Behind the expression of commiseration, a thin but tenacious nuance of disappointment made itself felt in her voice. Appointments are set three and four weeks in advance. Rescheduling is extremely difficult. "You are very tired though, aren't you."
I suggested we do it by phone. I had dreaded a two hour phone interview, yet something had to be done, and we left the appointment stand for the next day.
I prepared by printing the letter I had sent in a while ago, which contained the names of all the medications I take, and why; all the health care providers I see or have seen, why, when, upon whose recommendation. Turned out to be a rather long document which covered the last two years. I brought to the interview room a bottle of water and a few mandarines, although I did not think I was going to eat. I took my medication two hours early. And acting on an impulse I did not think through, neither tried to explain, went to the bathroom to fetch some tissues. Thankfully Luba was there, cleaning. She said, take the whole box. I hesitated and refused, why would I, in fact, need any? I did not have the slightest idea what automatism had made me seek any at all.
The voice at the other end young but thankfully not very young. Thirty something. Nice manner. Used to doing this kind of thing, that is, experienced in dealing with the distraught academic client. Not an easy thing, she admitted from the beginning, this attempt to accommodate the return to work for those whose work is made of 40% of one thing, 40% of another, and 20% of another thing yet. Even insurance companies know this is three jobs in one. While the employer's, that is, the university's strong point, is not flexibility.
This conversation was not going to be about the state of my health. That topic is somebody else's domain. It is the responsibility of the person I talk to every once in a while, she who wants to know if I'm better. "Oh good." Her voice struggles with depression, or despondency, or pure lack of interest, I'm not sure. It takes me some effort to abstain from recommending that she herself seek professional help. (It is not because one works for an insurance company that one is doing better than the rest of the lot.)
This inquiry, or rather interrogation, was to be about dreams. Regardless of the so called medical reality of my condition, and abstraction made of our respective positions, perfect strangers to each other of course, between whom one is to pour out her soul on the confessional mode, while the other, to take notes, literally: in the best of worlds, how do you dream yourself to be, what do you dream to do, from now on?
I have always disliked hypothetical talk. In the classroom it is often the preferred method of demonstration of this or that possibility. "Let's suppose that...". Abstract, non committed reasoning, always disembodied, always indifferent of what things feel or are like. To ask what my dream of the future may be, presupposes that speaking about the future is an easy topic of conversation; after all, why not, we're just speaking, just in case it comes to that. I resent this approach, it has many faults, but the most glaring is the lack of awareness of what an illness like mine does to the concept of future itself.
Of course we understand that it all had to do with my returning to work. I told my young interrogator that, had she called to take my pulse six months ago, I would have said, excitedly almost, yes, by all means, let me go back to my job. It just so happens that in the meantime, for the past few months, I have been going to the city. That allowed me to rediscover, if at a very slow pace, what I might and might not be able to do.
It is one thing to go to Toronto for two days every two weeks, in order to seek therapy; another, to actually go there to work. Not to speak about the fundamental requirement intrinsic to the act of teaching young people. The seventeen to thirty something, mostly inquiring minds, as they are branded, sons and daughters of privilege mostly, are here to discover wonders hidden under the proverbial stone - such things do exist indeed - wonders unveiled by the magic wand of an at once enthusiastic, optimistic, energetic and laid back instructor. The instructor's task, to mainly, wittily, entertain. The students' expectations, quite the opposite of being confronted by a middle aged woman who has just met with some of life's nastier accidents. I did not have, I continued, the emotional stability required by such a demand any longer. Even in the course of this interview, I chocked when faced with the most innocuous of questions: "So then, you came to U of T in 2002?" Or, "do you like your job?"
Can I explain why I such easy questions would bring me to tears? Can I explain what those past ten years mean, in the context of my professional life? What liking your job means, after having spent more than thirty years to become sufficiently qualified?
There is something fundamentally perverse in the presupposition that, while on disability, the employee is to employ herself at getting better, so that she may resume her life from the point where, quite abruptly, she left it. Falling off and out of the normal trajectory came to me, to us, as a powerful, unforgiving and sudden accident. With this fall, something was lost that I cannot, no matter how much I would like to, go find again, intact, waiting to be grasped. Of course, there is some understanding that the work I would be doing should accommodate my present, diminished condition. Yet everybody in the industry, as they call it, knows that the academic profession suffers very little accommodation. It suffers excess under the form of overdoing, but not of underdoing things. University abhors underachievers. Apparently, much more than many other jobs. Hard to know how that is, considering how so much of the current public opinion sees these teaching positions as plum jobs. Do many other professions require quite this much training? Not many. But in a culture which does not privilege learning, the question is not only irrelevant, it is of no interest.
This is another discussion altogether, though. Here the more scary part: if you are deemed able to work, but no accommodation can be arranged with your employer, the kind academia lets go of you so you may seek employment elsewhere. I suggested selling shoes was not an option, having done that already, when I was a student in search of better things.
Thankfully, the conversation did lead to an answer on my part. What I want, I said, and I know this to be true, and not a reaction to the barrage of questions, is to keep being just as I am now. I want to be as I am, keep doing what I do. A year and a half ago I did not dare hope I was going to be here, and yet here I am. I can only be grateful for what I have received and only wish to hold on to these lovely new days for a while. If, from the point of view of the employer, it means retirement, than that is what I want. In fact, in a not too distant past, I had even put a number on it: 61. In those days I was still part of the plan according to which, when to leave and make room for the many young people waiting in line, would be my decision.
My interrogator was somewhat surprised, yet, as soon as I put the word retirement on it, agreed with my position: what is lost is lost, we cannot go back and recover it. Getting better can only mean, essentially, finding a way of life which will accept that something irreversible has happened. The accommodation cannot, and should not come from the employer, but first, from the one who has, at the hands of life, known loss.
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