I’ve been trying to write here for over a week now, about so many things: my children in their Halloween costumes. My relief that Halloween was finally over juxtaposed with my half-crazy desperation to keep that moment as long as I could, my third-grader in her Luke Skywalker costume and my almost-five-year-old in his ninja costume, both dressed up as someone else and yet so unselfconsciously themselves. All these thoughts about motherhood, about time passing. About gratitude. Grief. Anxiety. The way it feels to be the parent on the other side of the table at conferences, bursting with pride when my little girl gets out her portfolio and reads us her goals, when her teacher tells us how well she reads and how beautifully she writes and how she loves math and how curious she is about everything and how she’s a perfect fit for this “highly capable” class even though I really struggle with the idea of “gifted” education in elementary school, knowing perfectly well that most kids labeled as “gifted” are simply kids from privileged homes, with literate parents, who can play the conventional school game well. Even believing that “gifted” programs seem to be more about the egos of parents who know how to get their kids into those classes. I have zero concerns about my children’s intellectual development. I care that they are empathetic and compassionate and curious; I care about the relationships they develop with their teachers and with learning. And I mostly trust that they’ll be just fine. But still, of course I love hearing that my daughter is doing well and seems happy. Of course I exist in this perpetual state of amazement -- this is my baby girl? This child flung across my bed, lying on her stomach, ankles crossed, reading a library book? This is my girl, flipping through a book of science experiments she picked out at the book fair, asking me whether we have enough vegetable oil or sand or construction paper to do a particular project? And this, this is my son, my baby boy? This child who punctuates our evenings with cries of “Hi-yah!” while he flies at us in his ninja costume but who can sit for as long as his sister at the dining room table, coloring and printing his name in painstaking crayon letters? Is the world big enough to hold all of my joy and fear and hopes for these children?
I was going to write about teaching, in that vague way I write about teaching here. Last week? Two weeks ago? I broke. I really think I did. I left school one day with a brick on my chest, tears in my eyes by the time I made it to my car. They were spilling down my cheeks before I turned out of the parking lot. I managed to put on a movie for the kids and hide until Matt came home, crying the entire time. I said something about a headache, or feeling very tired. I cried until my eyes were swollen nearly shut, and no amount of tea bags soaked in unicorn milk could have prevented me from looking like I’d been beat up. I can’t even begin to explain it here. I can’t tell you about one particular thing. I just lost all perspective, really lost it, and believed wholeheartedly that I couldn’t do it anymore, that it didn’t matter whether I showed up to teach or not. The IB kids don't need me because they’ll be fine no matter who teaches them, and the struggling kids -- well, I don’t have what they need, and I can’t help, and they don’t want the help I can’t give anyway. It hurt in a big, scary way.
I took the next day off and went with my boys to Remlinger Farms, our last daycare trip to the pumpkin patch. Matt had already made arrangements to go, but I could not go to school the next day. I felt too crazy. But somewhere in the midst of all that craziness I had a very sane thought: this would be our last daycare trip, because Isaac will be in kindergarten next year. Nothing was worth more than this day. Eight years! Eight years we have been making this trip! Driving out of the city, into the mountains. The trees bursting with red and gold against the sky. Eric Ode in the farm theater. The other moms teasing me about my dorky crush on him. Riding the train, watching my son and my husband play in the hay pit, walking through the barns, riding the rides. Taking my son on the roller coaster (small, but big enough), listening to him shriek with delight and then say, “Mommy, I want to do that again, but I want to ride with LJ,” and off he goes again while I wave from the sidelines. Drinking coffee, drinking hot chocolate, loading our muddy pumpkins into the back of the car, shaking hay out of our shoes, our pockets.
It was a perfect day, and it gifted me with a bit of breathing space, I suppose, if not necessarily the perspective I’d so messily lost. It helped, though. Other things that helped: the messages from friends and colleagues and former students in the twenty-four hours I was gone. They glued me back together. And that night, I wrote. I wrote about the kids I love, about the kids who slip and call me Mom, about how they seem to feel safe and welcome in my room during lunch, about how they pop in after school. I wrote about the kids who make me laugh every single day. I wrote about the kids who’ve graduated and still keep in touch.
I write these things down because I have felt like this before. Moments pass.
I write these things down, because I forget.
Or I don’t forget exactly, but sometimes, when things feel as bad as they can feel, I don’t see it. I don’t see that it matters, or that I’ve come through this feeling before. On Monday, I really, truly didn’t believe that anything I did mattered. But unfortunately, I do not want another job. I want this one. Or even: it’s not about wanting. It’s about this is part of who I am. Not all of who I am, mind you, but the idea that I could put it down and pick up something else, just to -- what? Bring in some money at something I’m objectively decent at but don’t feel called to do? -- isn’t a thing I can even wrap my brain around. Which is precisely why looking for other jobs English majors can do makes me even more crazy. Because they’re not the right ones. This one is. Against all odds, this one is.
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