The Trouble with Summer

I’m a teacher.  I love summer.  Summer is what keeps me sane.  Summer is the carrot on the end of the stick.  It is what I think about as I sit at the dining room table at 8 pm with a four inch stack of papers in front of me needing my attention and my red pen.

But summer is the bane of my life.

You see, during the school year, I have a rigid schedule from 6 am to 5 pm, and even after that, I might be working until 8 or later, depending on the homework I have to grade.  If I have time to slack off, it’s maybe 45 minutes to an hour at the end of the day before I go to bed with a certain knowledge that if I don’t, I’ll pay for it the next day.

But summer time?  I don’t have a care in the world.  I can get up when I please, do as I please, and go to sleep as I please.  That sounds great.  But for me it’s like living in a void.

I cannot quite express how it makes me feel.  This summer was worse than others.  The first part of it was fine while I traveled.  I usually had a place to go and see and a goal set for each day.  But then I went home to Mom and Pop’s for a month, and that’s when the emptiness set in.

I haven’t had my own home during the summer ever since I moved out, but that usually doesn’t bother me.  I don’t mind the un-rooted feeling, but this year I felt UProoted.  It’s a totally different feeling, and it’s horrible.  I feel like I don’t really have a home, nor do I have a purpose.  The vague dread of failure (failing what exactly I couldn’t say) clutches my chest and tightens around my throat.  I distract myself with Netflix.  I stay up late and wake up late, and it all just makes the feeling worse.  I try to force myself to workout, but I am isolated, and I cannot motivate myself every day.

But the worst feeling is when I realize I am drifting from my family.  I spend time with them, obviously, but their conversations are so different from mine now.  Every time I visit with my siblings, their discussion naturally flows around their lives and their children, but I have no children, and my life is 350 miles away.  I have nothing to add, and so I sit in silence.

Finally, I decide that I had better start cracking on preparing lessons for school and write my syllabus for my college level language and composition class.  The work is grueling and long, and I find myself reading and evaluating articles and essays for several hours each day.  Unfortunately, the topics I choose for the course are not pleasant, and my depressed outlook deepens.

But still the long work is not enough to fill my time or free me from the feeling of futile uselessness.  Despite the fact that I’m at my folks’ house, relaxing, taking it easy, I still wake in the middle of the night in terror, believing I have forgotten something important and someone’s life is on the line and I must go save them.

It doesn’t make sense.  This is supposed to be my home.  This is where I grew up.  These are the people I love.  I am supposed to be happy here, but I am restless, anxious, and afraid.  I think going back to my school year home will help, but when the day arrives to leave, my nieces and nephews flock around me to say goodbye.  They hug and kiss me and ask me why I have to go.

“Will you be back for Thanksgiving and Christmas?” Nathaniel asks, and my heart breaks.

“Of course I will,” I say, but I think, ‘Why does he ask me that?  I have never missed a Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Does he feel I am away so much he cannot count on me coming back?’

I don’t want to leave, but I cannot stay.  This is the first time I have left and felt like my work home was my real home.

So what’s the trouble with summer?  It’s not the relaxation or late nights.  It is the time when I finally have to slow down and face life’s questions, and this year, life’s question was hard.  What are you going to do about a home?

I still don’t know the answer.  But at least school has started, so I can ignore it for another nine months.