A Long, Long Way from Everywhere

Just before I received my acceptance from MTC, I had resigned myself to disappointment. In the depth of uncertainty concerning various applications no longer in my hands and recently coming off the break-up of the long-term dating relationship that got me through Peace Corps, I had begun to explore the possibility of starting over in a far-off, adventurous place, some place like Alaska. Alaska coalesced in my mind as a place of wondrous vistas, mind-blowing backpacking, and backyard ice hockey, a fairy tale land of like-minded souls drawn as I was to the obvious mystique of Alaska. Furthermore, unlike Washington, Alaska appeared to be a state with a viable certification route where I could begin teaching right away this fall. In fact, I was just about to send an application for a job opening in Fairbanks and truthfully speaking spent a lot of my free time daydreaming about what Alaska would be like, when I received my acceptance from Teacher Corps.

My hesitation to commit to Mississippi Teacher Corps initially had nothing to do with teaching in Mississippi or the quality and value of the program itself. I was convinced a long time ago about that, and MTC was the first program I applied to as my Peace Corps service was winding down. To put it frankly, I was afraid of loneliness. Mississippi is a long, long way from everywhere and everyone I knew before now. And it seemed even further from the idealized Alaska in my mind. Fresh off a break-up, I pictured Mississippi as a place of woes, a cultural, social, and environmental void where I was likely to find little to do besides teach and swat at mosquitoes, and even less in common with virtually everyone around me, white or black.

There are times when it becomes almost painful to sit in a deli or a bar with my younger classmates and have a casual conversation about the future, and never do I feel our age difference so keenly as when they talk about the opposite sex. (Okay, the one other thing that grinds me is the people who want to go to law school after this. Fools! The two oldest and presumably wisest of us in the program have been there, done that, and come to regret it.) Still, it happens to everyone: When you are closer to 20 than you are to 30, your partnerships are still experimental and expendable somehow. You recover more easily, because your whole life is before you. But as you—and by you of course I refer to myself—creep closer and closer to 30 years old and beyond, you start to compare yourself to the people you know, the classmates of yours who were married several years ago, your siblings and how old they were when your nieces and nephews were born, your own father and how old he was when you were born, ten years after your sister. You start to project, if you had children now, how old would you be when they are . . . and your constant back pain depresses you, as you begin to wonder whether you will still feel young enough to teach your daughter how to kick a soccer ball someday. You begin to long for commitment—stability, really—along with companionship. And in your sadder moments, you even wonder what is wrong with you, to be so old and still so alone.

The last time she had much to say to me, my ex-lover wrote gushing sentences about how we are both in exactly the places we should be. “Give it time,” she says. But she is not in Mississippi, nor is she alone.

When my classmates ask me why I am thinking of buying a house in Mississippi instead of renting, I usually present the same, dry rationale of it being a sound financial decision, as long as you stay in one place for at least two years. Anyway, “I’m not thinking of this as two years and I’m out,” I tell them. But more to the point, buying a house is a way to reconcile myself to this place and my time spent here. In a way most of my colleagues cannot, I know exactly how long two years is. It is a long, long time to wait for something to end. Then of course you get busy, and stuff happens, and all of a sudden, it goes by quickly too. But right here, right now, I cannot bear the thought of spending the next two years of my life in Mississippi, just to get through it. This house that I’m thinking of, this beautiful English Tudor, built for a Jewish merchant family to the original plans of a local architect, having passed through just two owners since its construction in 1930, this house I could never afford anywhere in America besides Drew, Mississippi, is my lifeline. It means taking ownership not just of a house but of a place and an entire experience, the next two-plus years of my life. And somehow, if they could see for themselves its high ceilings and spacious rooms, the generous woodwork and hardwood floors throughout, the loving details of a by-gone era and the sun filtering through the back windows, looking on to the birdbath in the back yard, they would love it as I do, and know for themselves why I must buy it.

But the details are yet to be finalized. The deal could fall through yet, and if it does, I will probably default to renting and perhaps even take it as a sign that my time here in Mississippi is meant to be temporary.