Back in the Black

I read a blog post on Shakespeare written by a friend of mine who went to the same graduate school as I did – the Shakespeare Annex in Stratford-upon-Avon – and suddenly I wanted to drop this law school lark and go get my doctorate in Shakespeare.

Perhaps I can be a student forever!

I would have loved a PhD in Shakespeare.  However, what does one do with such a thing?  And when I was getting my MA years ago, I was borrowing American Dollars to live in a British Pounds Sterling economy – in other words, every dollar I borrowed was worth half a pound, and that wouldn’t even buy you a cup of coffee let alone pay the (very high) rent.  So to supplement my huge (and yet simultaneously small) loan amount, I worked full time as well, pulling pints in a pub chock full of Atmosphere and British Olde Worlde Charm.  I wouldn’t trade the hours I spent at the Dirty Duck, Avonside – but the minimum wage I made was not enough to keep me in meat pies and lager, and the debt spiral wasn’t one I could’ve sustained for years during a PhD program that would not yield me a living wage when I was done.  Besides which, I just couldn’t handle the weather.*

But oh, today.  Today (speaking of weather), as the Caribbean style New Orleans summer swelters on, so that walking into the city streets feels like putting on a wet wool coat. . .  today, as the job prospects wither. . . today, as my American friend writes her blog post all about reading documents that are centuries older than this whole entire country . . . today, I’m daydreaming about living in Stratford again, and wondering if the Professor and I would have better luck abroad?  Perhaps we should pack it in and find another country with jobs and free healthcare and PROSPECTS for two well educated people.  We have other friends doing this right now – she quit law school, and they moved to Costa Rica.  I gave up the traveling, country-hopping, carefree life I loved for this more settled life, in order to attain financial security and raise a family.  Financial security is giving me the finger – maybe it’s time to up stakes and take my family and go live along the banks of the River Avon again, or perhaps the Nile, or the Congo, or anywhere else?

🙂  Well, my friends, one thing that being 32 years old and having traveled the world has taught me is this: no matter where you go, there you are.  The Nile is just a river.  I live on the Mississippi right now, the Big Muddy.  That’s enough river for me.  We’ll slog away, because that’s what you do.  Someday our luck will turn, because it just does.  Someday one of us may be dreadfully ill, or one of our kids may be in trouble, and I’ll dream of these days when all I had to worry about was money and a job and healthcare and . . . nothing.  All of this is a whole lot of nothing.

I reserve the right to daydream about my old traveling days, though.  And further, to dream of the day when we start making enough to have a vacation fund, so I can travel once more.  I’ll get back to Stratford at least once in my life.  I’ll read a Shakespeare folio again.  My life has not lost its romance simply because it has lost some of its transience.

This weekend I danced with my oldest son in the kitchen.  I taught him to twirl.  He reached for my hand, again and again.  It’s all for him, what I’m doing now, and he pays me back tenfold every day of his life.

*In case no one’s mentioned this, English weather is really really really really really bad.  Super depressing.  Drippy, cloudy, rainy, never very hot nor very cold.  We wore gloves during our fourth of July cookout (sponsored, need I even say this, by the Americans).  It was sunny approximately one day a month, and then not even for the whole day.  In wintertime, the sun comes up at 10am and goes down at 3pm.  D.E.P.R.E.S.S.I.N.G.