Return From Lunch

I have been taking college classes after work, and eventually online since 1998. At first I took them for a challenge, but eventually I started pursuing a degree. The stress of working, taking care of a household (and eventually a baby), and studying began to take its toll. There were many times that I wanted to quit, thinking that a degree was not worth the problems that it was causing. After getting laid off from work last year, and trying to job search without a Bachelor’s degree, the importance was reinforced to me. And now, finally, I have completed my last classes and am awaiting graduation. My brain, once numb and strained, has started to slowly wake up again. I can’t put it into words quite as well as Sue Hubbell, one of my favorite authors. Her writing was about the time after her husband left her, but I found it to be an appropriate description of what happened to me with the classes:

“And for a long, long time, my mind didn’t work. I could not listen to the news on the radio with understanding. My attention came unglued when I tried to read anything but the lightest froth. My brain spun in endless, painful loops, and I could neither concentrate nor think with any semblance of order. I had always rather enjoyed having a mind, and I missed mine extravagantly. I was out to lunch for three years.
….
One spring afternoon, I was walking back down my lane after getting the mail. I had two fine new flowers to look up when I got back to the cabin. Warblers were migrating, and I had been watching them with binoculars; I had identified one I had never before seen. The sun was slanting through new leaves, and the air was fragrant with wild cherry blossoms, which my bees were working eagerly. I stopped to watch them, standing in the sunbeam. The world appeared to have been running along quite nicely without my even noticing it. Quietly, gratefully, I discovered that a part of me that had been off somewhere nursing grief and pain had returned. I had come back from lunch.

Once back, I set about doing all the things that one does when one returns from lunch. I cleared the desk and tended to the messages that others had left. I had been gone for a long time, so there was quite a pile to clear away before I could settle down to the work of the afternoon of my life…”

(Sue Hubbell, A CountryYear, 1983)

In my case it wasn’t grief and pain that my mind had retreated from, just an overwhelming workload that suppressed the curious and artistic side of me. Toward the end, when I was working full-time and carrying a full-time course load, there wasn’t room for more than barely function in the necessary departments. But now I am back from lunch, and ready to move on.

And if you have never read any of Sue’s books, I would highly recommend that you check them out.