thirty

I turn thirty today, a day in a late spring. There are tulips and violets and daffodils. Last year, the dog was not as shaggy, and the flowers were out earlier.

*

Yesterday I went to campus for the last time. I calculated the final grades, ate a chicken salad sandwich, hugged the department secretary, recycled eight stacks of papers, sent a e-mail to the IT department confirming the end of my contract. Then I wiped down the keyboard with the last Clorox wipe and closed the door behind me.

I had the camera with me, since I wanted to take  photos of the dynamite final projects my students had turned in--fake bar-tops and hand-painted aprons and deconstructed paperback Emmas--and I thought about taking a little walk around campus and taking some pictures, but I didn't.

I will miss a few things, like walking over the bridge on a brisk morning, and the vines on a brick wall that turn bright bloody red in October, and the path I used to walk through the woods last summer while waiting for my night class to start. But those things are seasonal, and gone.

I worked here. I was a visitor.

But as I was getting ready to leave the office, one of my CW students stopped in with a farewell pie. I said, Good timing. We talked about her summer, and I gave her a short list of recommended nonfiction reading, and she said, I will miss your class.

Then it was time for a bonfire at our friends' house. We walked in and someone handed me a build-your-own-six-pack of stouts, and someone else handed me a curried lamb patty hot from the grill, and we stayed up far too late and drank all the beer in the house and ate four different types of desserts and someone uttered the phrase Sometimes I would be in the shower, and the skunk would stick its head in, and I would cover my prick with my hands. 

I cannot take a photo of these things, but they happened, and they are important, and I will remember them.

*

Here are two poems. One is me doing my best Franz Wright, and the other is happier.

*


On Monday, we were offered jobs. Our former TA director works at a school in the south, near Savannah. The B had e-mailed him looking for any leads on Atlanta-area schools, and he called back and said, If you want, I can give you both positions for the next year and the summer after. He kept apologizing for the salary, which is exactly what I make now, and there are benefits and only one prep. Ben called me--What do you think?--and we sat outside after our respective runs and I said, Let's do it.

We'll move to Atlanta in a year, then. And in the meantime, we will both have classes and actual salaries and we will go see what this other Georgia town, the one closer to the beach, is all about.

Sometimes life is confusing and I worry a lot, and then other times it seems easy. Right now is one of those times.

*

To do, next week: get out of jury duty, pack for Vermont, drive to St. Catherines, drive to Buffalo, drive to Plattsburgh, drive to Vermont, plot out residency writing schedule and objectives.

To do, today: drink an iced coffee, eat donuts in bed, drive to the beach.

This thirty thing is just fine.