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In 1999, I moved with my mom—a French immigrant and graduate student—to Clarion, a rural town in western Pennsylvania. I was 12. She was a one-year adjunct. We moved into a yellow prefabricated apartment building. There was a Wendy's in our backyard. It was a modest box, our box.
I spent nights walking around Wal-Mart off of I-80, gazing at fish. Were the fish dead yet? My mom was French, so we bought groceries each night. The mall had a JCPenney at one end, a K-Mart at the other. There was a forest with virgin oak trees accented by the Clarion River.
Today, my mom is moving away from Clarion. She eventually got a full-time job at the university there, though the French program she taught in got cut as part of the cutting that's happened to language programs over time. My mom almost got retrenched. Are universities dead yet?
These are bittersweet weeks. I listen to Lucy Dacus's "My Mother and I" and cry. Recently I dreamt I was running through Clarion. "I love it here," I said to no one as I ran, a sentiment that is neither true nor false. I too am now an adjunct. It is almost Mother's Day.
