Comings and goings

My office neighbor is packing his files, furniture and toys and leaving (this week) for Seattle to pursue a job opportunity that he felt he couldn’t pass up. A stream of well-wishers has been steadily trickling in, most offering good wishes for a bright (if drizzly) future. One colleague, however, did no such thing. She poked her head in and said to him “don’t worry, you’ll be back.” Being rather nosy and having overheard this, I asked where this prediction was coming from. “No one ever leaves Madison permanently” she stated confidently. She used herself as one example of a person who went elsewhere to teach, but came back with her tail between her legs, taking back the lesser job just to be again in Madison. She listed others who had done the same.

I thought that the premise of this whole discussion was flawed: if you leave and never come back, you will eventually be forgotten and written off. If you do come back, you’re smugly lumped into the returnees camp. Maybe every town has its handful of returnees. Maybe people even go back to Beaver Dam (earlier post: home of the “busy beavers”).

As I was dismantling her assertion in my head, I noticed that my moving office-neighbor had that look that we get when we stare out our windows (our offices look out on Bascom Hill) – a pensive kind of look, taking in the melting snow, the incongruously bright red doors of the Education building – and I have to admit to recognizing in that gaze the seeds of a possible future return.