The Last Meeting

I know for a fact that there are a lot of us wondering what we’re doing here, in this moment—and how the blah-blah did we get here anyway? Especially after binge reading momblogs, I know there are many of us out here. And through personal experience, of course.

This afternoon I was suddenly directionless after an entire week of 5am rush-rush-everybody-up-and-get-clean and let’s get the heck out of here two minutes ago mornings, high speed stunt driving to make it to must-not be-late meetings, and lunches, and emergency emails and office drama and dinners with interviewees, and cell phone calls to make sure that person X is where they are supposed to be given this thing that’s happening on the candidate’s schedule, and a cancelled class because I woke up and knew that showing up would be a bigger disaster than trying to pull something together….when I finished my last candidate lunch this afternoon I was suddenly at a loss.

My brain was empty. What do I do? What am I doing? Absolutely nothing came to me, so after the above-mentioned blog surfing I decided to visit my friend at the museum, who wasn’t there Still at a loss, I drove home—stopping briefly at Piggly Wiggly for pork loins, frozen peach cobbler, a pint of vanilla ice cream, lactose-free milk and instant sour cream and chive mashed potatoes. Pitiful as it may be, this is my idea of domesticity. In the area of home-cooked dinners, I have no pride or illusions.

On the way home, I learned that Octavia Butler had died. I listened to an old interview in which she talked about the year she spent on her grandmother’s chicken farm, and I started thinking about how I really have a desire to write about my childhood in Suttons Bay, the place I think of most when I think of what home was before I got married.

I sat down with my laptop when I got home, finally knowing that what I needed to do was write. Unfortunately, I also needed to compulsively check my email, through which I learned that at the precise moment that I was originally wondering what to do, I was supposed to meeting with a search committee to give my vote on which candidate should get a job.

My life is an endless series of ironies and opportunity for humility (enter peach cobbler and ice cream, stage right).