David Hadbawnik
Maybe all we really have is what’s right in front of us. So many of the plans that we made, dreams we had for the future – even something so ordinary as an upcoming ballgame, birthday party, or vacation – have been taken away by the Covid crisis. At times it feels like we are all, each of us in our little “self-isolated” circles, standing on a tiny island watching the water rise, swallowing things one by one.
Last year at this time my wife and I, and our soon-to-be one-year-old son, were living in Kuwait. Tina and I had full-time jobs as professors at an all-English private university. We were making good money and we enjoyed our work and our colleagues. But our tolerance for life in Kuwait, with its harsh weather and social restrictions, had run its course, especially with an active son who wants to play outside. So I reluctantly waded into the job market once again.
I was delighted when a late-breaking opportunity arose as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the English Department at Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Two great friends of ours from grad school days were professors there, and we’d heard good things about the school and the area. Luckily – in a lightning-fast interview, job offer, and moving process that is a whole different story – things worked out, and we arrived in Eau Claire in August 2019. Our friends helped a lot, and we found the city itself and my new colleagues to be incredibly welcoming as well. The ability to walk outside in the pleasant summer air, visit the farmers’ market, go running on trails along the river – this was a miracle, one we didn’t take for granted after four years in the desert.
But I couldn’t relax for long. A position as VAP is transitional and transactional – you are providing temporary, needed labor to a university, with the idea that you leverage it into something more permanent elsewhere. This is the nature of the beast in today’s precarious state of higher education.
Thus, I continued applying for jobs. Through an agency, I was referred for a job as “head of academics” at a small, private, Muslim-centered K-12 school in Austin, Texas. I eagerly applied and was soon invited to interview. This seemed like an unbelievable opportunity. My wife and I had met in San Marcos, just south of Austin, and we still had many friends in the area. After ten-plus interviews, both over the phone and in person on a campus visit, I was offered the job in early February. I negotiated and signed a five-year contract soon after, and with relief and joy we began telling friends and family, and posting on social media about our impending move.
And then came Covid.
Looking back now, it’s easy to see the warning signs. The early rumblings from China, the growing alarm in the rest of the world, the (false) reassurances from the Trump administration that we wouldn’t have to worry about an epidemic here. As recently as the second week of March, I was still planning to fly to Austin over our spring break to observe some classes at the school, still planning to meet with realtors to find out what kind of housing our stretched budget could afford, still gleefully making plans with our Austin friends.
In the space of just a few days in mid-March, everything changed. Austin’s famous SXSW festival was canceled (along with the NBA season, Coachella, many other events). Suddenly it became obvious I couldn’t fly to Austin anytime soon. Then I received an ominous email from my contact at the school, telling me they’d already had parents unable to pay tuition and were worried about enrollment for next year. Soon after that I spoke with the school owner, and she asked me to give her until mid-April to try to figure things out.
I said yes – what else could I say? – and waited with chagrin as the virus ravaged New York, California, most of the country, while millions of people were instantly out of work. We began letting friends and family know that we might not be moving to Austin after all. And I informed my (very understanding) department chair that I might need to rescind my resignation.
A few days ago, I received a regretful message from the school that, indeed, they would not be able to honor my contract. Though we’d come to expect such news, it was still a blow. Still is a blow. In just a few weeks we’ve gone from dreaming of buying a house and enjoying the type of security that would see us towards retirement, to wondering how long we can afford our current rent, and what kind of employment prospects might lie ahead in this dark new world.
Is there hope? I refuse to subscribe to wild-eyed optimism – the wishful thinking of an administration that until recently claimed the virus would simply disappear in warmer weather – even as I refuse to submit to despair. Covid has already taken so much from so many of us. 20,000 dead and counting. Millions unemployed. Front-line workers and care-givers still without basic protections. And the small, personal things the rising tide takes away: the party we’d been planning for our son’s second birthday, and Tina’s brother flying in from Europe to celebrate with us.
What we’re left with is what’s right in front of us. The still-miraculous gift of taking walks outside in nature. My son’s face as he smiles and laughs and sings, blessedly oblivious to the worries of the pandemic. These moments give me the spark to get through the otherwise monotonous days. And they fuel my cautious hope, leavened with anger at what’s been lost. That hope is conditional on turning the anger into action to transform the world we go back to. A world in which we no longer tolerate the systemic inequalities, and the underfunded and overwhelmed health care system, that have made this crisis so much worse. A world in which we prepare for such storms rather than waiting for them to sweep over us.
David Hadbawnik is a poet, translator, and scholar living and teaching in Eau Claire.
