The Art of Losing: A Letter to My New Colleagues at Deerfield Academy

members of the English department at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts have a tradition of writing letters one another over the summer months, describing what they're reading and thinking and seeing, how they are enjoying the span of time between the end of one academic year and the start of the next. My husband and I joined the English department at Deerfield this fall, and we were invited participate. letter that follows tells my new colleagues what it was like in Virginia as we prepared leave Sweet Briar College, where we lived and taught for the last twenty-one years (though I had a three-year hiatus from Sweet Briar, during which I served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at nearby Hollins University). In March, Sweet Briar College's administration and board, citing insurmountable financial difficulties, announced that the college would close at the end of the 2014-2015 academic year. In June, supporters and alumnae won a surprising victory, and the college will remain open for at least another year--perhaps for another hundred years. But the rescue came too late for many, such as my husband and myself, who had already found and accepted positions elsewhere. My letter my new colleagues describes the thoughts and feelings that accompanied our last days at Sweet Briar--the last time we did this or that, went here or there, saw one friend or another--days that also were filled with anticipation about the new life we were soon begin. June 15, 2015 Sweet Briar, Virginia Dear Friends, In every room here at Sanctuary Cottage we weave a path now through cardboard boxes, many gleaned from the liquor store (Barton Gin, Canadian Mist, Benchmark Kentucky Straight Bourbon ...). Most of these boxes are half-full, flaps open. Inside, books are stacked, blankets are folded--the red-and-blue woven bedspread from my grandfather's boyhood bed, for instance, and two quilts patterned with purple irises, sewn by my great-great-aunt. Plastic bins are stuffed with eiderdowns that release a flurry of feathers when I open the lids. We own a few pieces of silver--a candelabra, a child's cup engraved with the names of daughters going back six generations, ending with my own, a bowl given my parents on the occasion of their wedding, picture frames engraved with the names of each of our three children and the hour and date of their births, given us by the mother of a dear childhood friend. These frames--blackened with tarnish, evidence of my shameful neglect--I have polished and wrapped in flannel and packed. This fall, along with many of our friends and colleagues at Sweet Briar, we will move begin new jobs. Deerfield is a distinguished school, beautiful--we discovered when we visited--and buttressed by a comfortingly generous endowment. As every Deerfield faculty member and student likely knows, among the school's illustrious alumni is the writer John McPhee. I buy a copy of his book about the school's famous headmaster, Frank Boyden, who oversaw nearly every aspect of the school for an extraordinary sixty-six years, from 1902 until 1968. The object of the school should be the development of character, Boyden wrote in 1906, to help each pupil do that for which he is best suited. I like this sentiment. What better life than the life for which one is best suited? Yet the matter of determining exactly what sort of life is one in which one is most likely be happy and successful is complicated. We are apprehensive about our move, for instance, regretful about who and what we will miss when we depart, uncertain about the fate of the place we leave behind, as well as our future in the place which we have committed ourselves. campus of Deerfield is a less than a half hour's drive from the Vermont state border, thirty-eight miles from a house in the tiny Vermont town of Williamsville, where I lived happily for a few years as a child. I have the disconcerting sense of my present life inescapably approaching its beginning, and it occurs me wonder what happens when both ends of the circle meet. …

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