The other day, a former colleague of mine stopped by the
office to say hello. Her son had been accepted to Harvard the week before and
we all chatted happily with her, congratulating his accomplishment. I’d tutored
the boy a few years earlier when he’d been stuck in the hospital, receiving
chemotherapy for leukemia. Those sessions had always stuck with me; I remember
how rattled I felt walking around the pediatric oncology unit, looking at the
sick kids and frightened parents. It struck me as the worst thing that could
happen to a person.
Apparently I was wrong. She said that applying her son to
college and waiting to hear from Harvard had been harder than helping him
recover from leukemia. “At least with cancer you have something you can fight
against and smart doctors who tell you what to do. With college, your whole
life is in the hands of idiots.”
I wanted to punch her. I know it was a flippant remark and
probably not really indicative of how she feels – the stress of waiting for the
acceptance still fresh in her memory. But I honestly couldn’t think of any
statement I’d heard in a long time that so crystallized everything that’s wrong
with this high-pressure, fast-paced part of the world I’ve been living and
working in for the last 8 years. No matter what, you should want your child to
live more than you should want him to get into Harvard.
Jokingly, I told her what a friend of ours had told my
husband when he got his current, fancy-sounding job. I told her she had to help
him “keep it real.” Forget that, she laughed! “I say get a few gentleman’s C’s
and you’ll be set for life.” Um. Ok. I guess if anyone deserves to have a good
time in college and not worry about grades, it’s probably this kid. But still…
way to miss the point mom.
My husband and I are in the process of *seriously*
considering moving. His fancy-sounding job has gone well but he’s had to work
in an environment of egomaniacal, status-obsessed colleagues who are frankly
anything but collegial. They don’t share. They don't say hello. They’re
resistant to change in a way that makes me think that the word hidebound was
coined here. My husband tends to do pretty cutting-edge stuff and while they’d
like to keep him around as a curiosity, they’re not sure they want any more
like him – so forget about any institution-level infrastructure or support.
Have fun out there in the wilderness, loner.
My job has been both wonderful and terrible in ways that I
still try to wrap my head around on a daily basis. Imagine a rich and
stimulating environment where you get to help exactly the population of clients
you enjoy working with while simultaneously having access to amazing on-the-job
training and resources. A job where you get to bring your dog and there’s a
chef who comes twice a week to make staff lunch and you get to really help
people. And then imagine that there is absolutely no ability for advancement
and no matter how much you learn, you will always be just an employee and take
home 25% of what they bill for your time.
And all of this would be fine I guess, if we had some kind of
rich life or community outside of work but nope. Middle-aged people do NOT
socialize with a childless adult couple. I joined the board of a non-profit in
town to meet people and that’s been a moderate success but all the people I’ve
met have been well-meaning seniors or people my own age who don’t have time to
socialize because… they have kids. We’ve met some people through my husband’s
job but they don’t have time to socialize because… they have kids. And the
people at my office are all generally younger or… well, they have kids. As for
old friends – that hasn’t panned out either. One friend regularly visits her
brother who lives a mile from my office but we haven’t seen each other in
years. (I know, she’s busy. She has kids.) One friend lives 2 hours away and we’ve
visited twice. I do have one high school friend who doesn’t have kids and lives
nearby and that’s been great – but she’s one person. And my best friend… well,
let’s just say I texted her last week to say Happy Easter and I’ve yet to hear
back. Her hands aren’t just full, they’re overflowing: dying wife, problems at
work, sick kids. Not her fault.
It’s no one’s FAULT. We’re just isolated. We live in a rural
area and don’t have a religion or kids so this is what we get. I thought maybe my parents would come visit (albeit a mixed blessing) since they have friends in the area, but my mom comes for about 36 hours every 18 months when there's a Garden Club meeting nearby. Right now they're in Dubai. Good for them. But it just
can’t be like this forever. I mean, there are only so many films on Netflix
left that we haven’t watched. So we’re seriously thinking about moving. I’d
miss our pretty house in its beautiful setting. I’d miss sitting on the porch
on summer evenings and watching the birds play in the long grass of the marsh, smelling the salt breeze and waiting for the lightning bugs to emerge.
But the rest... I'm not sure anyone would notice or care that we'd gone.
