Dream: What a difference a year makes

The Thursday before Mother's Day 2010, I learned that I was to be cut from my department at the end of the year.  A younger, childless co-worker had approached me the next day, sympathetic and incredulous.  "It's just because you're a mom," she'd whispered to me, wide-eyed.  I was pretty sure she was right, and the echo of her words served as the soundtrack to my Mother's Day weekend.

I woke up that Sunday achy and feverish.  Refusing to believe that I could be both fired and sick on Mother's Day, I insisted on going to my husband's soccer game where it was overcast and blustery, my husband's play was uninspiring and the girls' behavior alternated between whining, fighting, and crying.  "But it's Mother's Day," I protested weakly and to no avail.

My husband tried to salvage the day by stuffing me with prescription Motrin and packing us all up for the 45-minute ride to my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, which, we found when we arrived, was closed due to a plumbing emergency.  The only place we could find with less than an hour's wait had talking mooseheads on the wall and maybe one menu item that wasn't a slab of beef. 

Also, I was fired and angry and really, really sad.  I knew that if this was my darkest moment, I was lucky; but I knew it in the same way I knew the earth was round.  I understood that it was so, but it was hard to actually feel it and so it wasn't as comforting as it should have been.

A month later, my principal changed his mind and just like that everything was back to how it had been.  Sort of.

This Mother's Day, I again started my morning at a cold, windy soccer game, except that my husband scored a goal (and also got a red card, mortifying me at what appeared to be a terrible misreading of my appreciation of aggressive play, but it turned out to be some sort of misunderstanding and the ref rescinded it in the end). I kept warm by chasing a squealingly happy Little E the length of the field, and I had a mimosa on the sideline after the game. I went for a jog in the new running pants that I got for Mother's Day, and for dinner my husband found a spot that claimed New England's best lobster roll, which I enjoyed at an indoor picnic table and followed with coffee kahlua brownie ice cream with chocolate sprinkles. 

What with not being fired, sick or forced to dine in the company of talking mooseheads, it was all much better than last year.  The very best part, though, was how over the past year --after abruptly losing and improbably regaining my job-- everything never really went back to exactly how it had been.

Hearing Little E's happy shrieks as I bounce her down the field on my back, swapping bites of ice cream with Big E, jogging through the woods, and, yes, even sitting through the Sunday morning soccer game: without a doubt these things feel more important than anything else in my life. 

They are a comfort in the face of any hurt, and, like the troubles of last Mother's Day, they are because I am a mom.

Work: Casual Wednesdays

Last year, my principal made (and then rescinded) the decision to cut me from my department.  I saw this coming and so I was able to make some preparations prior to my fateful trip to his office.  I saw no point in bringing my folder full of positive performance reviews.  Clearly he had considered these, right?  Instead I focused on my wardrobe.

I thought a lot about what one wears to a firing --a suit? sweatpants?  I decided on a black shirt dress with a side tie and a big full skirt.  This was a dose of private gallows humor, as I attributed much of my expendableness to the fact that I was the only mother among those of us who were without professional status (and thus fire-able); this dress, in a different color and covered up with a scallop-edged apron, reminded me of something Donna Reed might wear.  Also, I wore pointy-toed, spike-heeled red lizard-embossed pumps; I thought they handily summed up my bitter disapproval of the entire affair.

In the month between my firing and unfiring, I spent a lot of time strategizing about my wardrobe.  Truthfully, I had always put thought into my clothing.  The scrutiny of a hundred opinionated teenagers a day will do that to you.  In that month of being fired, though, wardrobe decisions felt like my only place of power.  I relied often on the red lizard pumps.  When a former student e-mailed his support, he said that a friend of his in one of my classes had mentioned my shoes.  "Classy," he wrote, "dig?"  Why, thank you.

This year, though, I find myself moving in the opposite direction with what have become regular casual Wednesdays, and I'm not sure what this means.  By the middle of each week, I find myself unable resist the lure of denim.  Sure, I dress it up with cashmere sweaters and crisp blouses, and it's not like it's sweatpants. But it's certainly not a suit. 

It could be that after the drama of last year, I'm approaching work on my own terms.  Or, it may be that my new (and beloved) part-time schedule has shrunken work down to being just a portion of my day and not the day itself.  It's also possible that a tiny piece of me is daring the higher-ups to make something of it.

Insubordination by wardrobe.  Now that's a cause for dismissal I could be proud of.

Work: So, it's kind of a long story...

Invariably, that’s how I introduce the story of the work crisis that ultimately inspired the life changes I hope to document in this blog. I always distrust a long story, and yet that’s what this is. I try to avoid talking about it, but in the interest of context I’ll try to fill you in as succinctly as possible.

It all starts in my principal’s office. He is telling me that due to budgetary considerations, someone must be cut from my department for the following school year and it will be me. It is my lack of commitment, he says, that makes me the most expendable member of the English Department. Sure, I do my job, he says, but I don’t stay late, or coach or sponsor activities; this, he says, is “a cloud.” Actually, I tell him, “this” is being a mother to two small children. He shrugs. I start mentally tallying the all of the times I have dosed the kids with Tylenol and sent them to school and daycare with my fingers crossed, of the missed first day of kindergarten drop off, or the weepy mornings when all I can say to stop the tears is “but I’m going to be late”. It is good, I realize, that I can’t be fired from my more important position for a lack of commitment.

For a month, I walk the halls and teach my classes as the living dead. Everyone knows my story but I put my head down and try to do my job with as much dignity as possible. Co-workers, students and parents are incredibly kind and supportive and still it sucks more than any other month I can remember. And then the principal summons me back to his office.

He has reconsidered. Not only will I not be let go, but I have the option of full or part time and regardless of my choice will be granted professional status, which will hugely increase my job security. I am calm, professional and completely flabbergasted. In the end, I opt to split the difference and take the part-time position.

So that’s the abridged version of the long story of what happened last year. The story of this year will, I hope, be different. I’m planning a story of balance: balancing my work as a teacher with my work as a mother and wife, offsetting all of that work with some serious play, finding time to indulge my love of cooking and eating and actually having enough time left over to sleep, and, of course, dream.