On the Move

‘Man, you gotta Go.’

It’s ten years ago this week since I left Old School. I was at Old School for eighteen years: give me a job and I’ll stick around. So departures are on my mind at the moment, as are all the feelings around leaving and staying and moving on. It was our last day yesterday, a day of complicated emotions for various reasons, and so here I am, with a post about Thom Gunn and Sister George Michael from Derry Girls, and if Thom Gunn and Sister George Michael have ever previously featured in the same piece of writing then I’d like to know about it.

A long time ago, just before we adopted The Dude, The Husband and I went to Bulgaria. We had a phase of several summers when we went to various lesser-visited parts of eastern Europe to climb hills and drink wine, and this particular part of Bulgaria was just about the most remote place we’d ever been to. I was apprehensive and excited all at the same time, and the apprehension and the excitement were heightened by the fact that a few days after our return, we’d be meeting social workers to discuss a little boy with red hair who might eventually become our son. We were staying with the friend of a friend the night before our flight, sleeping in her adult daughter’s old bedroom, still filled with books and folders and student posters. Pinned to a wall was a handwritten copy of Thom Gunn’s poem ‘On the Move’. I’d never read any Thom Gunn before, but I stood and read. The poem spoke of transition, of waiting to be started and not quite knowing what would come next. There are some times in your life when you come across the perfect poem for a particular moment, and that evening in the summer of 2006, ‘On the Move’ was absolutely it.

I quoted from ‘On the Move’ in one of the leaving cards I wrote last week. In one of my favourite parts of the poem, Gunn writes of how

Men manufacture both machine and soul,
And use what they imperfectly control
To dare a future from the taken routes.

It strikes me that daring a future from the taken routes is essentially what we all do in life. We wing it, make it up as we go along, see how it works out. Most of the time we’re oblivious to this, but when we leave a job to start a new one, or to do something else entirely, we become more acutely aware of it. We don’t know whether it’s going to be the right move, but we take a deep breath and let the future happen. We move toward, toward, trying our best with whatever we imperfectly control.

Sometimes we go, and sometimes we stay. The magnificent Sister George Michael, in Derry Girls, is the headmistress of Our Lady Immaculate College. The school is in her blood. She is sarcastic, withering and impatient, in her wimple, pleated skirt and chunky Aran sweater. (My favourite Sister George Michael bits are when school swot Jenny Joyce and her friends appear in assembly, staging well-meaning drama performances on themes such as social division or singing about the wonderful possibilities of Monday morning: her sighs and eyerolls are legendary. After one particular horror, on the Good Friday Agreement, she comments, ‘The conflict here has led to so many terrible atrocities. And now we must add your play to that list.’) But then she is told, by her bishop, that it is time for a new challenge. Familiarity distracts us from the main purpose. People get too comfortable, and when that happens, a change is the best thing all round.

I wondered, for a long time, about whether I should leave Old School. In the early years, the main reason I stayed was because my mum had died, very suddenly, at the beginning of my second year. I’d lost both of my parents in just under four years: I felt rootless and in need of somewhere to belong. There are times in your life when you need a comfort zone. Several times, over the years, I looked at other jobs. I even went for an interview, for a job that seemed perfect, and realised on the way home that I absolutely didn’t want it and didn’t want to leave. I loved being part of a community, the continuity that being a long-term member of staff gave me. This is something that’s often undervalued. The teachers who stay give students a sense of security, a feeling that they can always go back to a place where they’ll be known. Bumping into former students in town, seeing people grow up and move away and then come back: you become part of so many lives in all manner of intangible ways.

When Sister George Michael is told that it’s time for her to leave, we see a rare period of soul-searching. She sits alone in her study and ponders, the lights dimmed, watched over by statues of saints. And then she tells the parish priest that her decision has been made. She has had a whiskey, and a word with herself. She has rung the bishop and told him that she makes a difference. ‘The girls know that. The parents know that. I’m not ready to leave. Try and force me to and there’ll be an awful fuss, I said.’ There wasn’t much the Bishop could say.

It took me a long time to come to terms with leaving Old School. I’m happy where I am now, but I know that one day it’ll be time for me to pack my things into my metaphorical red-spotted handkerchief , and dare a different phase of my future from the routes I choose to take. Good luck to everyone who’s on the move this year, and best wishes to everyone who’s decided to stay.