The first official showing was taking forever. I had returned from a morning spent talking to Chicago public high school students about careers, and I was exhausted. All I had wanted was to go home, change out of my respectable "career woman" attire, eat, and take a nap. But the cars parked outside my house let me know in no uncertain terms I was unwelcome; my house had been on the market for little more than twenty-four hours, and it no longer belonged to me. I wondered about who was inside, what kind of people had packed into the gray minivan in my driveway to pick up where I had left off. I sat across the street in the corporate parking lot watching my house, waiting for the interlopers to emerge. They did, eventually, a young family with four children. They stood outside for a while, taking in the details of the house that had been my home for almost twenty years, peering closely at the brick, kicking its tires. The house that had once lured me in, the home I have, for so long, taken for granted.
When my friend asked me recently to participate in a "Career Day" panel for high school students, I reprimanded him for mocking me. He insisted he was serious. "Which career would you like me to discuss?" I figured that would stump him. The very word career suggests longevity and success. A lifetime of achievement in a particular area. An area that commands a fat pay check, and even an occasional pat on the back. I defied him to identify a career in my life, something high school students might want to emulate. Something that proves I can stick with it.
My friend was a little bit stumped but he remained undeterred. "You're a writer. Talk about your career as a writer." He might as well have told me I should tell these kids I'm a stripper. There's not much difference really; I am equally trained and qualified for both. As if reading my mind, he added to the irony: "just emphasize education." It's not that I have anything against education; it just seems to me if you're going to tell a bunch of already cynical and lazy kids how important it is, all those letters after your name should probably bear some relevance to what you do.
As it turns out, I probably could have said I was a stripper, even offered up a little demonstration, and very few would have noticed. Well except maybe the occasional adult wandering in from the hallway to check on things. Most of the kids looked comatose; the ones who were conscious just looked annoyed. One girl announced that she hates every minute of every day at school. Ironically, she seemed more engaged than most, and she was perpetually smiling. I don't think she hates it at all; she's just waiting, each day, for something to knock her socks off. I get that.
By the time I arrived in the third classroom, I had bored myself to tears. Even my fellow panelists were starting to sound stale, and they were a lot more interesting than I am. For my final presentation, I decided to focus less on what I have done and what I know and more on what I had learned from the sleepy students in the prior two classes. One, clearly as baffled as I was about how someone who has flitted from one thing to another could possibly talk about something as permanent as a career, challenged me to explain my meandering path. "How do you know when you're done?" she had asked.
How did I ever know I was done, ready to move on to something else or, in some cases, nothing at all. Good question. My initial response seemed lame, at least to me. "When you're no longer doing the job the way you know you should be doing it." If that were true, attrition rates would be astronomical. The whole point of the learning curve is to get us to a place where we can do some things with our hands tied behind our backs, take shortcuts, do things by rote. Nobody leaves simply because they're no longer putting in the effort. I thought about my house. I would have been long gone had no longer doing the job the way you know you should be doing it been the standard.
I told the students in my third and final class about that question. I told them that, in business anyway, there are no awards for outlasting everyone else. Well, theoretically there are. There's always someone who gets called up for that thirty year pin. The guy who's been there longer than everyone else, watched many of the newbies come and then go and sometimes pass him by on the ladder. The guy who is an essential cog in the wheel by virtue of his attendance rather than his skill. I have never been that guy, never will be. But I've never left simply because things got too easy, or I got complacent. That would be silly. I told the students in that final class that you just know. Sometimes it's because you're no longer learning anything new and you need to move on. Sometimes it's because you know you just don't belong there anymore.
The young family with four children liked my house. I could tell they did; I had wanted to zip over from my stalking post and tell them everything that was wrong with it. There's another young family rushing to see it today, afraid it's going to slip between their fingers before they can make an offer. Good news, I suppose, except I suddenly am plagued by doubt, uncertain that it is time for me to go. I am no longer complacent; I have spent a good chunk of time recently fixing up the old place, reacquainting myself with its spaces and the memories that lurk within. It's been anything but easy, but I was clearly the woman for the job. I have been there from the beginning, from the day we staked our claim and tossed our kids' Aladdin bath mats by the sinks in their bathroom. I have been there as the clothing in different sizes and the school notebooks and the trophies and all the other evidence of lives being lived has accumulated like dust bunnies in every nook and cranny. And I have sifted through it all, deciding what goes where, and what just goes. I know, intellectually at least, that my work in that house is done. There is little left for me to learn, nothing left to accumulate. I no longer belong there. The young family with four children has much to learn, but it is time for them -- or some other growing clan -- to take our place.
As much as I don't want to, I will probably stand watch again this morning, stalk my own house while some potential replacements wander through and determine whether they are the right ones for the job. I will leave with a heavy heart but I will know it was time to go. I won't necessarily like it, but I will know.
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