The Good Mother and her Evil Twin

What they don't tell you when you sign up for motherhood (or perhaps what they all tell you but you just don't believe, especially if you've combined your lifelong desire to be a mama with rather unhealthy perfectionist leanings) is that there will be a staggering number of days in which you feel like -- pardon my French -- a total fuckup.

There's the mother I try to be: unfailingly patient (I can hear everyone I know laughing at this, but I think both teaching and mothering have mellowed me at least a little bit in the last ten years), relentlessly good-natured, kind, laid-back, understanding, and able to find the humor in every situation almost immediately, as opposed to two days later when I write about it.

Then there's that mother's evil twin, her doppelganger who appears uninvited far too often for the Good Mother's liking, most recently yesterday afternoon.

Suzannah spent the day with me at school. It was a non-student day, meaning she was off but I wasn't because I had a staff in-service day. Since I haven't yet been able to convince my parents to relocate from Montana to our neighborhood solely for my convenience so that my daughter can spend such days with Grandpa and Grandma instead of at school with me, I brought her along. I've done this before, but last time I had a lot of "free" work time in my classroom, and I have a few toys in my bottom desk drawer, lots of paper and markers and colored pencils, and a giant white board that can amuse my daughter for quite a long time. Yesterday, though, I had actual meetings, actual sessions with other teachers, sessions in which Suzannah would have to sit quietly with me instead of bouncing all over my room and making cheerful conversation. Matt dropped her off with a backpack full of paper and crayons and snacks, though, and it was actually fine. First of all, she arrived at school wearing a leprechaun mask (complete with orange construction paper beard) she'd made at kindergarten the day before, so everyone fell in love with her right away. And then she was awfully well behaved, sitting in a desk next to me and coloring for nearly ninety minutes (the length of the first session). She made a picture for one of the guidance counselors and a friend of mine who teaches Spanish, as well as a couple for me. We went to lunch with two of my good friends, friends she knows, and she quietly ate her lunch and colored while we chatted. In the afternoon, she made friends with the attendance secretary (who charmed her with candy and a collection of wind-up toys behind her desk). She was getting pretty squirrely by the time we left, but even then she told me she wished we could stay just a little longer so she could draw on my white board some more.

I was prepared for a little chaos, to have to skip a few sessions, whatever. But I really enjoyed having my little girl hang out with me for the day, truth be told. I love watching her make friends with the people I work with; I love watching her hug the friends she already knows; I love it when other grown-ups are kind to her. She's just turning into such an utterly fantastic little person.

But then at home this utterly fantastic little person might decide that she's tired of holding it together so well all day long, and so she might start to make some bossy and unreasonable demands when her mother is frantically making a grocery list before picking up the toddler, and when these unreasonable demands are not met immediately, there might be some stomping and some tears and then everything just goes to hell.

This is the point at which the Good Mother who can give such wise and compassionate advice on the internet, who fancies herself so patient, so willing to meet kids where they are, who understands that all of the most infuriating sides of children are really, totally developmentally appropriate, just Loses Her Shit. I mean, it was horrible and I don't really want to talk about it, but let's just say that my husband came home later that evening and expressed some bewilderment about why the battery cover on the remote control seemed to be missing and his sheepish wife had to admit that she'd thrown it and it went flying somewhere. (Neither of us have been able to find it yet.)

I can tell you exactly how I should have handled it. And even while it was happening, while my daughter and I were both just entirely losing our minds, it was like I could see the alternate ending playing out in my mind at the same time -- the one in which I keep my voice very calm, the one in which she doesn't necessarily even change her behavior (because let's face it, she is five years old and I am the adult) but I am able to weather the storm with patience! And grace! And I am not rattled at all, because I know exactly what this is about (feeling exhausted, a little unmoored by the unfamiliar surroundings, holding it together so well for six solid hours, and finally having a safe space in which to be five years old and just done) and I understand that this is a perfectly normal reaction to fatigue and being shuffled around to so many places and being expected to behave, behave, behave all day long! And yet -- and yet. The battery cover for the remote control is probably buried in Isaac's box of trains, and it isn't because the five-year-old put it there.

I've always believed that it is extremely important to be able to apologize to my children when I lose my patience like that, no matter how frustrated I am, no matter how "justified" I feel in my reaction at the time. It's not easy, because I'm as stubborn as my daughter, and she knows just how to bring me right to the precarious edge of my sanity. But it's important. And as I drove my daughter, sniffly and sullen, to the grocery store, I apologized to her for losing my temper and behaving so badly. But I was still angry, and I was still trying to combine my apology with a lecture, and so my little blonde fury merely clutched a Kleenex in her fist and glared out the window.

I glanced at her in the rearview mirror a few times and felt about two inches tall.

At the store, I was still brisk, short, impatient. I walked quickly, more quickly than I needed to, barking at her to hurry up, we needed to pick up Isaac, we needed to get home. There were none of our usual grocery store rituals; she did not ask me if she could "scale" the produce I picked up or point out things that looked interesting, like the huge boxes of rainbow goldfish crackers or the pillow pets that looked like Thomas the Train. We went through the shortest checkout line I could find, and then I slung the canvas bag over one shoulder and grabbed my daughter's hand and headed for the exit, all Mom-like efficiency.

But then I stopped, right there in the middle of the store. I felt, suddenly, very silly, and not in a good way. I started walking again, slowly, not dragging my daughter, not even encouraging her to walk faster, just matching my pace to hers.

We have this little code, Suzannah and I. When we're walking together somewhere, especially if there are a lot of people around, I give her hand three little squeezes. It means "I love you." I used to whisper that with each little squeeze -- I (squeeze) love (squeeze) you (squeeze). Now, though, I don't need to say anything. She knows.

So we walked, slowly, towards the exit. She wasn't looking at me. I relaxed my grip on her, but I gave her hand three little squeezes. Little, quick, but firm.

She didn't look up, but I watched her face. Her hair hid her half-smile, and then it came, the undeserved grace: three little squeezes back.

I'm still here

I went for a late-afternoon run today, wearing shorts and a t-shirt instead of my winter outdoor running gear. I cannot even begin to describe how wonderful that felt.

I'm sick with about my thirtieth cold of the year and, quite frankly, I feel like crap. I'm coughing up horrifying things in the mornings, I'm coughing my way through my seniors' orals this week (Dear IB people: please do not choose any of my students' recordings to listen to), I'm congested, I'm worn out, and I'm completely out of patience. I haven't been sick like this since my first year of teaching, when I was adjusting to living in a brand-new state and figuring out how to teach for the first time and also teaching in a classroom that possibly had some really nasty mold. (It smelled like a possibility, anyway.) So I'm forced to draw the inevitable conclusion that this year has just been absurdly stressful enough to wreak this sort of havoc with my immune system.

In case it hasn't been obvious, I've been kind of avoiding this blog lately. (Sidenote: you know what I hate? The word blog. It seriously sounds like something I coughed up this morning after a night of allowing ropes of mucous to congeal in my chest. You're welcome.) It has not been the most spectacular month. We all came through sinus infections and ear infections and colds in January; a few weeks ago, 2.5 members of the Winslow household were hit with the stomach flu (Matt is the .5, as he only felt sick enough to consider working from home one day and didn't have much of an appetite for a few days, but he did not spend the wee hours of the morning throwing up like his wife and son did, although that, thankfully, happened on different days). Once we'd all sufficiently recovered from that, Suzannah and I came down with the same crud we're battling now, which means that both of us have had sort of stinky attitudes this week.

Let me tell you what Mama Guilt feels like: You spend an afternoon and evening really battling your stubborn firstborn, because she is so obviously trying to turn into a teenager at the tender age of five. She is, in your eyes, sassy and defiant and obstinate and whiny, and you have just had it with the attitude problem already. And you're not feeling all that great, and you haven't gotten enough sleep. For that matter, neither has she, because she's been allergic to sleep since she was conceived and sometimes it makes her a little owly. By the time you finally get her into bed, you feel like all you've done is bark at her all day long, and when she doesn't want extra snuggles before bed you take it really personally but also think her attitude still kind of stinks. And then -- then! -- she wakes up totally, completely congested in the morning, and it's so obvious that she feels pretty rotten, and suddenly her behavior from the day before makes perfect sense, and you feel like the biggest jerk in the whole world. Thankfully, your obstinate firstborn is pretty willing to forgive and forget, especially when you allow her to pick a Special Dinner (instead of forcing her to take a thank-you bite of the curried quinoa with toasted almonds and veggies you made the night before).

(Special Dinner, in this case, happens to be Kraft macaroni and cheese shaped like Cars -- the Disney kind.)

So anyway, I haven't been writing a lot, because it's all been snot and puke and diapers and tantrums. Also, some really upsetting things have happened at school in the last couple of weeks, and as much as I want to write about it, I can't -- mostly because this space isn't right for that, and because it involves really personal details of my students' lives. I've struggled with this a bit, because while I want to talk about what it's like to work with these kids, not only do I need to honor their privacy but I need to protect myself as well. And not just in the obvious sense, but in the sense that a teacher needs to be careful about sharing the raw, sometimes painful reality of working with kids -- because people forget that they are kids, and they tend to use such stories to make sweeping generalizations about public education or The System or whatever else people have opinions about, and I'm just not in the mood. I write a lot of recommendations every year for kids who go to Ivy League schools, and I love them a lot and it's a huge, huge privilege to teach them, but I also work with a lot of at-risk kids, and they're the kids who keep me up at night. Because I love them, too, and when I talk to other people I find myself growing strangely, fiercely protective of the kids who make my life a particular hell sometimes.

I can feel myself starting to write in about twenty different impassioned directions right now, and I have a lot of stuff to finish up by tomorrow, so I'm going to stop there. What I really signed on to write about was how good today's run felt, despite the hacking cough. Just to feel the sun on my arms, to smell the wet earth full of spring. Soon, the cherry blossoms will scatter on the breeze and flutter over the sidewalks, and I'll retire my cold weather gear for several months. I needed this run.

Other things have been good, too. I had a wonderful birthday weekend, in which my brother and sister-and-law stayed with the kids while Matt and I had a fancy grown-up dinner date at a restaurant that was decidedly not kid-friendly (no crayons! No grilled cheese!), and on the next day -- my actual birthday -- Matt gave me time to nap by myself for two glorious, restorative hours, and then he took me to the Elliott Bay Book Company where I shopped recklessly for books while he played with the kids and then we all went out for Indian food. That was a pretty perfect day.

And teaching isn't always upsetting. Today, in fact, two former students paid me an unexpected visit. One was even kind of a punk for me last year, and I always thought his feelings for me fell somewhere between contempt and vague amusement, but then they went to about three different places looking for me. Because I've spent the entire week doing senior IB orals I've had a sub for my regular classes, and they were in the library today, so the boys went to my room, then to the main office, and then to the library. The parked themselves there until I showed up at the very end of class to check on my kids, and then they presented me with chocolate (good chocolate! Lots of it!) and stories about what they're doing now and hugs, and that felt really awesome.

(Someday I will write about what it feels like to teach a kid who will be the first in his family to graduate from high school. I will write about his smile, about how it's impossible not to grin back at him. Or I'll write about the girl who started the year announcing loudly that she hated to read because it's a stupid waste of time, but last week she wrote three solid pages on Zeitoun in one class period and said, "Well, okay, this book is interesting.")

The lows of teaching are pretty low, I'm not going to lie. I've been at this for ten years, and I still have moments of wondering if it's worth it, if I'm cut out for it. I've had more of those moments this year than I've had in a very long time. At the same time, though, the highs? They're why I still believe this one true thing: that this matters, and I'm still -- for now, at least -- exactly where I'm supposed to be.