In November of 2015 my husband and I were preparing for two things: A Christmas trip to Paris and, come January 2016, to start the process for IVF. After 6 years of trying low-level fertility treatments we felt we could finally afford the $20K+ it would take for a chance at having a baby.
On November 14th, news came out that a devastating terrorist attack had happened in Paris. A series of coordinated attacks—shootings and bombings—killed well over 100 people. Throughout my workday, I refreshed the news. When Jonathon came home from work, I didn’t wait for him to come inside. I ran out to the car, climbed in, cried, and said, “I don’t think we should have kids, this world is so terrible. It’s so awful.” I wish I remembered more clearly Jonathon’s response (which was hopeful), but I don’t. I only remember my own words, images, how it all felt. The sun had set and the sky was cobalt blue. Our maple tree cast bare branch shadows on the garage door.
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At Thanksgiving, my father asked me if I was afraid of going to Paris after the attacks. “No,” I replied. “I teach. I live in America. I’m much more likely to be shot at my place of employment than in a foreign city.”
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My good friend Bee and I talk often about “living past the dream”. It’s multilayered and has several meanings but for the sake of what I’m writing here, I’m referring to making a life beyond A Big Dream that you have achieved. For me, I got my MFA in Creative Writing and I got a job as a full-time teacher at a community college. As an 18-year-old just launching into adulthood, this would have seemed impossible and improbable. I came from a lower middle-class background, steeped in end-time, charismatic evangelism. I lived in rural Pennsylvania and my only extra-curricular activity was youth group. There was a heavy expectation that I would marry, preferably someone in the ministry, who was going to be a missionary or a pastor and that I would have babies and support him. And yet. Contradicting that expectation was a roiling restlessness— a need to rebel, to explore, to create my own dream and life. I left PA for college in the Midwest and fell into a flow that led me to and through my bachelor’s degree, a fulfilling marriage, a master’s degree, and a good job. I hustled hard; I stressed; in many ways I destroyed my body. But that’s the American way, right? To suffer and to sacrifice to achieve.
When I achieved these things, instead of feeling elated, I was suprised to find I felt despondant. What Big Thing would I work towards next? The obvious answer was trying to publish a book but I couldn’t find the drive. Teaching took a lot of energy, I’ve never been motivated by money or fame, and I hate (hate) the administrative process of submitting work. My job allows me a lot of creativity and autonomy and yet I still felt down instead of up. How then could I dream about a good and satisfactory life in the minute day to day? What does that even look like in modern America?
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The American Dream ethos is an ideal of freedom to pursue prosperity with a goal of upward mobility and a comfortable life. The idea is that anyone can achieve it through hard work and sacrifice. Historically, it meant getting a degree, buying a house, getting married, having kids, passing wealth down to those kids, retiring, and living out the last years in some gorgeous green space.
That isn’t the case in modern America for many people and for many reasons and that is what I hope to explore here; what does a new dream look like? What does it mean to live past the dream, the dream that so many Boomers acheived and expect for thier kids? What about those that don’t want to follow that trajectory? We live in a country with living costs aligned with double-income homes and yet our infrastructure has not caught up. America has terrible health insurance, staggering childcare and college costs, inflation, a tight housing market that is driving prices up and over what houses are actually worth. Shit’s hard. And on top of this we have a pandemic we can’t get under control and a serious gun problem.
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How can I love this country? How can I keep trying to change deep-rooted issues when that trying feels so damn futile? How can I love my little 1100 square foot home and my neighborhood, my city, what I do? How can I be the wife/mother/friend/teacher that I aspire to be in the constraints of the American infrastructure that limits freedoms instead of reducing barriers and opening paths to creativity and innovation? What the hell even is “American Freedom”?
Really, what I’m trying to do here is record this time period in American history.
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It took us 5 more years to do IVF for a myriad of reasons which I’ll explore here in upcoming posts. We did go to Paris in 2015 and we were not afraid once. This past week (in June of 2022) I went to the gym and to Target and to the eye doctor and to the gas station and in each place I felt tense; covid or a gun shot? I assessed each point of entry and exit; I looked for places to hide. I want to love my country. I want to dream and work and live in and towards that dream. I’m just not sure how.