Work: Breaking up is hard to do

Though I normally tune out when someone starts recounting a dream, I need to share one that I had a few nights ago.

I was at Little E's daycare waiting for some sort of student show to begin and I was angry.  The show, it seemed, was delayed and I was sitting cross-legged and sullen in a child-sized chair.  Head cocked, I glared at the center director and snapped my gum impatiently as she smiled politely and offered a continous stream of awkward apologies and acknowledgements of my patience, all while the rest of the parents squirmed in their little seats at the tension.  The dream ended when I stood up and announced that I would be heading out to the lobby to make a phone call --to our new daycare.

I didn't need an analyst to tell me that I was feeling anger toward the daycare; I'd spent enough of my waking hours stewing over the misunderstanding with Little E's registration for next year to be well aware of that.  I did think it was a neat trick of my subconscious, though, to bring together all of my personae in one room.

There was my crazy mom side, the one I keep in check almost always, the one who comes out primarily when I recount for my husband what I should have said in any number of situations.  In the gum cracking and cocked-head glaring was my inner bitchy 15-year-old, a version of me that I find myself in much closer touch with than many women my age simply because of my everyday proximity to a fair number of sullen teenagers. The director, though the object of my crazy self's rage, was also me in a sense, the teacher trying frantically to figure out what to say to mollify the seemingly irrationally angry parent. My polite and reasonable everyday self that works so hard to squelch the crazy mom side was present, too, in the form of the other parents in the room.

In thinking through my concerns about Little E's daycare, I've been feeling all awhirl as my various selves weigh in on how best to manage.  While crazy mom gets all feral at the first inkling that someone might be treating her baby unfairly, her more rational, albeit somewhat cynical counterpoint, the realistic teacher points out that Little E is not the only child in the daycare and not every parent request can honored nor can every child's needs be expressly catered to.  Still, the sulking teenager thinks the whole thing is so not fair, and is thoroughly pissed off at the director's power trip after we've been sending our kids there for six years now.  And while my reasonable everyday self grits her teeth at the shoddy treatment in the face of six years worth of tuition, she plasters on a tense smile because she knows that for now she still has to leave her kid with these people every day for the next couple of weeks.

Being a mother has been both a help and a hindrance at work; though I'm much more sympathetic and understanding than I was before I had kids, my commitment to the job is limited by my devotion to my family.  Similarly, being a teacher has both helped me in interacting with my daughters' teachers by giving me some insight as to their viewpoint, and it has also hurt at times when I've hesitated --sometimes at my kids' expense-- to be the difficult parent that I myself dread dealing with at work. 

In this case, reasonable me won out for the most part, though my teenage self was in evidence insofar as I chose to phone in my daycare breakup just as I did my high school breakup, though with much less name-calling and without a pre-written script and an audience of girlfriends urging me on.  I was pleasant but firm in explaining my decision to remove Little E from the program, and I only let crazy mom out when I reenacted for my husband what I would have said had Little E not been sitting right next to me when I called.

In all, I felt good about the way I handled it. Which is not to say that I can promise there won't any glaring or gum snapping when I go in to pick up Little E on her last day.

It's probably childish that I want to share this picture of Little E enjoying the superior playground at the new daycare with the director of her current daycare.  But would it really be a break up without a little pettiness?

Work: On sacrifices and sensitivity

My part-time schedule has made me the Boo Radley of the English Department.

I'm a phantom, slipping out quietly while all of those around me go about their middle of the day business, no longer in meetings where I would have been vital last year, not even copied onto e-mails I might have been sending last year.  Stripped of my own classroom due to my part-time status, I spend prep periods in the windowless department office where the motion-sensored lights shut off so frequently that I've mostly given up trying to keep them on and have learned to make due with the one lonely fluorescent panel that acknowledges me.  Yesterday a co-worker ran into my cave to use the crusty office microwave; she startled when the lights went up and she saw me hunched over a pile of essays in the corner, cringing  from the sudden glare.  Boo.

In the classroom, though, I'm still there.  In fact, I'm feeling better than ever about my teaching because I'm not hassled by building politics or harried by five classes worth of planning and grading.  This makes it easier to live with the fact that I'm feeling vaporized in every other aspect of my career.  The decision to go part-time was not made in the interest of advancement; it was made in the interest of my family and my sanity.

My family is happy with the change.  And yet my sanity is tested.

My latest grievance is with world's lack of consideration for working parents.  I've long resented the lack of story hours and organized parent-child activities outside of working hours, and when Big E started school the stakes grew.  She may not have known that they were missing out on a mommy and me music class, but it's hard not to notice that all the other kids had a mother to wave to at the school Halloween Parade. 

The tipping point, though, came recently.  After I expressed some concern about Little E's lack of coloring skills and her teachers seconded it, I set out to address the issue.  This meant that, after some calling around and a fruitless doctor's appointment, I actually needed to speak with someone in the building where I work.

To admit that there might be any obstacle --no matter how small-- between my sweet daughter and whatever she might possibly want out of the world was excruciating, so the conversation would have been difficult no matter what.  That she spent most of our time together reading from a list of pre-schools attended by current kindergartners and suggesting that though she wasn't terribly familiar with any of them they would all be good alternatives to Little E's current school, which she said diplomatically, was not one they typically recommended, did not help. 

The common denominator in the list of acceptable schools?  They were all part-time programs whose exorbitant rates and unaccommodating hours made them impossible for our family.  I could have pointed out her insensitivity or the fact that Big E spent four years in the same program and is now the strongest reader in her class, instead I added this to the sagging sack of guilt I'd been carrying around since I'd spoken to Little E's teachers.  Drank Diet Coke while pregnant, once accidentally went through the car wash with her window slightly open, sent her to daycare for two and a half years...

My frustration over this issue is probably compounded by my concerns about Little E.  But if someone who works less than five hours a day feels the pinch, what about someone who works ten?

If only some noble-hearted Atticus Finch type could take up the cause...

Work: Progress Report

It's progress report time at work.  So, in the spirit of reporting progress, I decided to take a look at how I am faring in my year of balance and despite a slightly bumpy start, it's going well. 

One of my biggest concerns, that shaving two-and-a-half hours off of my day wouldn't justify hacking 40 percent off of my salary, seems unfounded.  I've always noticed that if I take an extra two minuthere es to get Big E and I out of the house in the morning, those minutes seem to somehow repoduce along the way until I'm well more than two minutes behind schedule.  We will inevitably get stuck behind a school bus, my harried rush will cause Big E to cling a little longer at drop-off, the parking lot at work will be choked with other frazzled parents blocking the travel lanes with their own drop-offs, and on and on.

Amazingly, it actually works the same way in reverse.  Those extra two-and-a-half hours are amplified in the same way the two minutes are: fewer hours at work, fewer classes to prep, fewer papers to grade, less time wasted complaining, fewer hours spent panicking, and on and on.

And since my field has taught me that undocumented success is not success at all, here is evidence of my progress:

More playing fetch,

more playing house,

more apple picking,

more bike riding,





more tire riding,




more llama feeding,

more playgrounds,



and even more soccer (because there should always be room for improvement).



Not bad.  Now to work on the less photogenic details that I may have neglected, like more floor-mopping and more toilet-scrubbing...

Work: System Failure

I was thinking that today I'd write about how I felt as I drove away after dropping Big E off for her first day of first grade.  Last year, when I left her on her first day of kindergarten I bent down to kiss her before I dashed off to work and was struck by a brief but distinct glimmer of her infant-self in her face.  She was my baby, but just for an instant.  I wept the whole way to work...and I was planning to reflect on a similarly poignant moment today.

We all know where planning gets you.

When I drove away from Big E's school today, I was overcome not with a wave of nostalgia or pang of separation anxiety, but with a tornado of full-fledged panic.  Due to a mix-up with the school's morning care program, when I drove away, it was with Big E in the back seat.

I apologized profusely to every higher-up that I encountered as I darted between clumps of teenagers, six-year-old in tow.  I gathered up a makeshift collection of art supplies, grabbed an abandoned picture book and brought Big E to my morning classes with me.  She colored quietly while I worked through my first day spiel to my new classes and by the time I was done, my panic was pretty well tamped down.  Save for some mild disapprobation from my boss, we had survived the worst case scenario.

Until, that is, we got her back to school, where she burst into tears upon entering the main office.  After a very kind secretary pried her from around my leg, calmed her and set off with her down the hall to the first grade, I finally made that solo drive to work.

I didn't think about how much she'd grown, like I'd planned to.  I thought about how messy it all was.  It didn't matter that I'd confirmed and reconfirmed my childcare arrangement, that the night before I'd talked her through the day that I thought she'd have as she started first grade, not even that I really looked like a competent professional when I left the house that morning.  It's all subject to change.  

Embarking on this year of balance, I'd planned to somehow subvert this kind of chaos.  If today is any indication, that will not be the case.  All I can do is try not to let the inevitable messes tip the scale.

Another panicked mother was nice enough to take this as we both hyperventilated and tried to figure out how to work around the missing childcare.

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.