Only this specific group of people could ever host a party for packing up collections. It was special, or at least we all thought it was so. Walking across a busy boulevard with only the knowledge that we had uncovered something great, something magnificent. No one in this city- full of rich art collectors, movie stars, wannabes, tryhards and Industry folk- would ever value the same silly little things that we did. Except they weren't silly, and we took it all very seriously. So on a warm spring evening, on the cusp of the summer field season, our two curators packed up a little suitcase of alcohol and we took the object we had been clamoring about, and we walked across the street to one of those fancy high rises. Cars honked, people biked past, no one cared about our mass exodus from The Museum. I held a bottle of root beer and laughed when appropriate, paused at the group photo and then was waved in by our Collections Manager. Standing there, in the sun with my cohort of mismatched researchers, students, and colleagues, I felt like I was part of something a bit bigger at last. If, in a bizarre moment that reminded me of the Park Service, I was part of a collective and finally that "family" that museums like to talk about. No longer their mouthpiece, forever getting parts of their research incorrect or having to spend the entirety of my days on the floor talking with school children about the work that all of them do. No longer excusing myself as not a scientist that works there, a paragon of academic knowledge and power. Instead, I'm one of them this evening, in the hazy sunset of the city and the bright greens of the shirts they made to commemorate their accomplishments.
That all comes crashing down in the next few hours.
Two vodka seltzers later, peach flavored and sweating, I pulled myself out to the patio to look across at the park where The Museum is located. There are conversations happening that I'm lost in. Or not included, rather. The team of students refuses to chat with me, on account of one of them having been offended by my assistance one day in the lab. The head of Field Research has been introducing his star student otherwise, to every visiting researcher that is in attendance of this party. This stupid party, in a glass tower that we all have paid for either in time or labor, the view of the park and the emptiness of the cubicles. There is a microscope in one such cubicle, a fossil cast on another's desk- every time I have been up here my shoes squeak across the floor but the sound has never reached anyone else's ears. It's a place that should feel homey since we all work right across the street, but instead it feels like we've been put upon ourselves to act in caricature. Folks have straightened up a bit, have started speaking in different tones, have started mentioning the future of The Museum and the remodel and the structure and all the things that I thought we weren't supposed to look at too closely. Not yet. Not ever. I had this vision of us, in that underground bunker drinking beers on the roof of that structure after hours and joking about the bigwigs in their shiny new office building, in my mind for so long. But here we were. In a tower in the sky, and across from me is sat the Executive Director and I am....gleefully showing her kittens on my phone?
(Elsewhere, the Union's Bargaining Committee is meeting, and I am missing it.)
I had to excuse myself. It was too hot, too cramped, too much. In the bathroom, I padded damp paper towels to the back of my neck and wiped away excess eyeliner. I shifted my lanyard to hide the Union pin (shameful) and I considered taking it off altogether so that the executives who had descended upon us (they hear word of a party in the new building and they arrive exactly when the champagne is popped open) won't know my name. It was futile however, when the Curator gave a toast to each of us, naming us in the process of packing and helping with the collections in this time of dire need. I returned to the kitchen, looking for a glass of water and ran straight into the Curator and her Assistant. For a second, it was like seeing two girls gossiping in a corner, but then the Curator stood a little taller and I watched her Assistant defer to her opinion. Motherhood, or something like it was happening between the two of them. (Not something I am ever really an expert in, but I understand the desire nonetheless.) Still, as I approached them, I too plastered a winning expression and prepared some sort of joke to tell her.
There wasn't a need for a joke. Instead, she acted like we had already had one. Leaning forward enough so that I could smell the perfume (shockingly sweet and floral, for someone who is not...how I would describe as gentle) she winked at me when asking how things were going in my department. "Stick around long enough, and we'll make you Head of Education here" she had said once.
Now, she looks at me with that knowing eye and asks, "Why do you think everyone at the other Museum doesn't like how close you are to us?"
Her assistant piped up. "It's because it's Education. You know. Everyone in Education wants to be in Research." So they're jealous, was left implied.
I thought back to my undergrad days, when all I wanted was for one kid to care so much about a plant that they'd go tell their friends. Or the time when I was leading a hike up a mountain and the kids I was with were so tired they started throwing mud at me. We had a mud fight and we came back glowing and happy and shiny. Then my own childhood, chasing my dog through the redwood trees and sliding down invasive grass filled hills and collecting shiny rocks at the beach, and riding on the back of my dad's ATV and the whole wild nature of living in the Park Service. Research hadn't ever crossed my mind.
Not until now. Not until I had decided only just a few years ago that I had a mindset that was focused on wanting to complete something. To study something more so that I could offer it to others. Becoming a professor is still my end goal. Education, or something like it, might be with me forever.
They laughed regardless, both looking at me like I was in on this joke.
Back at the main room of the party, the researchers all boasted on their exploits. They discussed how silly It was that Marketing wanted to join them in the field this year. They jabbed at anyone who didn't work in the office or the lab full time, all those folks who had cubicles in this fancy office and yet remained working remotely. I thought of a monkey's paw as I stared out at the orange sunset, casting shadows of pitch black pools of tar. I had my wish, finally. I was one of them. But the cost might be everything I had already been working for this entire time.
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