The Place Where I Used To Work

Where is it? my 18-year-old son wanted to know.  A community college I thought he would like. 

It’s up north, past the place where I used to work.

My throat closed as I heard myself say it: Used to.

The grief rolls over me in waves.  Grief over the loss of my work as a teacher, the place where I worked, the people I worked with.  The looming loss of my brother-in-law to cancer.  The looming loss of my son.  The loss of youth, of multi-potentiality, of energy, of the belief in perfectibility.  The loss of hope that the past will ever be redeemed.  The belief that anyone other than myself is responsible for my failure and limitations and unhappiness.

Twice a year, lakes turn upside-down. The well-defined gradations of light and temperature and living creatures break down, and everything mixes with everything else: protozoans, algae, bottom-dwelling scavengers, decomposing litter.  Dissolved oxygen and minerals intermingle throughout the water column, a fertile reshuffling of matter and nutrients.

Like the monarch in its chrysalis. Another potent soup.