Reflections.

My mother was a sociology professor who believed she needed to work 14 hour days, seven days a week. Her kids came last. She never took vacation and forced herself to live on half of everything she earned. She was promoted, widely published, but had few friends and was clinically depressed for most of my life. And didn't treat it. She lived in the past. She lived in fear. At retirement she went straight from her office to a dementia unit where she is today, aged 72. That room costs nearly $7000 a month.

All that work and saving and this is what she bought herself. Her childhood and college friends send cards and letters. Her "best" friend from work hasn't visited her once in three years.  My sister and I moved her out of her office because she was unable to do it herself and her end-of-career accomplishment was a pile of papers in giant recycling bins. No one was there. No one cared.

It broke my heart in that moment and, two years I am having trouble "leaning in" to my own work after seeing all that go down. Sometimes I am honest with people about this, but more often I just create an illusion that I still find meaning in what I do and am enjoying being busy. The reality is I am questioning almost everything.

Comments

[Savvy Working Gal]

am reading Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus book Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids---and What We Can Do About It. I think you would find the chapter on tenure interesting - I assume your mother was tenured. I remember when you wrote about cleaning her office and had no choice but to throw out all of her unfinished work or papers. The book says how most tenured professors write for each other and not for students or the general public and that only other academics understand it. The book makes it seem like they are wasting their time.

[Debra]

A perfect case study of why we need to live fully in the moment and tend all of our gardens, not just the one on the way to the car. It's good to question. If she had questioned, she would have baked cakes. With you.

[Two Kitties]

The funny thing is? Im not sure she would. Though my best memories of her are from the brief time she was at home - trimming my bangs; grilled cheese and tomato soup before my afternoon Kindergarten class. I miss that version of her.