Melissa, June 13, 2007

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It's the little things, sometimes, that make you think your energies are going in the wrong direction.

I really believe in living up to my commitments, and last year I made a commitment: to a three-year term on the board. It was an honor, sort of—at least something that I could put on my C.V.—the sort of third-tier community service that might give you a little extra insurance when the tenure review comes around. But I didn't kid myself—I knew that being secretary of the board of directors of The Tangled Bank Nature Center was worth, at most, about 2% of my tenure, and that every hour of actual work it obligated me to do was essentially a wasted hour.

But you know, that wasn't the problem.

Even when Lisa started talking about resigning, and suddenly the executive committee became a search committee and a damage control committee, and a let's-sit-down-with-a-bottle-of-wine-and- tell-each-other-it's-the-mission-not-Lisa committee (which usually required a second or third bottle of wine, because we all knew that Lisa was the reason we had all gotten involved, after all, Lisa was The Tangled Bank, but now we, as board members, had to dedicate ourselves to the fiction that the center was an ongoing community institution and that Lisa was merely our employee)—even then, it didn't seem much of a burden. I guess once you get into committee mode—when you've spent your afternoon sorting through the pre-defined agendas that your colleagues bring to a Biology Department four-year-plan "brainstorming" session, it almost seems natural to spend an hour on the phone discussing the impact on extant grant applications of the impending departure of the founder, executive director, principal fundraiser, and very visible public face of the Tangled Bank Nature Center.

No, it wasn't that my position on the center's board distracted me from Biology Department business—or even from my own teaching and research. It was that one particular phone call—the phone call where I agreed, wholeheartedly, that the board would keep the center going without Lisa—distracted me from Jake.

Jacob. My son. My sweetheart.

I knew something had been bothering Jake—since Memorial Day he had been acting strangely—not to me, so much, as to his father. Jake's a great kid—very patient and understanding—he knows how hard I work, but he also knows that I make time when we can be together. Sometimes it almost seems as if he keeps an agenda of important things for us to talk about. When we get the chance. The way I keep a list of issues I need to discuss with the department chair.

That's too much to ask of an eight-year-old, isn't it?

Anyway, that night he had something to tell me. I think he had saved it up—waiting patiently until we were alone—until his father had left the house.

"Mom," he said. "Remember the picnic?"

"You mean Memorial Day?" I said. It wasn't a big picnic—we had some people over to grill out—including Lisa and her daughter Samantha. Whatever the conflicts of interest involved, Lisa's still my neighbor. And my friend.

"Yeah," said Jake. "You know how Samantha and I went inside to play chess?"

And that's when the phone rang.