subtext

One day left in the work week: Thanksgiving Holiday. The second year I taught, sixteen years ago, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I left the school building at the end of the day drove across town to the bakery I had worked at for two years looking for the owner. I was going to ask for my job back. Judy probably would have hired me; I was desperate to quit teaching. Five minutes before I arrived at the bakery, Judy had left for the day. I ordered a cup of coffee and a cookie, then sat by the window and read the paper. Such are the vicissitudes of fate. Pictures of me from that Thanksgiving show me drawn and thin. The double stresses of a new baby, our first, and my first year teaching in Austin were physically draining me. By the end of the school year I had lost seventeen pounds; I weighed less than I had when I was a junior in high school. I was not having a good year. Today I am just tired. Most of the stress I have now is self-inflicted by my mid-life decision to go back to grad school and work on a doctorate. I wonder if maybe I should have just bought a new sports car instead.