Callings and Seasons
“If you need me, I’ll be facing soups and beans.”
In retail, to “face” is to rearrange product on shelves following customer purchases. A customer buys a can of chili or tuna or tomato sauce, and the crew member pulls the remaining cans forward. The display is thus made new for the moment, and in the grocery business, “facing” is a constant need.
It has been a year since I left Trader Joe’s Hermosa Beach and struck out on my own as a freelance ghostwriter. After twelve turbulent months, I’m still able to scratch out a living as a scribbler for hire, and I am grateful for it. I do, however, miss store #248. Tonight, I went back for a visit, and, after some banter with beloved former co-workers, I announced I’d do just a little facing. The managers (we call them “mates” at Trader Joe’s) humored me, and allowed an “alumnus” to organize various olives, broths, and beans.
I was fifty-five when I left TJs. I had worked there for just over five years. It remains the only full-time job I’ve ever had where I left on good terms. In particular, it remains the only job I’ve ever had where my employers were sorry to see me go -- and assured me I’d be welcomed back should circumstances change. Given my life history, that assurance is no small boon. It is a wonderful thing upon which to rely, both as a fallback should the writing gigs dry up – and as a reminder that for all my professional and marital failures, there are bridges I crossed but did not burn.
Last month, two days before Thanksgiving, I walked onto the Pasadena City College campus. It was my first visit back since 2019, when I took the children to see the classroom where I had taught their mother. I am still not sure whether these visits are entirely permissible; as part of the resignation agreement I signed with the college, I pledged never to set foot on campus again. No restraining order was filed, however. Given that I signed the document while under tremendous emotional strain and heavily medicated, I don’t consider myself entirely bound by all its restrictions. Whether the college shares my view, I don’t expect to find out.
I walked the campus, peered into my former classrooms, inspected the strange name on the door that was once my office. I marveled that old buildings always seem to retain the same distinct scent, year after year after year. I went to the campus bookstore and bought myself a Pasadena City College t-shirt. I gave twenty years to the place, I might as well don the gear!
Over the past decade, many former students, meaning to be kind, have told me that I was one of their favorite professors. Over and over, they say, “You were born to teach. There has to be a way for you to get back into a classroom.” For the first seven or eight years that I heard that sort of remark, it made me weep in shame and frustration. How could I have been so foolish to throw away so much? I had a job that didn’t feel like a job. To borrow a concept from Aristotle, when I was teaching, all distinctions vanished between leisure and work – I loved the classroom so much, I would have lectured for free.
I have decided to believe that I was born to teach. I was born to teach for exactly twenty years, no more and no less. I taught at least 15,000 students, and they were the sum total of those I was meant to teach. I was then “born” to spend five years and two months working at Trader Joe’s, slinging groceries and stocking shelves and keeping the town fed during the pandemic. I am now “born” to ghostwrite, and I do not yet know how many authors I will serve in that capacity. Perhaps I am meant to do my own memoir. Perhaps not.
I was a very good teacher, and my misconduct aside (for it can be cast aside, whatever Twitter says), I served my students well. Later, I was a good stocker of groceries, a good breaker-down of pallets, a good puller of date codes, a good bagger of bread. Now, some of my clients seem to feel I am a good and helpful clarifier and organizer of their thoughts, memories, and ideas.
The point is this: We make a grave mistake when we confuse a talent with a calling. We make a similar mistake when we confuse a calling for a season with a calling for a lifetime. It is true that some wonderfully talented people labor in a single profession all their lives and become celebrated masters of their craft. It is true that some people marry their first love, and that union endures. Some of us are not so lucky – or to be honest, we are not so constant and reliable. It may not be a virtue to have many callings in many different seasons, but it is certainly good fortune. And I give thanks for mine.