The Honeymoon Can Wait

On Monday, June 22, less than 48 hours after I got married, I packed my car with a few bikes, some clothes, seven books on writing, the King James Bible, and an almost five-pound volume of John Milton’s works. I made the five-hour drive from Brooklyn, NY, to Middlebury, VT, alone. This decision was not based on an epic first fight but rather a deep impression left on me by my sixth-grade English teacher.

On the last day of school in sixth grade, my classmates shared their summer plans: sleep-away camps, family vacations, and sports camps were the most common. Our teacher, however, told us that he was going to school. We idolized him but had no problem laughing when he shared his summer plans. Who in their right mind, we wondered, would spend nine months teaching a bunch of preteens and then go back into the classroom as a student? When he said the school was called Bread Loaf, we laughed even harder. But this Bread Loaf place was obviously magical — it seemed to train teachers not only in literature but in the art of teaching.

Almost twenty-five years after snickering at my English teacher, I emailed him to ask for a recommendation letter to include in my Bread Loaf application. The following June, I relinquished a much-sought-after summer vacation; left my girlfriend, who is now my wife; and started the first of what would be five summers of intensive literary study. I questioned this decision numerous times. The first was when I received paper feedback from Michael Katz some three weeks into that first summer.