Tomorrow I am chaperoning my son's field trip, and the timing couldn't be better. I'm fairly certain I would make a perfectly dreadful first grade teacher, but spending a day with the littles is pure joy. Mostly, I think, because six-year-olds aren't grumpy and negative all the time. First graders don't seize every opportunity to complain about how busy and overworked and tired they are to everyone who says, "Hey, how's it going?"
I need a day of holding the grubby little hands of human beings who find the world delightful. Isaac has already informed me who is in our group, so I'm fairly confident that these hands will, in fact, be pretty grubby. But they are good little fellows, and I have plenty of wet wipes.
Yesterday I drove through my favorite espresso stand for my Americano and the barista said, "I just want you to know we appreciate you. You smile at us every day."
"I appreciate you guys too!" I said. I do. I love this espresso stand. The women who run it are so friendly, and one of them leads a life practically parallel to mine. She's been working there since I moved out here. We're about the same age, we got married at the same time, our kids are the same ages, and she's a fellow soccer mom who actually finds it all really fun. Also, they make my coffee perfectly, and they remember when I want a splash of cream and when I'm going dairy-free for awhile. Once, one of them accidentally added a shot of vanilla to my drink, which I didn't realize until I'd driven away. (I used to add vanilla all the time. Then I turned into one of those obnoxious folks who does a whole30 every now and then, and since then I rarely do flavors because I can't stomach the sweetness.) I didn't much care. After watching an acquaintance make no fewer than three posts complaining that her coffee shop messed up her fancy drink, and not being able to deal with the righteous indignation, I decided to literally never care about a coffee order. I go to places I like because they generally serve good coffee. If they generally don't serve good coffee, I likely won't frequent them. If my coffee order is ever less than perfect at a place I generally like, I just don't think it's worth dumping it out and having someone re-make it, someone who probably hears stupid complaints about the amount of foam or the precise temperature of milk all day long. I'm not saying this to prove how chill I am, or how saintly. I am emphatically neither. But coffee orders in particular are the thing I've resolved not to worry about, because it's just coffee. I love coffee. But I have lots of other stupid things to freak out about.
The next day, the very first words out of the barista's mouth were, "Oh my gosh. I know I totally screwed up your drink yesterday. I'm so sorry!"
The fact that she realized it and remembered it twenty-four hours later is impressive. It made it that much easier to say, "Please. If that's the worst thing that happens to me in a day, my life is pretty sweet."
"As sweet as that Americano, though?" she asked. We laughed. "But seriously, you're really chill about your coffee."
"Just wait," I promised. "One day I'm going to come in here and you won't be able to predict what I order. I'm going to order the most complicated drink you have. What's that caramel thing?"
I think I just enjoy being told that I'm "chill" about anything, because that is not something I hear often.
Yesterday, after I told the baristas that I appreciated them too, they said, "No, seriously. So many people just want to complain about their lives every single day. No one is busier or more tired than they are."
"Do you get that from a lot of people?" I asked.
"Yeah. We really do," she said.
I shouldn't have been surprised, I guess, because we all know those people. Hey, how are you? SO BUSY. SO TIRED. No matter what. Look, we are all busy and tired and everyone has a hard job. It's so easy to romanticize people who work in different fields, right? I'm a teacher and I hear all the damn time from people who are not teachers about how I should be so grateful to have summers "off," among other things, and that's a different entry. But I think we teachers make assumptions as well, about "how nice" it must be to work in the private sector, where there is often significantly less job security. (This is a real thing; my husband was laid off with only 24 hours' notice a few weeks after I returned to work after having Isaac, when the company he'd been with for seven years was bought out.) And might I just point out that while my husband is nicely and appropriately compensated for the work he does (which is perhaps the difference, which is also a different entry), he worked late into the night every single day over the long weekend, our daughter's birthday weekend, long after I'd gone to bed. He's still battling work as I write this tonight, and he'll be home late. He's dealing with something stressful at work right now, and it sounds like it won't be resolved before this weekend, either. I'm just grateful he has the option to log in from home now; years ago, there were times he drove home from work in the middle of the night for a few hours of sleep before he'd be called back in the morning. The point is not who works harder, or who is the busiest, or whose job is the toughest. That's a battle none of us will ever win, and when we try, we mostly just turn into folks other people avoid running into just so they don't have to say, "Hi! How's it going?"
And I get that sometimes we all just need to vent. I will not pretend that I have never complained about being busy and tired (or complained about things that are not problems). But I also never want people to just expect that when they smile and say good morning and ask me how I'm doing that I will roll my eyes and sigh noisily and explain how tired and busy and overworked and unappreciated I am. I don't understand what people expect when they do that. An award, for being the busiest and the most exhausted? The most frustrated at work? The least appreciated? Sometimes all of those things feel true--for all of us, I suspect. I certainly don't want that to be the thing I'm known for, though, especially by the folks who make the coffee I am privileged enough to buy on my way to school. (Maybe those other folks haven't had their first cup at home already?) And today was just the kind of day in which I felt the weight of the negativity of the adult world.
And it's part of why I'm taking tomorrow off, to get outside with my son and his class and just enjoy the day with kids who find delight in a school bus ride, who already know they're excited about the aquarium and the show at the amphitheater and seeing the monkeys. They will not complain about the traffic, or about how they need a nap on the way home. I'm romanticizing first grade too, I know; I actually hated first grade (but that is another entry as well). But I'm looking forward to recharging my own batteries, so to speak, so I can continue to smile at the baristas who make delicious Americanos and with whom I can chat comfortably about the weekend.
There are real reasons to be exhausted, frustrated, sad, angry. And sometimes we just feel things, and that's okay, too. And it's okay to express that.
But I also think that sometimes we could make someone's day a little better, instead of a little worse. And maybe that would make the tiniest of differences. And maybe sometimes, that matters.
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