some other year

Four years ago this week, I had a pretty simple routine. It was finals week in Minnesota. I would wake up to brightness behind the curtains--a cold sun bouncing off the crust of frozen snow. I'd let out the dog, yawn, make coffee. Yawn again. Brush my teeth. I'd check my e-mail, check blogs, check my bank account. Then I'd head over to my office, where I sifted through random papers--stuff I could finally throw out, now that the very first semester of my very first class was nearing its end, or new papers that students had thrown on my desk at the last possible minute. The halls were busy, but the people in my office were wearing jeans and hoodies instead of their teaching clothes. They carried bags of Chipolte and cups of coffee. On all of our desks sat stacks of purple plastic folders.

Later I'd hole up in my small room, avoiding the ROTC at all costs. I'd grade portfolios, try to write a poem, take the dog for a walk, eat dinner (usually nachos, strangely enough, but delicious ones, stacked with black beans and red onions and stolen-from-the-ROTC cheese and Newman's Own peach salsa), listen to the song "Somebody Told Me" on repeat.

Sometimes I'd press my ear to the black shag, trying to hear if my downstairs roommate D was home; if he was, I would wander downstairs to watch him paint, or accompany him out to the side steps, where he'd pluck Camel Lights from his Carhartt and blow rings into the still, cold air. And at the end of these nights, which fell dark and quickly, I'd call the B. He was holed up in his apartment with mono, and so that's how I would fall asleep: listening to his voice.

Here's what I remember about that week: it was a strange, yet good, one. The constrictions of the semester had lifted suddenly. I no longer had to be anywhere at any particular time. My own classes were finished, and there were no finals, no portfolios. I was working my way through grading, but it was done sitting in my room, on my time. Outside it was bright and cold. Inside, I was trying to figure out what to do with myself, when to leave for home, what grade to give two students who hadn't, despite my repeated warnings, included a Works Cited page on their argument papers. (Answer: two Ds--my first fails.) I was tired, excited, nervous, self-congratulatory. At the end of that week, I packed up my car and drove home to Buffalo. I did the drive in seventeen hours, and I sang "All Alone on Christmas" no fewer than twenty times.

Today marks the first day of finals week, and it's hard to believe that one week from today I'll be done, finished with my first semester in Michigan. I swapped portfolios today, collected finals from my other students, stopped by the nursery on the way home and sprung for evergreen branches (which are, as it turns out, significantly less expensive and easier to handle than a real tree). I'm not due back at the office except for a few hours on Thursday, and the forecast is calling for a wintry mix that is mostly freezing rain. Everything I need is here.

After four and a half months of this town and this apartment, things finally feel like home. The kitchen smells like sausage and the lights line the window. Last week, four students shook my hand and said, Thanks for a really, really fun semester. Even tonight, walking the dog, I ran into one of my "Most Improved" kids, and I pulled out my earphones to congratulate her on a solid portfolio--one that showed real attention to writing, to revision--and we chatted while snowflakes stuck to her dreadlocks. I have no doubt that there will be Ds again this round, but in the meantime, it's nice to have this week at home, with the dog at my feet, and morning trips to the downtown library. And at the end of these days, I'll be getting into the car and heading home--but first to Wisconsin, where the mono-less B waits.

I never had a last week of the semester quite as wide-open as that first one; there were restaurant shifts and literary magazine last things and many, many parties at Highland, some involving complicated punches and all involving Meatloaf dance parties. But I do remember thinking that first winter it would be nice if all this would work out, if I could go on to live the academic life and keep talking to this guy and find every December this short and bright and warm. Some other day, I wrote at the time in a failed poem, some other year.