I am one of the fortunate ones: I love my job teaching biology at a small liberal-arts college, and I am good at it. At least I like to think so, and my teaching evaluations show that students think so, too.
My courses are well-enrolled, I have published research with undergraduates, and I have found committee work that is actually satisfying. I am coming up for tenure next fall and, although nothing is ever guaranteed, I should present a strong case.
So, what's the problem?
My husband and I live approximately 1,000 miles away from my parents and 1,400 miles away from his mother. And although we try to visit as often as we can, traveling long distances in a car or a plane with two small children and a dog is, at best, costly, and, at worst (and more often than not), an epic journey through the outskirts of hell.
The travel issue would be comparatively minor, however, if my husband and I felt even remotely at home in the small, rural community where we live.
Anxious to strike out on our own, we moved here with the best of intentions. We bought a house and landscaped the yard. We remodeled the kitchen. Although we are more than 90 miles from any decent city, we have learned to live with catalog shopping and the shortage of good restaurants. (We have become fairly adept at making our own chicken enchiladas and pad thai.)
It's not that we see ourselves as urban sophisticates stuck in a backwater. I grew up in a small town, and my husband and I both went to a small college in a small, rural community much like the one where we live now. We thought we would like it here. We thought we knew what we were getting into.
But try as we might, we have been unable to connect to this place. The town, the area, the people . . . everything is fine, but nothing is right. For some reason, we don't fit.
Perhaps the key reason is that my husband is a stay-at-home father and I am the one who works full time. In larger metropolitan areas, that may not turn heads, but in Small Town, U.S.A., we are an anomaly.
That has been particularly hard on my husband. Although he has come up with creative ways to keep himself occupied (we now have a garage full of power tools), he has found it very difficult to fit in with the mommy crowd. He has tried to take the kids on play dates and to picnics in the park, but, as he put it, "It just doesn't feel right to spend all day with other men's wives." Add to this the assumption that he is willing to go on "blind dates" with any other stay-at-home father rumored to exist and you can start to understand why he spends a lot of time actively avoiding other parents.
My adjustment hasn't been as difficult. I have found mentors both within and outside of my department. For the most part, my colleagues have been very helpful and supportive -- even when I was pregnant with our second child.
Nevertheless, my husband and I have found it hard to identify with my colleagues on a personal or social level. Our life experiences are just too different. Some don't have children and have dedicated their lives to their work. Others have grown children and spend all of their free time at the office. Those with small children have wives who are stay-at-home mothers and, thus, operate under a more traditional paradigm.
The only other female in my department is also a junior faculty member and, although I have come to greatly value her friendship and advice, she and her partner both work and do not have children.
All the same, there are times when I look out of my office window at the students walking across the campus and wonder why don't I love it here. Sometimes it even starts to feel a little bit like home. Then it comes time for the students to go on break, the pace of life eases a bit, and the campus and town lose whatever magic they held for me.
Without the students around, I feel like a tourist in my own backyard. At about this time last year, I began to understand why.
One day last spring I went to pick up my oldest child from school. As I stood in the parent-waiting area with the other mothers, I looked around and noticed a number of women whom I knew. A large group of them were chatting and laughing, but none of them engaged me in conversation and only a couple acknowledged my presence.
I had been in their houses. They had been in mine. Our children had played together, had had birthday parties together. I work with some of their husbands. As I watched them, a profound sense of isolation came over me.
I realized then that I would never belong. I would never be part of this community. Those women, whom I had eaten with, partied with, drunk margaritas with, all considered me an outsider. Standing there, I also noticed a sign advertising a support group for stay-at-home mothers.
My husband doesn't fit into the mommy crowd because he is a man and he doesn't fit in with my male colleagues because he doesn't work. I don't fit in with my male colleagues because I am a woman, and I don't fit in with the mommy crowd because I work full time.
Perhaps we haven't tried hard enough to make a connection. Perhaps we are seeing dichotomies that don't really exist. Perhaps, but it's been five years. My youngest was born here and my oldest has spent two-thirds of her life here. If it doesn't feel like home by now, when will it?
We intend to go through the tenure process in the fall, but we do not intend to spend the rest of our lives here. My husband and I have decided that we can't be this far away from family if we don't feel any connection to the place where we live.
Now that we have made that decision, I have begun to feel like an adulterous lover. A strong sense of guilt is starting to take hold. But soon it will be summer. The students will leave, and I will be a tourist here again. I will simultaneously prepare my tenure file and start a job search. I just hope that we can find somewhere to call home.
