The Deed Is Done

I just received my official offer letter from DePauw University for me to be their visiting professor of ethics at the Prindle Institute of Ethics for the 2011-12 academic year, and I signed it and sent it back.

The deed is done.

As soon as I put the letter in the mailbox, beyond possibility of retrieval, I had my first twinge of doubt about this idea of spending almost an entire year elsewhere. I still want to have this enchanted time at this place of which I'm so fond already, with dear friends awaiting me, and an opportunity to grow as a scholar and philosopher in so many ways. But what about my dear little life here? I miss it already! My dear sweet little life - my almost daily walks with Rowan, the half a dozen dear friends who live within a few blocks of my house, my church that means so much to me, the Knitted Brow, my sons, my cat - can I really leave all this for a year, just leave it and go?

I have to stop thinking this way. I remember what when I first had Christopher, 22 years ago, I made the terrible mistake as a working mother of feeling guilty the whole time I was at work that I wasn't home with him, and then feeling guilty the whole time I was with him that I wasn't working. Luckily, I soon figured out what a bad system of thinking that was, and I started focusing on loving and cherishing every minute of my time with him and then loving and cherishing every minute of time at work.

That's what I need to do here. I'm going to savor every minute of my dear sweet life in Boulder from now until I leave in August for Indiana. Then I'm going to savor every minute of that gift of a year away. And then I'm going to return to my dear sweet life in Boulder, loving it more than ever.

That's what I'm going to do.