Regeneration

As you know, I am a longtime Whovian, one of those rare old types who's been around since the First One. A fundamental plot devise to the series is the idea of regeneration. This is when the Time Lord, because he is old, exhausted, wounded or otherwise dying, transforms into a new physical reality. It is a dramatic, fiery, painful letting go of an old life in order to make way for something new.
  

This has been a year of changes. Recently I lost my remaining teaching contracts. For over two decades, I have taught as an adjunct. At one point, I taught between 8 to 10 classes a semester. I helped develop an online program. I advised students, and wrote recommendations. I aged out of the tenure system long ago, but I stayed with the teaching because it served a purpose, despite paying for my own benefits. Losing my income, and facing the consequences that followed, brought me to a cross-roads and some hard decisions. Should I seek out new contracts? After over two decades of teaching as an adjunct, do I really want to face the semester by semester existence again? How long can I keep this up?

Or maybe, as Doctor Who says, "Everything ends, and it’s always sad, but then everything begins again. And that’s always happy."

With that said, I’m leaving my beautiful log safe-haven, my home for twenty-five years. I am heading south. With this, I offer some poetry of hope and new beginnings, and roads to travel.

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 

 

 My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold'
William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is the father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Hope is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson


Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me. 

With special thanks to my fellow Time Lord, Cynthia, for the reminder that "every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And we definitely added to [this] pile of good things." And for my favorite companions who have followed me through this space and time, dear Monica and Bonny and Vera, and everyone, who reminded me that I am not alone on this adventure.

See you on the other side!

Bobbi Miller


(PS. All photos by Pixabay)