Under Construction

From my office window, I can see the National Cathedral in the distance through the scouring January sun. A year ago, I would not have believed myself capable of such a statement. At the beginning of 2010, my little family was still holed up in a cabin within spitting distance of Lake George. I could walk from my front door all the way to the top of Buck Mountain in the Adirondack range without ever crossing a road. An urban office, the requisite job, and the need for me to bring in an income were not anywhere on the horizon. We were still doing our best to perform triage on our marriage. I was a stay-at-home mom and camp wife by day, a struggling novelist by night.

In my spotty work history, I have worked leading students through the streets of Geneva and the hills of St. Lucia, occupied modular cubes and steamy kitchens, and staffed courtrooms and classrooms. But I have never simultaneously possessed both a workspace of my own and a window. As Bug was growing through his toddler and preschool years, I occasionally imagined myself returning to work. I figured if I could keep him alive until kindergarten, I might land a part-time gig scanning membership cards at the front desk of the Glens Falls YMCA.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Desperation is the OB forcing her feet in the stirrups. Within the span of a year, complacent avoidance has given way to single motherhood. My imagination has been cracked open by the sudden force of the change. I don't just work and raise a child. Within the School of Public Policy, I take on projects above and beyond the scope of my position. I say "yes" whenever possible. I may be laying my career foundation a little late in the game, but I'm erecting the gleaming skeleton with determined optimism. I know better than to assume 2011 is going to see a finished product, but I also understand that the structure of this new life will only be as grand as the blueprints I lay down here and now.

At this moment, I am inside the freshly carpeted hull of the latest steel-and-glass addition to the Virgina Square skyline. This is our first week of business in George Mason U's new Founders Hall. On Monday morning, I opened an office door flanked by a plate bearing my married name and walked into the sunlit space I will inhabit forty-odd hours of every week. The ergonomically correct office chair gave me a welcome hug and I spun around to gaze northeast across Arlington, over the river, along the tops of winter-bared trees to the cathedral atop a D.C. hill.

I remember the stone church being perpetually under construction when I was a child growing up here. The foundation was laid in 1907. When it was completed about 80 years after its beginning, many people needed reminding that it was one of the most rapidly constructed cathedrals in the world. It's a nice reminder that lovely, solid things take a long time to build.