Aimsterville

“It’s a cruel, cruel summer/Now you’re gone/You’re not the only one” –”Cruel Summer”, by Bananarama

It’s September, and for the first time in over thirty years, I’m not anywhere near a school.

And, no, it’s not because I have a restraining order against me or anything like that.

Twenty years ago, I was leaving home for my first semester at college. And for every year after that, I was either in school or working as a faculty or staff member at various colleges and universities.

But not anymore. Due to a family move, I am without a job. And while I’ve been jobless before, those moments have usually occurred over the summer and would miraculously disappear before Labor Day.

But not this time. This year, I watched student move-in day at the state university on the local news and not out my office window. I didn’t go buy new clothes to teach in, I didn’t stand in line at the bookstore, I didn’t carefully label two-pocket folders with the names of classes that I would be taking or teaching.

Somehow, my possibly premature mourning for a life that I may never have again seems apt, coming as it does at the end of what felt like a particularly strange summer. This fall marking twenty years since I started college also means that this summer marked twenty years since I graduated from high school. And for most people, this summer would also mean a twenty-year high school reunion, but the fact that I was moving on the weekend of mine made me, as always, unlike “most people.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to begin with—not sure I wanted to see that my classmates hadn’t frozen in time with their big hair and Midwestern mullets and stone-washed jeans, not sure that I wanted to answer the “What are you up to?” question with “I’m an unemployed Ph.D. Wanna see some pictures of my husband and my cats?”—and so I was relieved to have the decision ultimately taken out of my hands. I don’t think I needed another reminder that things end and things begin. But while twenty years ago, high school ended and I had college to look forward to, now part of my supposed “grown-up” life has ended as well.

It’s just that this time I don’t know what I’m looking forward to.

Click here to read Part II