Homesick

This is going to be sad and maybe a little whiny. You've been warned. Skip if you want to.

I'm going through the last bits of some data related to my dissertation project - mostly, looking up some information about the different research sites. This is in hopes of getting the second paper out of my dissertation and maybe someday getting it published. (I defended the thing in 1999. The first paper came out last year. Academic publishing is Hell.)

But it makes me horribly homesick, which seems strange to me. I mean, I've lived HERE for eight years now, almost as long as I lived in the place I'm homesick for.

I suppose part of it was, like youth being wasted on the young, I didn't realize how carefree my grad-school days were until now. Now, when I'm responsible for teaching 13 credit-hours, and getting research done, and guiding students through their research, and running the Youth Group (and we had some minor vandalism last week, caused by a child who WILL NOT BE COMING BACK until he can prove he's mature enough to handle it, but I still got in trouble for his actions), and serving on committees, and and and. It's like there's always someone "needing" me for something.

And it wasn't that way in grad school. Oh, I taught - I was a TA. But I had a wonderful (I realized it then but appreciate it even more now) professor I worked for - any crap from the students, his blanket policy was, "If they don't want to listen to you, send them to me and I will back you up." (I think I've shared here the story of how a student basically TOLD me I was going to accept a paper of his 3 weeks late, I sent him over to the prof's office to see what the prof said, and I had the delight of hearing the prof's "HELL NO!" echo down the hall).

I mean, not like it's any great insight or anything but: being a responsible person is hard. And it's tiring. And it's also often thankless. But, God help me, I cannot do otherwise.

And part of it is just the weather. I remember the first year I was here, about this time, I looked at the calendar and calculated how long it was likely to be before it cooled down, and then I just closed my office door, put my head down on my desk, and had a little cry. It's so HOT here. And so HUMID. And it doesn't seem to change. It's kind of like the movie Groundhog Day, but without being about to drink 37 milkshakes without suffering any ill effects, and without the eventual redemption scene.

And it's ragweed season. One thing I've discovered about allergies - Claritin and the desensitization shots help with most of the physical symptoms, but they don't touch the exhaustion and dysphoria I feel when the pollen's thick. It's just something that has to be lived through, but it makes me miserable every August. (I've also been waking up at 3 am and not being able to back to sleep. Even if I go to bed at 9 pm and fall asleep right away - unlikely for me - that's only 6 hours of sleep, which is not enough.)

So I'm sure part of this is kind of out of my control. But knowing WHY I'm sad doesn't help much to undo it.

But anyway: I was relatively carefree. I didn't have as many ugly confrontations with the entitled side of human nature. I was also living with my parents, so instead of having to keep a whole house and yard, I only had a comparatively few things I had to do, pitching-in-wise. It's a lot easier to clean house when you have one or two other people working alongside you. So there were a lot of good things I probably didn't fully appreciate at the time that are now gone forever.

But, the other thing is just the whole idea of the locations - most of these sites I had visited myself or at least knew where they were. The names are familiar to me. I can picture being out there, in the field, on a nice summer day (to think, in those days I complained about 80 degrees being "hot." It didn't even get down below 80 for the low last night here). I knew what I was doing, I was pretty good at it, I could just go and work and get stuff done. And it was satisfying. I had one goal, one directive: complete the research and finish the dissertation.

I miss having single big goals.

I also miss the people I worked with. I called in just about every favor I was owed that summer to get field hands - I promised to teach people the different plants, if they just would come and help carry equipment for me. I took people out to lunch (which I loved doing ANYWAY) in return for help. All of my officemates helped me on various occasions. My advisor's wife went out and helped me. The guy I was dating went out and helped me.

(And right now, that's what's hardest - I'm working through the sites he and I visited together. And I remember that time - how I honestly and seriously and naively thought that I was going to marry him. It was the one time in my life when I can truly say I was in love. He made me feel like I was beautiful and it was endlessly interesting to talk to him - we could talk for four hours about "nothing."

Needless to say, since I am still single now, it did not work out between us. But I think of the hope I had that summer, how the future seemed golden, how I'd get my Ph.D. and marry this guy and we'd find jobs together at some little college and we'd buy a house together and and and....)

Being a grown-up is very different from how I envisioned it when I was a child. And being out in the work-force, being a "full grown-up" is very different from how I envisioned it would be that summer.

Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm not dissatisfied. Most of the time I'm pretty happy. I'm grateful to have the job I do, I'm grateful to live somewhere where I can afford a house as a single woman. But reading the old names of the towns and the preserves where I worked brings up the old pictures from that summer in my head and it kind of makes me wish I had enjoyed it more while it was happening. And it kind of makes me wish I could go back to those places - and this time take the time to stop at that little cafe for a piece of pie, or bring a change of clothes so that when fieldwork was done, I wouldn't think I was too grubby to go into that bookstore. And most of all, to be able to bask in what would turn out to be my last summer before the yoke of responsibility dropped onto my neck.

"My good people, enjoy being 20 years old; you have it but once in your life." - Edith Piaf