My Last Drive From Bridgewater

On Monday night I made my last trip home from Bridgewater State University. Oh, sure. I assume that I’ll be back at some point. But, this was my final drive home as a member of the faculty. And now, I’m a former member of the faculty.

The name comes off the mailboxes.

It was about this time of year in 2006 that Neil and I rented a U-Haul and drove my belongings down to Bridgewater, where I started as a new assistant professor on the tenure-track. Since we still lived in southern Maine, 120 miles from Bridgewater, I had rented a cottage in the area so that I would have somewhere to stay overnight near campus. Thus, the U-Haul had my office belongings, as well as items for the garage-converted cottage. It was incredibly hot that day, as I recall – about 100°. My step-daughter, Dorothy, was a teenager and she was home sick from her job at Funtown, with a fever. This was in the days before we had cell phones, so we didn’t know she was sick until we arrived home late that night.

Our tenants and neighbors at that time had a new shelter dog, who hadn’t quite adjusted to life outside the shelter yet. Iolo, as he was called, was skittish, timid, and nervous. He was traveling with us and our black Lab for the day, as his owners were out of town. Iolo was so mixed up. He sat on the bench seat between Neil and me, along with our dog, Blackberry, and faced out the rear window the whole way down to Bridgewater. Since we were driving a U-Haul, he didn’t get much of a view, staring at the wall of the metal container.

But, I digress.

Monday night I drove home from Bridgewater for the last time as a member of the faculty – and, specifically, the social work faculty.  As I have blogged about before, joining the social work profession after I received my PhD, was life-changing. It fundamentally changed me as a person, how I see the world, interact with it, and what I seek to contribute and gain from it. And, as I have also blogged about before, I met people at Bridgewater who helped to shape me into a more social being – into the person who Neil says, “Could develop a social circle in solitary confinement.”

My drive home came after a day of packing up my Bridgewater office, in preparation of moving to a new university, which I did the very next day. I tend to keep a pretty tidy office, but there were more decisions to make than I anticipated. More history to review than I had remembered. More books than I could fit into my little hatchback. More items to distribute to my colleagues than I had thought. More ice to thaw out of my dormitory-style refrigerator than I wanted. I stayed late into the evening and then into the night.

It was fitting to be there, in the Burrill Office Complex, late at night. Those were some of my favorite times at Bridgewater – working late at night in the BOC; trying to race the clock to get home, but being strangely rewarded by the solitude that comes with work spaces at night. It wasn't unusual to be there until 7 or 8 or 9pm. I loved being in that building, if you could even call it that. The School of Social Work moved into that space in 2007 – a temporary, pre-fabricated building of sorts, that the university had a two-year lease on, with an option for a two-year renewal. And, there we are, 10 years later, complete with a failing roof, windows that leak, ants in the spring, and mice year-round. That’s the way it sometimes goes at public institutions. The faculty and staff joked how fitting it was that the School of Social Work should be in the “trailer park.” But, I also liked it there. It was spacious, bright, and airy.

The Burrill Office Complex

I loved meeting with students in the BOC, in 30-minute increments, for hours on end. There’s nothing quite like forging relationships with students, reassuring them about their competence and skill set, watching them grow, and sending them into the world to be an intervention in other people’s lives, to be a force for good and social change. I also loved coming back to my office after teaching in the evening and finding my colleagues in our office suite, talking: Debriefing after class, dissecting assignments, worrying about students who were struggling, and commiserating about our crushing workloads. Yes, late nights in the BOC were to be avoided, but also to be relished.

My drive home was like most of my drives home from Bridgewater: Dark, long, and slightly dangerous. In my decade-plus of commuting to Bridgewater, I may have gotten used to driving through the O’Neill Tunnel, but I never adjusted to the lunacy of Route 24, where there is always someone in the right hand lane driving 50 mph and always someone in the left hand lane driving 90. I will not miss that part of my drive. But, I will miss seeing the marsh on Route 1 in Malden, climbing to the top of the Tobin Bridge and seeing Boston Harbor in all its glory (and if I was sitting in traffic, texting my friend, Lars, in Germany, to tell him that I was once again in traffic on the Tobin, but isn’t the view wonderful, and snapping a quick photo for him, and he would respond that it is, but I should focus on my driving), seeing the historical Bunker Hill Monument, and then coming out of the tunnel after the Tobin and being rewarded with the striking beauty of the Zakim Bridge. But, then again, there's the traffic. My commute was 90 minutes each way without traffic. Without traffic. That's almost a joke in Boston, no?

In the first week of December, 2007, there was a giant snowstorm in New England. I left campus too late and found myself in gridlock in Boston. It was unprecedented. Children stranded on school busses and elders stuck on shuttles, a mere mile from their residences. We still lived in southern Maine and my usual two-plus hour drive turned into nine. Yes, nine hours on the road, six of which I spent sitting in Boston on Route 93. I won’t entertain you with stories about the emergency bathroom trip. Suffice it to say that it did not involve an empty Big Gulp cup, even though it almost did. But, it did involve the O’Neill Tunnel, a McDonald’s, and a snowbank.

But, I digress.

Packing up and leaving a place that you have loved and where you have spent your life is a strange thing, especially when you’re going onto something else that brings so many unknowns. But, this is the way I felt when I moved from the University of New Hampshire to Bridgewater in 2006. So, if history predicts anything, it will all go well. Nonetheless, I wasn’t really sure how to leave the BOC. In fact, when my department chair unlocked my office door for me so that I could pack up, she said, “Not that this is strange or anything.” No, nothing strange here. Not. At. All.

"Will I ever finish?"

Apparently so...

I wrote a goodbye sign for my colleagues and hung it by the mailboxes. I turned off my office light. I turned off the hall lights. I locked the School of Social Work suite door, being sure to pull on the handle, because it doesn’t latch on its own. I used the rest room one more time and then carried my cap and gown out to my little hatchback, loaded them in among the boxes, and drove home.

The BOC, late in the evening.

Ready to leave campus

On my final drive home, I encountered drivers who zipped passed me, weaving in and out of traffic, easily going 90-100 mph. And, I cursed them and said out loud, as I have been saying since I first started commuting to/through Boston when I was 16, “Crazy Boston drivers!! The insanity! They are going to kill someone!!!” I held onto the steering wheel tightly and kept my eyes focused on the road, behind and in front of me, and survived this moment of Boston driving, once again. In my early days of teaching at Bridgewater, my colleague Karen and I would often teach in the same evening time slot. We’d interrupt each other’s classes to say to the students, “So, what are you guys learning tonight? Can’t be as much fun as my students… We’re doing ‘threats to external validity’ tonight!” We’d walk back to our offices together after class. She’d give me a ride to my car and we’d sit for a few moments and talk, her seat heater warming my generous derrière. Then on the way home, she’d call me and we’d talk some more about classes, students, and our department, until I would tire or I’d reach the “dangerous part” of my drive and we’d hang up.

But, I digress.

On Monday night I drove home for the last time from Bridgewater State University. I stopped and got a drink, as usual. I was starving, but Subway was closed and I wouldn’t make it to Chipotle in Saugus before they would close. So, I opted for trail mix with chocolate – splitting the difference between junk food and healthy food. A choice that I have often made when leaving the office at night.

I finished my drive with another favorite moment, by driving through Newburyport, over the Chain Bridge and Hines Bridge, which leads me to a street along the Merrimack River in Amesbury. Every time I get on Route 95 south or travel up from the south, I make the choice to spend the extra 3-5 minutes to travel this route. I love a river more than any other body of water, even the ocean. This route gives me a small chance to appreciate the tremendous natural beauty that surrounds me. It calms and restores me at the end of my long drives to and from Bridgewater. 

You know, that place, that school, is the real deal. A place dedicated to social justice, to first generation college students, students of color, and students of modest means. It is a place that is dedicated to teaching and enriching lives and lifting people up and it has been, nay, it was my sincere pleasure to spend a decade of my career on its campus. And, this past Monday night? I made my final trip home from Bridgewater. What a decade it has been. 

The Merrimack River from Amesbury at night