Today and last Wednesday I felt a sense of uplift towards the end of the day, before I realized the next day would be a different kind of Thursday than the one that I was looking forward to.

This semester I set out to do school like a job. It feels like I’m achieving that aim but then of course I’m also doing my traditional-sense jobs. The ones I’m paid to do, rather than the other way around.

For one of them, a few months ago I started spending Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in a little town south and east of the city, looking after a friend’s son. The time away really started to round out each week for me. This week and last have a lopsided feel to them, with my Thursdays given over to clinic for the next month and a half.

Opportunity knocks, and who am I not to answer? At least I still have one day a week to get past that last stoplight where the Beltline crosses the busy city street that turns into an open country road with a quickness I marvel at every time.

It takes seconds to leave it all behind, the proliferation of billboards and Walgreens and curbs and unassertive trees, and be surrounded (or literally, not) by wide expanses of space. There are houses here and there and the roads are labeled. It’s not wilderness by any stretch.

But it is such a change of scene. Every time I think I’ve missed the turnoff. I never have. I have no idea where I’d end up if I did. It’s like an old-world map in my head, just blank space around the known territories, with maybe some sea dragons lurking, forked tongues and all.

When I get there, once a week now, the baby and his grin have gotten so much bigger but he still falls asleep quickest after a little heart-to-heart time, head on my shoulder, one last mighty sigh-wriggle, then that blissed-out baby surrender to sleep that is sweeter than any success.