I loved being in college. I loved especially researching and writing papers, the top grades they earned making up for poorer grades on multiple-choice tests that required a better memory than I had. I majored in Elementary Education and graduated a semester early with a B-average, not a brilliant but a hard-working student. Yet even with the degree behind me, I married immediately upon graduating college, still lacking the self-confidence to go overseas or even leave Delaware. He was a single parent raising a small boy, and there I had it: a mission, an unacknowledged substitute for serving elsewhere. What I told myself was love was actually a mutually agreed-upon, albeit tacit, arrangement whereby he got a wife; his son, a mother; and I, needed.

I loved being in college. I loved especially researching and writing papers, the top grades they earned making up for poorer grades on multiple-choice tests that required a better memory than I had. I majored in Elementary Education and graduated a semester early with a B-average, not a brilliant but a hard-working student. Yet even with the degree behind me, I married immediately upon graduating college, still lacking the self-confidence to go overseas or even leave Delaware. He was a single parent raising a small boy, and there I had it: a mission, an unacknowledged substitute for serving elsewhere. What I told myself was love was actually a mutually agreed-upon, albeit tacit, arrangement whereby he got a wife; his son, a mother; and I, needed.