Berlin, 11.03.01
So we've had an unusually crazy week - hence the lack of updates. Busy enough that I couldn't do anything at work, either, which is not normal. And obviously I haven't done anything with the site yet. Christ.
Cruel, heartless mean-spirited link o' the week: the 'TardJogger™
This weeks baby pictures: bear attack, face off.
Time had been flying along in a pleasant enough routine since Annette finished that article a few weeks ago. Working, training enough to keep myself fit and sane, lots of (mostly pleasant) time with Madeleine. The only thing hanging over our heads was the uncertainty over what would happen with the two jobs she interviewed for over Christmas; decisions were due by late February. Annette was starting to grow a little worried, a little depressed.
On Monday last week we met after work to run a few errands (take the cat to the vet, see about reserving flights to Sardinia). We stopped for a quick dinner at an Indian restaurant, then came home about eight. Minutes after we walked in the door, the phone rang. It was the department head from SFU, regretfully informing Annette that she didn't get the job. Why did they bother calling - an email would have been kinder. Annette was devastated. She just collapsed and began crying, harder than I've heard in a very long time. It wasn't just the loss of yet another possible academic job, but it was the loss of our only chance to live in Vancouver and the chance for Maddy to grow up near to her grandparents. Pretty tragic. The next morning I went to work but told my boss that Annette was ill and needed help with the baby so that I could return and spend the rest of the day with her. A friend from her birth prep class came by for the afternoon, a prior engagement she wisely decided not to cancel. We made the most of the available distractions, but by four o'clock things were looking decidedly glum.
Then Annette checked her email and learned, to her great surprise, that Toronto wanted her to come out for an interview. It's a History/Gender Studies job. She knew that she was medium-listed for an interview but had heard nothing for weeks and had more or less given up. Never in my life have I seen such a mood swing. Almost instantly she bounced from depression to manic energy. The interview was barely two weeks away and there was much to do. After several calls home her mother decided that the best thing to do would be to fly over as soon as possible to help with the babysitting while Annette wrote her presentations. These calls happened around dinnertime Tuesday; by mid-afternoon Friday, Oma [German for Grandma] blew into town and took over baby care duties. She'll be here until the day after Annette comes back, almost three weeks. I'm relieved! I have a good relationship with my mother-in-law, and while I'm sure that five or six days alone with Madeleine would have resulted in some excellent father-daughter bonding, I'm not that impatient, there will be plenty of opportunities for bonding in the future.
Having seen how devastated Annette was by the news about Vancouver, I have ceased making whiny comments about not wanting to leave Berlin because life is so much cheaper here.
So Annette has one more crack at a job this year. (Over the weekend a very belated rejection letter arrived from Carleton, in Ottawa. No surprise there.) Toronto is her last best chance for a job in Canada. There is an element of destiny to this interview - long-time readers will remember that her first interview for a tenure-track position was at Toronto in 1998, where despite having barely started writing the dissertation, she very nearly got the job. I have never seen her so determined, so focussed. We have a good feeling about this. And yet hers is a dark determination, because there is nothing to lose.
Annette has been on the market four winters running now, twice with a completed Ph.D., and if it doesn't happen soon, she's past the sell-by date, stale goods on the shelf. Five times she's interviewed with Canadian schools, five times she's been rejected. (Meanwhile, one crack at the U.S. job market yielded six AHA interviews, three on-campus interviews and one job offer. What gives?) We don't know exactly what happened with the two failed interviews this year, but last year Dalhousie took a clearly inferior candidate against the recommendations of the hiring committee because the faculty thought that she was "too good" and would leave for the U.S. What is wrong with Canadian universities? They complain about a "brain drain" but they don't have the confidence to hire the best Canadians on the market, don't believe that they would elect to stay at home. Toronto might be the only school in Canada that has the balls to hire her.
The Toronto interview might be the last chance ever, because she's not sure if she wants to go through this process again next year. If she comes up empty, she might decide to walk away from an academic career entirely. After six attempts it will be pretty obvious that for one reason or another she's not going to find a job in Canada, and neither of us want to live in the States. So maybe we'll stay in Berlin for a bit, or we'll go back to Vancouver and open a coffee shop together. Who knows. Either way I will support her decision. Ten years is a long time to work for something, to then just walk away. It will be a difficult transition, but ultimately healthier for her to find another career than to string together temporary teaching jobs in one miserable backwoods school after another. It takes courage to let go.
Right now there's nothing to do but prepare, and wait. It will all become clear by the end of March. For more than three years we've been living with this long-term uncertainty; sometimes I wonder if I'm prepared to cope with certainty.
That's the last time we eat at a certain Indian restaurant, by the way. No more will we cross the threshold of the "Yogi-Snack" on Simon-Dach-Str. It brings bad news. After our second visit, last Monday, we received the phone call from SFU. During our first visit, last October, the meal was interrupted by Annette's water ever so gently breaking. I'm willing to admit that Maddy's arrival didn't exactly qualify as bad news, but in both cases dinner at the Yogi-Snack was followed by a really shitty 24 hours.
In other news, Maddy seems to be breaking records for being the world's easiest baby. Well maybe until this week, when she began teething. We are having fun together. There are days when she looks at me with such intelligence that I half expect her to open her mouth and speak to me like an adult. My heart just skips a beat. It's weird. Lots of progress on feline-infant relations too. Vita will now greet her, a quick nose touch, when she's brought to the bed. This may change soon, when Madeleine discovers self-propulsion. But so far so good.
Vita is also doing well. She has lost weight since Christmas, 300 or 400 g maybe, but is doing better now that the vet decided to take her off the heart medication she started last year, and gave her a good de-worming. There's so much dog shit on the sidewalks in our neighbourhood that it's impossible to keep worm eggs off your shoes. Even house-cats suffer from worms. Disgusting.
What else is news? The vacation has been postponed on account of the Toronto interview; it's looking like Italy (Ravenna or elsewhere on the Adria coast) or Mallorca in early April, after the season's first race. Again, combined training camp and holiday if possible. Meanwhile, my training goes reasonably well. The ice season has ended, now it's just indoor inline, outdoor when weather permits (warm and wet currently) plus weights twice a week and lots of cycling, road and off-road. Enough to keep me fit and sane.
Bed beckons. I'm actually getting more sleep than before the little beast came along. We go to bed much earlier and I don't wake for the feeding. I am so well rested. Other fathers hate me for it.
