start running," so I did, and I still am--not quite sure where I'll wind up.  

The Tempest: Why we all need shelter from the storm

When it rains it pours.  Until recently I never paid much attention to that phrase or to what it really meant because after all, it’s merely a platitude, right?--an overused sentiment that has lost all substance, a convenient cliché we often utter when trying to understand the tiny tragedies that befall us.   

But lately that phrase has taken on new meaning for me as I’ve begun contemplating the phenomenon of storms.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines a storm as “a violent disturbance with strong winds and usually rain, thunder lightning or snow.”   Webster’s New World College Dictionary adds that a storm is “a strong outburst of emotion, passion,  or excitement” as well as, “a strong disturbance or upheaval of a political or social nature.”  The words “disturbance” and “upheaval” seem to capture the essence of my current plight, but what is it that set this storm in motion?  

A couple of days ago I woke up to a sea of gray skies and grumbling thunder in the distance and out of the blue the word “tempest” seemed to roll into my thoughts like a cumulonimbus.  It may just have been the weather that lead to that thought, but I think it was more my state of mind at that moment, which, for lack of a better term was becoming “tempestuous.”

I looked out the window and said to myself, “I need to read that play; I need to read  Shakespeare’s The Tempest” so I moseyed on over to the bookshelf in my living room, scoured the shelves for my Norton’s Anthology and started reading.

What intrigued me most about this story is the fact that the titular “tempest” is man made.  Prospero, a duke that has been ousted from power by his ambitious brother, uses magic to conjure a storm that causes a shipwreck, leaving his brother and other conspirators stranded on the island to which Prospero has been exiled.  The storm permeates the characters’ dialogue, causing them to seek shelter from violent winds, turbulent downpours and stentorian thunder.  But while these characters seek shelter from the storm, they believe that it was borne of the supernatural, not a fellow human being.  The possibility of a man-made storm, so powerful as to wreak such havoc, does not even occur to them.  

The storm in the play is manufactured as a means of righting a perceived wrong, but Prospero is not without his own guilt--his own culpability in attempting to play God by toying with people’s lives and manufacturing fate. Hmm. Why does that sound familiar? Cold-hearted, power-hungry administrators, maybe?  

Seriously, the parallels to my life are infinite, but there is one theme that truly resonates with me:  The theme of free will versus fate--personal determination versus destiny--continues to haunt me as I seek shelter from the storm that has enveloped me.

“I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be passed.” -Trinculo, from The Tempest

It used to be that when a storm was imminent, I would embrace the coming rain, the cloudy skies that hang low like clotheslines drooped heavy with wet.  There used to be something contemplative about the grayness, an opening up of possibility that I found soothing.  

Now, though, the grayness portends gloom, and I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to see my way through the darkness.  Now, instead of taking comfort in it, I just take cover.  

Maybe that’s because everything is falling apart.  I lost my job, developed a medical problem I couldn’t pay for, my television broke, my car is on its last legs, and my father’s illness is becoming too much for my mother to bear.  My mother is someone who I would always turn to when I was in trouble, and she always knew what to say to make me feel better.  Now, though, I can’t bring myself to burden her with my tale of woe, knowing that she’s coping with one of her own.  

People never really talk about the burden placed on primary care givers.  My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about eight years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that my family and I began to notice a significant change in my mother’s behavior.  

As of late, she seems more frail to me, not physically but emotionally.  She called me up the other day and said, “I just needed someone to talk to.”  The loneliness is what gets to her, I think.  People don’t realize how cruel a joke Alzheimer’s is:  the person diagnosed with the disease is still alive and present physically, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually, that person is dead.  When a person dies, we weep, we grieve, and then we bury that grief in six feet of dirt.  When a person is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, grief becomes a way of life.  Grief walks around the house searching for the coffee maker he can no longer locate in the kitchen next to the microwave. Grief is what we’re greeted with when we look in my father’s eyes, now vacant and confused by my stranger’s face. 

When he was healthy, my father was full of life--always the life of the party and full of passion for the art that he created.  It was that passion and charm that drew my mother to him when they first met.  But Alzheimer’s has erased the man my father was, replacing him with an empty shell devoid of memory.  My father spends his days doing word search puzzles, most of the time holed up in the bedroom that has become his comfort zone.  My mother is always trying to take him places and keep him active so as to stimulate his cognitive abilities, but my father always ultimately retreats to that space.  It’s as though in the recesses of his mind, there is a storm of a different sort, a disturbance of his organized thoughts, an upheaval of memory.  

When I visit my parents these days, I often walk into their bedroom to see my father sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning toward the lamp, stooped over his book of word searches.  He looks restful and snug, as though he, like the jester Trinculo, has found shelter, trying to “shroud [himself there] till the dregs of the storm be past.”  

Of course, my father’s storm is here to stay, so as a family we continue to try to weather it.

The Dylan Effect

I can relate to the desire to seek shelter.  Whether my new routine of retreating to the comfort of my laptop screen, or listening to music that reduces me to tears, I gotta do what I gotta do to get through this.  

The other evening, my boyfriend Adam put on Bob Dylan’s greatest hits.  He was sitting on the hardwood floor in our living room, adjusting (as he always does) some technical element of his stereo that had to be adjusted in order to produce optimal listening conditions.  When “Shelter From the Storm” came on, I, of course, started to cry and I walked over to him, leaned down, and kissed him while Dylan serenaded us:

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,

Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail,

Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.

Come in, she said,

Ill give you shelter from the storm.

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin there

With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.

She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.

Come in, she said,

Ill give you shelter from the storm.

I kissed him while I cried, and he let me cry until I was ready to stop.  He looked at me and said, “Oh, Smith” and then we laughed.

Sound and Silence: What to do when life's cacophony turns quiet

“Do not speak unless you can improve the silence.” -proverb

Ever since my TV remote went on the fritz a couple of weeks ago, preventing me from being able to change the channel, I have had the distinguished privilege of watching only one station:  the one that broadcasts that gem of investigative journalism called Cheaters.  The novelty of this program soon wore off as I quickly realized I had no desire to watch cuckolded husbands disintegrate under harsh fluorescent lights while strangers gawked in fascination.  I knew I was wandering down a dangerous path when one day I noticed that I could not peel myself off the futon, as my brain had melted like a birthday candle, affixing it’s remains to the cozy canvas cushion beneath it.  

So I turned the television off, and off it has pretty much stayed.  

The mornings have been the hardest.  At first I felt restless, not knowing what to do with my coffee cup if not hold it while watching the morning news.  And what about Regis and Kelly, Oprah, The View?  Without my morning routine of watching famous people talk to other famous people--or simply listening to them when I would get up to wash out my cereal bowl and brush my teeth,--everything was much too quiet.  After all, the television chatter had become my life’s white noise, the constant, comforting buzz in the background that made me feel like I wasn’t alone.  What would I do without Joy Behar’s witty repartee?  Without Regis’s face-in-the-camera-for-emphasis wild gesticulations?  And then it hit me.  Maybe, just maybe, I could embrace the morning silence, and start to listen--not to famous people I didn’t know--but to the people I did know, the people I cared about, and the people who cared about me in turn.

I haven’t always been a good listener; in fact I think I’ve always been a terrible one, much too self-centered to stop thinking about myself to truly hear the thoughts, fears or joys of someone else.  So that’s where I would start. In an effort to embrace the new silence in my life, I would begin to get in touch with old friends with whom I’d lost touch.  Instead of combatting the quietude with aimless activity, I would resolve myself to reaching out, to doing something that wouldn’t be entirely about me. 

The Price of Selflessness

It was a lovely surprise when a teacher friend of mine--one I’ve known since grammar school --called me up a couple of days ago.  We had a lot of catching up to do as we hadn’t talked in almost two years (the fault of that grad school Ivory Tower that causes anyone outside it to cease to exist).

We had a great conversation, during which she mentioned that her classroom was still not ready for the first day of school.  She casually asked if I would like to help her get things organized, as she really needed the help and knew that I really needed to get out of the house.  I readily agreed because I did need to get out, but mostly because I wanted to help a friend.  I hadn’t done much in the way of reaching out to any of my friends the past couple of years because of that self-centeredness I alluded to earlier, so I was excited about seeing my old friend as well as her classroom.

After hanging up the phone, my excitement about our upcoming visit suddenly halted the moment I looked in the mirror and noticed some things.   

“My roots are black and these damn grays are uncontrollable!” I said, pulling my hair up in a vertical stretch.  “I can’t leave the house looking like this!”  Then I leaned in closer to examine my eyebrows, only to conclude that they were now so bushy from lack of attention that I would need something akin to a weed whacker to tame them.  The silence of my surroundings seemed to amplify these voices in my head: “You look like a full-blown recluse!  Where’s your beard and ragged clothing?”

Upon examining my upper lip for signs of the beard, the voices grew louder and more critical. They convinced me that I had fallen apart at the seams and that my friend would obviously notice.  These were the shallow thoughts that pervaded my mood for the rest of that evening.  My friend hadn't seen me in a very in a long time, and this is what she was going to see?  I was so disgusted and depressed that I poured a glass of Gascon Malbec, walked out onto my deck, and proceeded to brood.  

By the time I’d finished my second glass, my mood had begun to improve slightly.  While I was brooding over my lack of grooming, I also perused some of the writings I’d done recently about the things I’d been going through since I lost my job.  Surprisingly, I read things that I agreed with, that I believed in, things like wanting to be a better friend and not consumed by material possessions.  After re-reading some of those writings, I decided I was going to wake up in the morning, do my best to look presentable--eyebrows and all--and enjoy my visit with my friend.  

Back in the Classroom Again 

Because of the flat tire on my car that I had no money to fix, my friend graciously agreed to pick me up.  When I opened her car door the next morning, she smiled, gave me a hug and didn’t utter a word about my eyebrows.  Instead, she complimented me on my hair, and we picked up right where we had left off a couple of years ago.  In short it felt just like old times, two girlfriends giggling about boys, jobs, and the crazy world we live in. 

The work we did in her classroom that day was tedious but ultimately meaningful.  My job was to sort through boxes of classroom books and organize them into a genre-based library.  My friend teaches third grade, so as a junior high and high school teacher, I was utterly charmed by such titles as The Case of the Sneaky Snowman, Ice Cream Cones for Sale, and my personal favorite Sit!, which featured on its cover a smiling, tutu-clad elephant sitting daintily on a tiny stool (I joked with my friend that if I ever got a teaching gig again, I wanted that book for classroom management purposes!).

By the end of the day, her classroom had started to look, as my friend expressed while leaping girlishly in the air, like a classroom.  Talking to my friend that day, between gulps of cold coffee and mini jam sessions (she has the BEST taste in music!), I couldn’t believe the passion that she still possesses for the work that she does.  I mean, she really loves to teach.  I listened to her tell stories about some of the students she’s had who have touched her life, and it was so obvious that she is someone who belongs in this profession.  Wow, I thought.  There really are some people who were meant to be teachers, and clearly, my friend is one of them.

Enjoying the Silence?

After spending the day with my friend, talking, laughing, and yes, listening, I felt like my spirit had been boosted.  That evening, the familiar silence that permeates my apartment was more pronounced when punctuated by a train whistle in the distance, a dog’s bark, or my refrigerator’s intermittent hum.  These sounds are the new soundtrack of my life, as I grapple with a future that is unknown to me.  But I’m learning to kind of like the quiet.  I can’t quite say I’m enjoying it, but I am starting to appreciate it.  

So while my TV is still on the fritz, and there is no Oprah and no Regis and Kelly, there might just be a little joy.  

Toilets, Tires, and Earlobes: why our lives are hopelessly full of holes

About a year ago I noticed that a little lump, the size of a pea, had suddenly appeared on the right side of my back.  Barely noticeable to the human eye, it blended in with my pale white skin, merely a shadow, perhaps, if someone made a concerted effort to spot it.

A while back, I showed it to my doctor during a routine check-up, and he assured me that it was nothing more than a lipoma, a benign cyst that was nothing that I should be worried about.  He told me that unless it started to grow in size or alter its appearance in any way, there was absolutely no need for concern.  

When it started growing in diameter, I thought to myself, “Maybe I should be concerned.”  To make matters worse it also began to discolor, at which point I had become officially worried.

By the time I had mustered the courage to show it to my boyfriend, it had grown to the size of a mini muffin top, and the color was, well, I’ll leave it to the imagination.  

My boyfriend agreed that it would have to be looked at. “You’re going to have to have it looked at,” he said, to which I replied, reminding him as if he wasn’t already keenly aware, “But I don’t have insurance.”  

Ah, there’s the rub.  Since I was laid off from my teaching position in June, I haven’t had any type of medical coverage.  I was supposed to be able to continue the coverage I’d had through the school district but due to miscommunications and mailings that never arrived (as though my apartment exists in some celestial vortex), I lost that opportunity, leaving me uninsured and vulnerable to astronomical medical costs. 

Upon showing the lump to my mother, as well as my sisters, they convinced me that despite my insurance situation I would have to get it looked at.  “You’ve GOT to get that thing LOOKED at!” they insisted.  So finally I did.  I decided to go to a local clinic I’d been to on previous occasions when my primary physician was unavailable on short notice.  I walked in, waited to be called, and then came the part I’d been dreading.

“So, Miss Smith, what will be your form of payment?”  the receptionist/nurse asked politely.

“I’ll be paying with my debit card,” I said casually, my eyes looking everywhere but at her.

“Have you been here before?”

“Yes.”

“Is your insurance the same, then?” she inquired.

“Um, actually...” I mumbled. “Actually, I don’t have insurance right now because, well, see I was laid off...”

“I see,” she said without looking at me.  “So you’re self pay.”

“I guess so,” I said.  “Self pay.”

Self pay was a phrase I’d never heard before because I’ve never been without insurance, so as I spoke the words back to the lady behind the desk, the meaning started to reverberate.  At first it sounded sort of empowering, as in, “I, mySELF, will PAY!”  or “I can take care of mySELF by PAYing for this!”  Yeah!  Take that!

But the delusions of grandeur quickly disappeared the moment the nurse called the doctor over after he’d examined me.  During his examination, he told me that the infection was pretty serious and that he would have to “get in there” to clean it out.  When he told the nurse about the procedure he’d be performing, she stopped and looked befuddled, as though he’d instructed her to lube me up for a lobotomy.

“Um, Doctor,” she said, frantically.  “Did you know she’s SELF pay.”

“Oh, “ the nice doctor said. “Well, then we won’t charge you full price for the procedure.  But we can discuss that in my office.”

It seems to me that nurse/receptionist could have taken a cue from the nice doctor about something called CONFIDENTIALITY!  But I digress.  After the procedure was over, I was left with a delightfully excruciating pain surrounding the newly excavated archeological site that was my former mini muffin. When I got home, I could not bring myself to actually remove the bandage and look at it, but in my imagination that hole in my back was a real force to reckon with.  Eventually, my fear morphed into obsession, to the point that I would contort my body to see in the mirror if the hole was still oozing anything gross.  

When the day came that the hole in my back had stopped oozing whatever it was that had to be oozed, I composed a song with an accompanying happy dance to the tune of “There’s a Hole in the Bucket, Dear Liza.”  My version went like this:  “The hole in my back’s not oozing, not oozing, not oozing!  The hole in my back’s not oozing, not oozing, no more, hey!”  The “hey” was accentuated by a sideways kick rivaled only by a backwoods Rockette stage show.  “Finally!” I thought to myself.  “The hole in my back’s not oozing!”  

And thus began the series of events that would begin to resemble one another in their level of inconvenience, their “you’ve got to be kidding factor,” and the common theme that ran through all of them:  holes.  

Allow me to elaborate.  The other morning my significant other drove his car (our only car, currently) to work.  He came home with news that one of the tires had gone flat, i.e. there was a hole in it.  

Two nights ago, we were watching a South Park re-run in the living room when suddenly part of our ceiling fell through.  Apparently, there was a toilet leak in the unit above us.  Once again, a gaping hole had been carved from my life, leaving what looked like the slobbery maw of some mythical  creature.  

I wish I could say that after my ceiling collapsed I composed a silly tune so I’d be more inclined to laugh about it.  But I didn’t.  Every time I look up at the hole that hangs over my dining room table (since moved, of course), I ponder the ubiquitous presence of holes.

The biggest of these right now is the hole in my head.  After a couple of weeks of coping with the fact that I haven’t found a teaching job, I still feel lost and very much afraid of what I’m going to do with myself.  Add to that the issues of family relationships, and there’s a great big hole in my heart, to boot.  

We spend our lives poking holes in our bodies for various reasons, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes not:  Ear piercings, belly piercings, shots, major surgeries, minor procedures.  Maybe the little voids we strive to fill are part of a cosmic plan to re-order the universe.  Or perhaps you find this theory full of....holes?

In sports, the hole takes on a whole new meaning.  In golf, the ultimate shot is a hole in one.  In basketball, the ball is thrown into a bottomless basket or hole. Pool is a game that is played on a table dotted with  dark, mysterious, velvet covered apertures called “pockets”  which are really just holes into which balls are poked by a stick.  

All this poking, piercing, and puncturing results in a variety of scenarios, everything from winning the game to staving off infection or being able to adorn our ears with diamond-studded dangles.  We keep trying to fill them or plug them up to make something whole again.  Whatever the result, the holes seem to remain, whether in our pool tables, our theories, or our hearts.  

Growing Toward the Light: life lessons from a tea rose

For my thirty-seventh birthday, my whole family got together at my parents’ house to celebrate the occasion with pound cake, mom’s famous coffee, and a few tasty cocktails (not necessarily in that order!).  It was April 24th, thirty seven years to the day that I had graced the earth with my presence...truly something to celebrate in the context of the turmoil I’d experienced, lo those many years.  I can’t explain the phenomenon of birthday ecstasy, but every year, as mature and independent a woman as I am, I still get giddy when people wish me happy birthday.  Perhaps it’s not such a mystery, though, that feeling that wells up inside us when people sing (or half shout) “Happy Birthday” in twelve different keys while we gaze at a flaming sphere of frosting, flour and egg.  After all, aren’t birthday parties some of the fondest memories of our childhood?  Isn’t that when we learned to wish upon a burning candle and then actually believed that our wish would come true?  And even if it wasn’t our own birthday party but that of a brother or sister or best friend, we still gathered around that flaming sphere of butter cream deliciousness and dreamt of our own upcoming birthday that was only 78 and 1/2 days away, secretly making our own wish in the flickering darkness.

A family gathering may not be every person’s ideal way to spend a birthday, for there will always be sibling rivalries over who has the hottest husband, the biggest and most stylishly decorated home, and the smartest most well-adjusted kids. Believe me: more often than not, issues similar to those contribute to the Smith family dynamic, but none of them surfaced that night. At all. It was simply a delightful gathering of people who loved me in spite of my many faults. And that felt good. It felt good that people showed up even if they really didn’t feel like it. As my four sisters and one brother (another brother was unable to attend) gathered around the table with my mom and dad by my side, I felt loved. Corny? Probably. But it’s true. Things got even better when my sister Susie said, “Okay, it’s time for presents!” Presents! Who doesn’t love to get presents? While I do enjoy giving, once again there’s something about a beautifully wrapped package that taps into our childhood happy place and melts that serious adult façade we’re forced to wear when we face the outside world.

One of the gifts I received that night was a tea rose plant from my sister Becky. I remember how she described it as I peeled off the neatly wrapped pink and white tissue paper: “I know that regular roses are beautiful," she said. "But there’s a sweetness about a tea rose plant that’s equally beautiful.” I couldn’t agree more, which is why, when the plant started drying up after a couple of weeks I became very upset. I kept thinking, “Why do all of my plants go through this when I bring them home to this apartment? Is the air too dry? Is there too much sun? Maybe not enough? Am I not giving them enough attention? Do I exude anti-plant love?”

Lo and behold, that little tea rose plant surprised me by finally seeing the light, literally, just as my born again geranium had. Out of the blue one day, I noticed a tiny bud protruding from a rogue stem that had gradually diverged from its neighbors. Little by little the fragile wisp of a stem had begun reaching toward the source of light that fed it, craning its neck like a baby bird poking through its shell. Some might say that this kind of thing happens all the time, right? Plants are just plants. But to me, as I embark on this journey of joblessness, self-evaluation, and fear of what the future might hold, nature’s resilience continues to inspire me. After all, plants are like people: they grow toward the light.

“The Road Not Taken” Part II: the myth of the elusive master’s degree

“The only real education comes from what goes counter to you.”

André Gide (1869-1951) 

From the time we were old enough to be dragged out of bed on a bright September morning and nudged out the door on the first day of school, we were told repeatedly that education is the key to our success.  Whether we heard it from our mother while she insisted we finish our homework before going out to play, or from our teachers who encouraged us after we failed that lousy math test, or from clueless politicians on the campaign trail, who preached the need to educate every child so that none would be left behind, the message is the same:  If we study, work hard, and go to school, we will find success.  

As a child who was practically born with a book in her mouth, I hardly needed the nudge toward academics that some children do.  I loved my teachers, and I wanted them to love me back.  I was the student who raced home in feverish delight when I earned an A+ on a spelling test.  I was the student who, when assigned a short story to write, drafted three versions and revised until I deemed it fit for sharing.  Yes, I was often the teacher’s pet, but not because I sought special privileges.  Rather, I really loved to learn, and I yearned to be in the presence of others like me.  

Considering this early interest in academia, it seemed a natural progression for me to go to college to study literature and to become, big surprise, a teacher.  I think I always knew that I planned on teaching high school, but only because my real love--writing--was just a pipe dream, something the F. Scott Fitzgeralds, J.D. Salingers, and T.S. Eliots of the world could do.  First of all, my first name did not consist of initials; secondly, I could never write like they did.  Real writers know from a very early age that they were put on this earth to write.  Real writers don’t have to go to college to learn how to write; real writers learn through the practice of revision and by sharing their latest works with their fellow expatriates while drinking wine in a smokey Parisian café.  Real writers were touched by the grace of God; I, on the other hand, was not. 

That was the illusion I was under as I enrolled in an undergraduate program at a small catholic college in a swanky Chicago suburb. When I was asked by my counselor what course of study I’d like to follow, I immediately said, “Education.”  I never expected to suffer a nervous breakdown of sorts during that first semester of college, but I did.   All of a sudden I felt like I didn’t belong there, so I stopped attending classes, failed to withdraw by the official deadline, and then simply failed.  

Eventually I found my way back to that same school, dragging my tail between my legs, begging to be re-admitted.  I was, and I graduated in the spring of 1996 with a B.A. in English Education.  After that came eleven years of teaching high school, middle school, and junior high in various places around the city and suburbs.  The time I spent at one particular school, which I will call Fallbrook, lies at the crux of that second questionable decision I alluded to previously.  It was at this school that I worked with a student teacher whom I will call Jane.  Jane quickly became a good friend because she was very supportive and actually wound up teaching me as much as I taught her.  She was older than I was, but looked very young, a fact apparently not lost on our principal who the following year was seen on video tape engaging in sexual acts with Jane and other staff members on top of the desk in his office.

As absurd and disgusting as the whole thing was, I now question my ultimate decision to resign my position at Fallbrook to enroll in a full-time graduate school program.  The program I selected would require me to quit my job because the courses I would be taking were offered at all hours of the day, so there would be no way for me to juggle both school and work.  

I wrestled with the decision to leave a life of stability.  I had been at that school for two years, and if I had remained there--if I had chosen a more “traditional” graduate school program like most teachers did--I would now be a tenured teacher at Fallbrook Elementary and I wouldn’t be sitting here at this laptop right now; rather, I’d be expounding on the virtues of good sentence structure while taking intermittent gulps from my bright red travel mug before a sea of sleepy, half-awake  faces.

So did I do the right thing?  I was accepted to an excellent school that was located in a beautiful neighborhood along Lake Michigan.  My boyfriend and I took long walks around campus, watching the leaves on the plentiful trees change color, taking in the beauty of the campus architecture.  I felt alive, engaged, and eventually, exhausted.  But I was convinced at the time that my life would never be the same once that precious piece of paper was placed in my hot little hands; once I received that diploma, life would be sweet. 

In the spring of 2008, I finally got my wish, earning my M.A. in the Humanities from The University of Chicago.  I found another teaching gig at a school that was not exactly my dream job, but the salary was good, more than I’d ever made before.  Consequently, I learned to live with the loud hallways, constantly cursing children, and mildly inadequate administrators.  I learned to live with all of it because I was suddenly able to afford the things I’d always wanted to buy and do.  Sounds totally shallow, doesn’t it?  But all of the monetary bonuses aside, I also felt like I’d reached some of those kids, and that really was more important than the money.

Like all good things, that job came to an end when I was informed that “due to budgetary constraints” I would not be re-hired for the upcoming school year.  I cried, I raged, and then I cried some more.  I couldn't understand how I could find myself unemployed, uninsured, and completely uncertain of my future  after I'd followed the rules and continued my education as our parents, teachers, and politicians  told us to.   My teacher friends assured me that once I had that expensive piece of paper in my hands, my résumé would be at the top of every school district’s list and that I would have no problem finding a teaching job.  Last summer I was able to find one; this summer, there’s none to be found.

So again I ask, was my foray into graduate school a wise decision in light of all that’s happened since?  Am I really a master of humanity as it states boldly on the diploma that hangs over my desk?  Am I really a master of anything?  

I’m reminded of a quote from the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley:  

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

Perhaps I am a master of at least one thing.