Under the Birch Tree

by Nancy Chadwick

  “I’m fine. Glad and yet sad that it’s all over. It seems there still should be more, more to study, more to learn, more questions to ask. But I guess we’re done,” I said as a statement but thinking it was a question. I was trying to convince myself it was really over.

  He was no longer my teacher or mentor. He wasn’t sitting in front of me, but next to me. He had a talk with me, not at me. It was a shift in learning and a new meaning to the idea of graduate.

  “How will you go about looking for a job?”

  “I’ve got the Redbook directory to make a list of agencies, and I’m going to send out my résumé to as many agencies as I can for an entry-level position. I’ll start with Leo Burnett, of course.”

  “Nancy, you’ve come a long way and you’ve really demonstrated your capabilities for all of us on the faculty. We’ve gotten to know you well over four years, and what we’ve seen is special. We are all so excited and proud. Your personality and creative journalistic sense will carry you to where you want to go. You’ve got what it takes, Nancy.” I yearned to hear this. I craved the validation. And I got both.

  In sharing this assessment with me, he validated me as a unique gem they had unearthed. I was ready for graduation. I had made it.

  I walked out of the office with bittersweet emotions and tears of sadness mixed with happiness I had never known before. My escalating heartbeat accompanied me through the halls to the front door of the J-school, and a sudden montage of the past years gave birth in my head. I had played catch-up for four years, where I’d experienced high school while at college, enveloping new experiences and challenges of being an adult. This had been my place with brothers and sisters and teachers who instructed, encouraged, and challenged me. I discovered a world that wasn’t in textbooks as assigned reading. My world advanced and expanded and was now open to anything. I learned to love life with the opening of the old faded blue wooden doors of the J-school.

  Each defining moment built upon the one before it. Conviction gave me confidence to succeed in my school advertising project, and I could not have imagined myself having a different part. I was meant to be that business manager then, and I understood that was what I was to do in the future. My nervous excitement over an interview with my mentors was exacerbated by my lack of expectation and preparedness. The validation that I was headed to the right place to do the work I was meant to do negated my uneasiness. I was prepared with the knowledge I needed to swing doors open, and I believed I could do anything I wanted to. I could interview for a job, I could do a job well, and I would be prepared for what lay ahead. Most importantly, I had demonstrated a belief in myself, my connection to me.

  My world had offered me connections, hope, wisdom, and grace. I viewed them as bridges to get me to a new place that offered opportunities to learn more about myself and to expand my vision of life. The connections enabled me to move forward.

  Later that week, I took my last final. I closed my blue book and hesitantly handed it in, triggering flashbacks of the past four years narrated in white pages bound by blue covers and, in the end, finality and lasting impressions. I took photographs of the moments and filled the book of memories in my head, focusing on the details with each slow step—the crowded room of test-takers; stale, warm air; silence broken by a sneeze and a yawn—the flush in my cheeks, and the concentration in my brows.

  I walked down the hall as if in slow motion, eyeing the double doors. When I came to the end, I paused. An echo from the swing of doors signaled the beginning of the end as metal banged shut to a finality of four years. My defining moments were brought to an end, but really, they were my beginning.

  My heart palpitated as I stood on the top step of the J-school. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I didn’t have any studying to do. It wasn’t time to eat. I didn’t have to stop at anyone’s place. I had no plans. What was I going to do now? The answer was in my distraction, in the best part of my day, late afternoon, with the sun lowering in a dimming sky, cast in yellowish-pink, and looking innocent and fresh. Even though May signaled spring and hope for warmer weather, a cool dampness hung in the air. Just like any signal on cue, my heavy heart was calmed.

  And then my contemplation broke.

  An idling car and a loud voice broke my meditation. A white Opal was parked at the curb. Jeff jumped out of the car and ran up the three front steps of the J-school to meet me.

  “I told you to call me when you were done,” he said.

  “I just finished. I’m thinking how it’s really over. No more, yet there should be more. Isn’t there always more?”

  “There is, but sometimes not right away. Time and patience, my dear. And this is for you,” Jeff said as he presented me with a single yellow rose. We hugged and laughed, and I cried. “I’m so glad I’m here, right now. Thank you,” he said.

  I valued his friendship. He brought me out of being serious to being spontaneous and living life. He was a crazy man, and I loved it, and I loved him for it.

  J-school graduation arrived and departed as quickly as my four years were spent. The only ceremonial characteristic about it was joining the line to walk onstage to receive my diploma. I didn’t exactly feel exuberant with the pomp and circumstance, the celebration before a grand entrance into the adult world to make something of my life and be a representative of my generation. Better suited for those overachievers, I thought. I didn’t need to succumb to the pressure of trying to catch up to others or to be just like them. I derived my own self-confidence from believing I would evolve at my own pace, separate from the crowd, starting from my own beginning. My perspective was on a smaller scale, a selfish take on a milestone delivered upon completion of four years of scholastic and social maturity. It was personal self-satisfaction.

  After the ceremony was over, I invited Mom and Dad to the apartment to join my three roommates and their families for a small gathering, an invitation I prefaced with, “You know, you really don’t have to come. It was a long ceremony, and you could drive back if you feel you need to.” I tried for selfish reasons to give them an excuse to leave, because I really didn’t want to have to explain them to others. My divorced parents weren’t like other parents, celebrating their child’s dedication, hard work, and success in getting her degree. Their lack of excitement about me and the occasion was the antithesis of the celebratory atmosphere. On the outside, Mom was a fashion statement of perfection with her hair neatly coifed and wearing a fitted, crisp, new summer silk dress in the best shade of blue to complement her ivory skin tone. Her shoes and handbag matched. She was together, and she stood in confidence with an air of stiffness, perhaps because of the awkward situation. I saw her as a person without a match, standing in solitude on the inside where others were grouped in twos. I would never know her in any other way.

  This look reminded me of a snapshot of her taken when I was about ten or twelve. Mom was seated on a black wrought iron chair on the patio in the backyard on Carlisle with her legs crossed and wearing a sky-blue polyester pantsuit. She was smiling in her Jackie-O black sunglasses with neatly coiffed dark brown, tightly permed hair. With an elbow on the armrest and one hand in the air, she held a lit cigarette between her fingers. The other hand held a plastic cup containing a light-colored beverage. She was a statement back then, and she carried it with her like an ID badge which never loses its place on the lapel.

  Dad sat in an old, worn chair in the corner of the dining room, away from others, looking uncomfortable, as if he didn’t belong there. The sun had faded low in the afternoon, casting shadows on him. I was looking at a stranger in the empty room, much like when I was a young girl watching him playing his drums in the basement, never quite making a connection. We didn’t connect here either.

  “Your father is hungry. Do you have anything to make a sandwich, or just a snack?” his wife, Selma, asked me.

  “A sandwich? Now? Well, um … I don’t know. I mean, we don’t have much to eat, we’re all moving out this week, but let me see what I c
an do.”

  I hurried into the kitchen through the swinging doors. I can’t believe this. I’m with my friends, celebrating, trying to enjoy my day, and Dad needs a sandwich, now? Mom, Dad, and Selma stood with awkward and forced conversation. They didn’t have any idea who or what I had become, so I figured they didn’t really know what to celebrate.

  “Here you go. Is this okay? Peanut butter and jelly is all I have. Sorry. But it should hold you over till you get back.”

  “Well, we’ll be going soon, anyway,” Selma said.

  Then why don’t you just go now, just leave if you are so painfully unhappy and feel so out of place that you can’t join the others and show your daughter how proud and happy you are? I stood next to Dad until he finished. Then it was time to go, and I walked them out to the car.

  “Okay, well, I’ll see you. Thanks for coming, and drive back safely,” I said.

  Now alone, I didn’t want to go back and join an apartment full of people, because I knew I might have to explain my parents’ behavior and why they’d left so soon. I wanted everyone to go home. I wanted this day to be about me, to give myself the needed recognition and pride that I had made it. My lack of connection with my parents in that room was evident. Strange, how a sad realization solidified my proud sense of who I had become.

  I thought about my childhood years living on Carlisle, knowing my birch buddy was just outside the front door. Back then, I never thought my tomorrows would be any different from living the current moments. That child in me had been resurrected and transplanted to a new home, where my life’s vision was building for my new future. One year had followed the next, and the motion had progressed automatically. I had had classes to attend and schedules to maintain for four years. But then the motion stopped.

  My readiness to graduate was only insofar as I was equipped with what any twenty-two-year-old needed to navigate the outside world—a college degree and confidence. But I was in transition, where I still needed the connections from my university home. I would remember my classes, O’Donohue’s on Friday night, Tombstone pepperoni pizza from the dorm store at midnight after returning from O’Donohue’s, live concerts in the Mug Rack on a Friday afternoon where I, alone, enjoyed being in my world.

  Separating myself from these many connections was not easy. It had taken years to establish the links that enabled me to learn about myself and where I wanted to be. Creating the links could not be forced or rushed. I learned to trust and believe that my connections were there for a reason—to teach, to follow, to study, to reinforce the person I was discovering. Even though I was entering a new world, post-graduation, I allowed myself the time and gave myself permission to be alone and to trust that God would not let anything bad happen to me. I had become strong enough to rely on my courage and resiliency when I thought I had none of it when I started college. My connections were not only to home, but were vehicles to move forward.

  transitions

  As campus emptied for summer break, I thought I should be there too, walking through the center of campus where I crisscrossed daily to and from classes and ended my day at the J-school on Wisconsin Avenue. It was my home; I belonged there. Without it, I was afraid I would regress to a place void of connection, leaving me in limbo, alone, with no direction.

  I sat on a cement bench mounted just off to the side of center campus watching a trickling of students and the quieting of campus life as the term ended. As my eyes engaged with the rhythm of the walkers, the familiar sight of two grown birch trees stopped my attention. Their swaying branches and rustling leaves stood in the distance next to the St. Joan of Arc chapel, guarding the historic, sacred spot, much like my birch tree had anchored me at my house on Carlisle. I was reminded that comfort from home and my Jesuit school and teaching would always be with me as they became one and the same. I breathed, deeply invoking my faith. This was my home; I belonged somewhere.

  I had everything I needed to start my new life. But I didn’t know where to begin. I had to free my self-confidence and personality as well as the ability to sell myself to any prospective employer. I needed to open my mind to venture into a new world where I had to start over, introducing myself to others where no one would know my name. I understood intellectually that I was supposed to get out and find a job in my field now that I had graduated, but my heart and my head told me otherwise, as they were in different places. I rented a studio apartment, my decompression chamber, on Sixteenth Street for the summer, and I gave myself permission to park there for a while. I tried to convince myself that some direction or inspiration or both would be bestowed upon me as the result of living alone in a small apartment on the outskirts of campus. Staying in Milwaukee was an enabling act that made me feel I was still a part of a happy life, in denial of the fact that the life I had come to know had ended.

  I occupied every moment of subsequent summer days with walking until I couldn’t complete another step. I tired easily. As I slowed my pace, I watched mothers holding one baby on their hip while squeezing a toddler’s hand with their other as they muscled their way on and off the city bus. Male office workers briskly walked with briefcase in one hand, grabbing the ties that blew over their shoulders when the winds gusted. These travelers had a purpose in their gait, and they were on their way. Did I have a purpose? Where was I headed?

  As summer came to an end, I had neither school nor a job waiting for me. I was lost, and homeless, as my apartment would have new tenants soon. I did have a place to go, though—back to the townhouse with my mother—my only viable option. I had no other choice; I had run out of them.

  A couple of weeks before I was to leave Milwaukee, I needed to check out the Redbook and compile a mailing list of all the ad agencies in Chicago as a reference for sending out my résumé once I returned home. Then I had to pack for the trip to Mom’s place. I piled my belongings in the center of the apartment, considered what I could part with, and saw there wasn’t much. Tim was picking me up in a borrowed neighbor’s station wagon, and the longer I waited for him, the more time I had to think about what remained after four years. And then I cried. I cried as I mourned the life of the innocent and naive freshman I once had been and the people who became my friends. I cried for those relationships that never went where I wanted them to go. I cried because I missed my inspirational family of journalism students. I cried because I was alone again and moving away from another place I had made my home.

  I had been wrapped in structure with classes, and now I had no schedule to dictate my life. I was stripped, and I knew absolutely nothing.

  The buzzer interrupted my internal struggle.

  “Tim?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. What floor?”

  “Second.” I buzzed him in. I met him at my door.

  “You’ve got all this? It all won’t fit. Some of it you’ll have to leave,” he said, working his way to the middle of the room.

  “Just stop and let’s start moving out,” I said. I grabbed boxes and suitcases, and Tim followed with my television and record player.

  I made it all fit, including the daybed, within the confines of the old station wagon with some smart packing and patience, none of which Tim could claim. We were on our way with blasting music competing with a knocking engine. I said goodbye one last time in my thoughts. I carried with me a well-earned spirit that I prayed would not leave me once I went back in time.

  I took refuge that summer at a too-familiar place, the townhouse. As much as I had clenched my jaw and raised my shoulders to my ears in tension before walking in the door, I had no reason to do so. My move back was seamless. I had seen how Mom managed her days and her household, handling on her own the paying of bills and other chores. In my absence, she had learned to rely on herself. Perhaps I would be just fine too when it came to relying on myself to handle whatever came my way.

  Where I had once sought distraction while lying spread-eagle on a sun-warmed towel on hot cement, I had returned to reclaim and acknowledge additional connections I
had made when I was away. When comparing my links—those made before college with those made during—I saw I had come a long way in growth and maturity.

  The sound of splashing water surrounded me poolside with now-overgrown wild prairie. I listened to the symphony of crickets chirping in rhythm with the water’s ripple. The wind carried sweet smells of wildflowers, chlorine, and humid air. The clubhouse held on to its new wood smell with accompanying mounds of wood chips surrounding its mature landscaping. I was transported back in time when I once had connected with place, sounds, and smells.

  “Hello, how are you?” My eyes diverted to the lifeguard standing in front of me.

  “Hi. Just fine, thanks,” I answered. I sat up on my elbows to get a better look behind the voice. “Not real busy this morning, huh?”

  “No, not yet. This afternoon,” he said. He pulled up a lounge chair next to me, bringing with him a smell of chlorine and sunscreen.

  “I’m Scott.”

  “Nancy. I live across the street. This is your first summer here?”

  “Yep. I’m staying with my parents, until the fall when I go to law school in Tampa.”

  I noted how he didn’t say, “living at home,” but rather, “staying with my parents.” Perhaps we understood that where we lived was a stop along the way to get where we wanted to be, a home base that was ours and not someone else’s. “Law school, huh?” I chuckled. Damn. Those law guys trailed me from college.

  “And you? What about you?”

  “I graduated, moved back with my mother, and I’m looking for a job in advertising.” I realized the total summation of my life at the age of twenty-two was bound by this three-action statement.

  “Good luck. You’ll do fine.”

  “I’m glad someone thinks so.”

  I figured he was married or otherwise attached to someone. He was too good-looking, too poised, too everything. But sometimes he appeared sad or just not there. I wondered if our minds were in similar spheres. His smile was offset by his sex appeal: tanned, slender body and green glowing eyes. He was mysterious and not a man of many words; he would sometimes chuckle and smile for no reason I could discern. But he did have a knack for finding the humorous. His sarcasm was always well-timed. I thought we might have this in common.