The Hardest Job

Well, my in-home nursery school won't be opening until next fall. Which is both a disappointment, and a huge weight off my shoulders. I suppose it's unrealistic to expect that I can conceive of opening a school in my house and then get it off the ground in under 6 months. :) But then again, what fun is realism all the time, right?

Speaking of realism, I've stumbled on a few too many articles recently about how parenting is the hardest gig going. And each time I can't help think (like we used to say in high school): for real? I'm tired of that trope. Am I the only one who disagrees? I've never worked in a coal mine, but even so, I'll take parenting any day of the week. And actually, I find childcare harder than parenting. It's all the same expectations, at least for the hours you're doing it, but you don't love the kids the way you love your own, which makes the work that much harder to do. Motherhood has never kept me up all hours of the night with knots in my stomach, the way teaching special education in a classroom of kids called "emotionally disturbed" did. Give me a gaggle of kids of my own over another day of that year of hell!

But maybe my particular cross to bear isn't parenthood so much as paid employment. Now, that conundrum has never come easy for me. Always underpaid, underemployed, overworked, overwhelmed or overeducated! I only ever hit the sweet spot once with employment, and for the life of me, I don't know how to find my way back to that balance.

I know what to do with my kids. When it's hard, it's also pretty clearly my own fault. I always know what the problem is, and how to solve it. Get out of the house more, and get them running around. Quit bickering with my husband in earshot of the kids. Don't use a snappy tone of voice if I don't want to hear a snappy tone of voice used at me.

All of that seems simple in comparison to: how do I earn a living? And especially: how do I earn a decent living doing something that interests me, while homeschooling my kids? I find answering that question infinitely harder than motherhood itself.

There was never a magic moment where becoming a parent changed me. If I changed, it was like slipping on a new skin that fit so comfortably I never noticed the difference. But losing my job, deciding to homeschool, and trying to create a new career, is breaking me down, and rebuilding me. Someday -I hope- I will look back on these days and be able to say: of course it was hard. You built something from scratch that hadn't been there before. And now it's so amazing/rewarding/much easier than it used to be!

I can imagine some mothers might say that very thing about their difficult babies, who grow up to be far less challenging children.

I only hope I can someday say it about my career!

The Present and The Future

I feel, at the same time, a sense of stuck, of rigid, of all tensed up, and a sense of compassion that is the very opposite of stuck, rigid, or all tensed up. Compassion is like water; it flows and pours all over everything; it's lava, even, sometimes. It can melt things.

So I'm melty and I'm tense. That contradiction just sits in me all day, or it battles back and forth, like a fencing match taking place inside my heart, ribcage, and belly. All the places I breathe into. Yoga breathing keeps it at bay, but when the classes are over, and my verbal narration ceases, so does the sense of ... well, escape. Then the relentless drumbeat of my thoughts march back on to center stage.

I've been told I think too much my whole life, and I resented every motherfucker who ever said it to me. Maybe they had a point, but who asked 'em?

It's Tuesday, and my daughter won't nap. I rocked her, and I nursed her, and I filled her belly with homemade mac and cheese, and read her stories, and left her in the crib awhile, and it's just not happening. I feel a certain benign detachment from the whole thing. If she naps, she naps. If not, I just do the next thing to bring peace into the household. And so it goes.

Of course, that's why we're outside on the deck on a muggier day than I'd prefer, and my laptop is almost out of power. That's why I sat down to write at 11:30am and now it's 4:30pm and I'm only just beginning.

But then, the compassion rolls in. If I'm tired, how must she feel? And then the benign detachment: and who cares if we always nap? Let's eat strawberries and cheese, drink juice, and sit in the muggy air. Why not?

In the living room, I let the kids climb in and out of the big footstool that opens up for storage. Weeks worth of Sunday newspapers are sitting inside it, and I let them throw it around the living room, and stomp through. We knead basketballs out of sale ads and toss them into paper bag baskets for recycling. I keep picking things up and putting them on shelves. The kids keep taking them off and playing on the floor. I shrug. The stuck, rigid, all tensed up hasn't anything to do with them. It's inside me.

I can flow like compassion when I do what needs to be done next. I freeze when I look ten steps ahead.

But dammit, if I ain't always been just the type who can't help myself from looking ten steps ahead.

Development of an Idea (or My Brain Won't Ever Shut Up)

Read, read, read. Research, research, research. SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING! PROJECT APPROACH! UNSCHOOLING! I can't send my kids to a crappy school while immersing myself in these amazing educational ideas here at home. Can I even go work for a school district again, when I'm rapidly losing faith in the model?

I will homeschool. I guess I'll continue to provide childcare to earn a living?

Read, read, read. Research, research, research. Or ... I could open a preschool, right here in my house! REGGIO EMILIA and MONTESSORI inspired for early childhood education!

Read, read, read. Research, research, research. YOU CAN START YOUR OWN CHARTER SCHOOL IN NYS???

How do you open a school for unschooling?

Public school for unschooling? Look no further! THEY'RE ALREADY DOING IT! With locations in Western New York!

Oh. It's for high school. I want to do elementary school.

I need a network of people.

I hate developing networks of people. I like ideas. I want to be the idea person. I want someone else to be the people person.

Read, read, read. Research, research, research. YOU CAN GET PAID FOR BEING THE IDEA PERSON!? *SWOON*

Okay, I want to be an infopreneur. My idea is to take unschooling principles and make them work in elementary school. This could happen in one of two ways: we can take what they're doing in high schools like these ones, and bring them down to the elementary school level, OR we can take the approaches used in early childhood education, like these, and bring them up to the elementary school level.

So: homeschooler-->infopreneur-->open a charter school. Then who knows, because I would send my kids to this school, and then I'll either have to get a job there, or figure out a new life plan. :)

Assuming I don't have a WHOLE NEW idea next week, how the hell do I go about making THIS happen?

25 Thoughts Today

Because a list is all I can manage.

1. I was complaining to my husband tonight that with all my years of yoga, I still somehow ended up with bum knees, a jacked-up shoulder, and -most recently- a bad lower back! WTF?
2. I picked up my 3 year old 2 days after turning 36 and threw my back out. Niiiiiiiice. That will have been 3 weeks ago this Friday. Mother Effer!
3. It's actually almost better, I think, though. Which I owe mostly to yoga. But I still wish it had prevented the injury rather than help heal it!
4. Spring Break: my husband was off a week. I had kids all 5 days. I had a week off; he was back at work. Blah! I like our vacations to align, please, universe! For the next time, then.
5. Today was the first day all 4 kids were back together after the week off.
6. It. Was Seriously. Adorable.
7. It was in the high 70s and we spent all day outside together.
8. I feel as if I'm finally finding the spot where I'm figuring out exactly how to DO this job REALLY well with the kids. And that makes me love it more and more.
9. Maria Montessori: how do I know so little about her when I've been studying early childhood ed for so long? I don't know, but a wonderful old friend of mine has been sending me info, and I love it! I want to know more, more, more!!!
10. That same dear friend might be moving to Austin, TX. My father-in-law lives in San Antonio. I so want to sit with her and talk about Montessori for hours!!!
11. When I first started thinking about homeschooling, I felt it was really what I had to do for my kids. I hated all the other options, more than I loved homeschooling.
12. But I seem to have turned a corner, where now I'm really looking forward to it for myself!
13. I have a goal, for my professional self.
14. I want to master teaching.
15. By teaching, I mean that I want to master the art of facilitating people to be in flow.
16. I haven't figured out yet how to get anyone to pay me for this pursuit, but that will come in time, I guess!
17. Actually, speaking of flow and money, I think I have a blockage somewhere.
18. It's in my mind, and here's what it says: how much is the minimum I need to make to survive and do what I want to do?
19. And so I only ever make the minimum I need to survive and do what I want to do. Because that's the question I ask.
20. I think somewhere inside me, I believe that I am buying my freedom.
21. With all the money I'm not earning, I am buying those hours back to do what I wish with them. The freedom to exist without the structures, demands, the shape of lucrative employment.
22. Do I believe there can be both money and freedom?
23. That's a good question. 
24. I'd like to say yes. To embrace abundance of money the way I embrace abundance of choices, of ideas, of possibilities, of ways to be right, and ways to be beautiful.
25. But I don't know if I'm there yet.

How Many Bloggers Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?

It's early in the morning. My kids are both still asleep, and the little guy that I'm watching full-time for March and April has just arrived. He grabs both remote controls, points them at the TV and says: music! every morning as soon as he gets here. I put a Common CD into the DVD player, turn on the TV and adjust the volume. He lets me choose the music, and I pick from the grown-up CDs on the top half of the shelf. I turned all the kiddie CDs over to my son after months of battling over scratches, and now they're all scratched beyond listening, but they belong to the kids, and I'm perfectly okay with that. It gives us an excuse to start the day with Common instead of The Wheels on the Bus. Little dude smiles at the start of the song and takes off into the train table corner. He likes to play independently when he arrives to a sleeping household. It's his only chance all day to be the boss of every toy! I pick up my laptop to start my story here.

I had been scrolling through facebook before little man arrived, and I clicked and opened the most recent post at The Not-Ever-Still Life. Robin wrote about taking up sewing, and a little bit about finally having the time and freedom to take up sewing now that her youngest is a toddler. Reminiscing about the start of her blog, and the name she chose, she wrote, "I was thinking of the whirlygig whirling dervish cyclone effect of it all, that there was always a baby to nurse or a diaper to change or two diapers to change and a milk to pour, or a diaper to change and a spill to clean and a hungry child screaming and a misplaced critical item and a mess just stepped in."

That description struck something inside me, as I read it. Like the peal of a bell. THAT's what I like about mothering -and teaching- young children. I LIKE the whirlygig, whirling dervish, cyclone effect of it all.

* * *

What's written above is as far as I got this morning, little dude playing peacefully with trains, before I heard my daughter wake up. We went to get her, and our busy day began. The housekeeper came back today, after a 2 week vacation that only served to remind me how very much I despise washing the floors. So I spent the first few hours of the day feeding the little ones and racing around, furiously tidying. We all got out of the house by 10am and went to a playground. We came home to a clean house (just in time to mess it up again!). I heated macaroni and meatballs for the little guy, stirred his daily medicine into his applesauce and served it. I heated gyro filling for my girl, topped it with tzatziki sauce, tore pita into pieces with my hands and set it out on the highchair tray for her. I bibbed them both, and filled sippy cups, and I asked my boy: are you sure you're not hungry yet, Bubs? about 3 times before I took his word for it. I hummed while I zipped here and there, kitchen to the dining room and back again, and then I diapered times two, and I lullaby-CD'd one, and I recliner-rocked the other, and then I had them down for nap.

So I was scrolling through facebook again, while my big boy played independently at the train table, and I clicked and opened the most recent post at Momastery. Glennon wrote about her need to write, and how her sister gifted her with a laptop that allowed her to do it. Thinking back to the early years of her children's lives, she wrote, "I know, because I hear from you regularly, that there are mamas out there that feel completely fulfilled and filled by mama-ing itty bitty ones. I used to be mad at you – and secretly believe you were lying – but I know better now. I’ve read so many of your stories that I realize you don’t feel this way just to spite me. It’s just that we’re all different, and that is a beautiful thing. It’s okay."

That's what it is! I thought. It DOES fill me up to do this work, and it fulfilled me long before I had babies of my own. Meeting with my college advisor, I told her I thought teaching was the field for me, and when she asked what age, I answered: the younger the better. That's the story of how I ended up studying early childhood education.

* * *

I think I tried to say it here, still home on maternity leave after the birth of my daughter, when I wrote, "...our day is both busy and mellow, ebbing and flowing from moment to moment. It's like a dance I have to perform. I know the basic steps but never the tune that will play from day to day. So I have to improvise. Sure, I trip sometimes, end up in a heap on the floor, both babies crying at the same time, one wailing and bobbing at the breast, the other climbing loudly onto my lap, competing for space and seemingly for volume with their sobs. But even this is part of the performance. Can I keep my cool? Can I breathe into my belly, straighten my spine, scoop my daughter to the side to make room for my son, spread my arms wide enough to embrace them both, set my voice to the most soothing of tones, and move us all from chaos to a carefully choreographed quiet?

When I do find the rhythm? When I manage to dance through the day with something resembling grace? To keep balanced both babies, my husband and my house and a small space for myself, just enough to catch my breath and stretch, to catch the beat and ready my feet for the next number?

It's exhilarating."

* * *

It's not just that it's exhilarating, or fulfilling, or that I simply like a little chaos in my day (although all of those are probably true). There's something in it -for me- that I think maybe other people find in prayer or in yoga, in meditation or in climbing mountains. There's a sense that I'm just a vessel, with grace flowing through me. That if I get out of the way and let it flow, nothing I do can be wrong. My feet won't stumble or step the wrong way. My arms will always be big enough. My voice will forever be calming and melodious. I can create calm out of chaos just by being. By suspending my own will, tossing it off to the side like the temporary cloak that it is, and letting this other thing take over and move through me, I become the calm. I carry it with me because it is me for that little while.

I find this center of perfect zen stillness in the hurricane's eye of unending needs that little children exhale like carbon dioxide, and then I counter their exhalations by breathing calm all over the place, and I watch it take over, taming everything in it's path. And I feel absolutely delighted that it traveled through me to get here.

That's the closest I come to finding God, and it's why instead of going to church, I care for young children.

Competencies

I remember standing on a covered porch with two of my sisters. The year was 2000. I think the season was fall; it seems as if there was a slight chill in the air. We were standing close together, clustered almost. One or two of us might have been smoking a cigarette. I don't remember that for certain.

We were talking about an article one of us had recently read about what motivates people. There were a handful of options, and the idea was that people can be categorized by which choice is their primary motivator. The only two I remember are having fun and being competent, although I'm sure there were at least two or three other possibilities.

Being competent, we all agreed, was our primary motivator. I think it was me who added: I've gone years without having any fun!, although it could have been one of my sisters. And then we all chuckled.

I'm pleased to report that I'm a lot more fun than I used to be (cue the chuckling), but I'm still highly motivated by competence.

* * *

I miss teaching parenting classes. It was such a great job and -sadly- I don't see another opportunity to do it in the future. I could be wrong about that, but it seems to me that programs that include a parenting education component are few and far between. The non-profit that the district I worked for collaborated with is struggling to fund their parenting programs. It was just the sheer luck of the program design that allowed me to be a certified early childhood teacher and work for a GED program that served parents along with their young children. I stumbled into it, and ended up so passionate about the work. It was a whole new direction for me when I started, and it terrified me, if I'm honest. But by the end it was my very favorite part of the job.

One of the first parenting classes I taught was in a small room that a local library let us use for free. I stood at the front, jammed into a corner too close to a hissing radiator, and asked a question. I didn't know anyone in the group of women sitting in front of me. All of them were high school dropouts, mothers, living in poverty. No one answered. I stood there, and waited for the silence to grow uncomfortable. It grew uncomfortable for me. I repeated wait time, wait time, wait time, wait time in my head. Finally, after an excruciating period of thickening quiet, it grew uncomfortable for them. I saw a look on a face that meant someone was thinking about answering. I gave some form of encouragement. And the conversation began.

I didn't particularly like my job that day. But over time, as I mastered new skills, and was able to work with a team of colleagues I absolutely adored to implement changes we thought would improve the program, I grew to love it.

* * *

It's funny though. While I mastered parenting classes, and writing reports, and analyzing data, and managing a team, I moved further and further away from the children: the reason I was hired in the first place. My presence in the classroom was replaced with a teaching assistant, so I would have time to do the planning and paperwork required to coordinate the program. I developed a thematic curriculum that covered the year, and we used it alongside a home-visiting curriculum with individualized activities for each child based on their age in months, so planning curriculum wasn't an ongoing process anymore. My hands-on work with the kids became a smaller part of my job. I still possessed the skills, but I didn't practice them regularly. I played with my son at home, and applied my skills there, but he's only one person, and an easy one to teach at that, so my skills weren't stretched; I wasn't challenged in a way that took me out of my comfort zone or required more of me than I had at my fingertips.

And, to be honest, I didn't know that this new job would challenge me either. I had enough experience that I felt comfortable resting on my laurels. I thought I'd soar in, and that it would be easy. And certainly I'm a competent babysitter. But I don't want to be just a babysitter. I want to master my craft. And it's taken some time to get back in the swing of things with the little ones: observing, planning, carrying out, reflecting, correcting, tweaking, and repeating. I very much miss teaching parenting classes. But I don't have to miss teaching or parenting. I still get to do those every day.

* * *

I feel like I'm getting good at this! I said to my husband the other night over dinner. It took me a couple months to settle in, and then to realize that I just plain couldn't keep up with the cleaning and still teach. And it took some time for the kids to get to know each other too. It seems like all I did for months was work on social-emotional skills, which was necessary, but it got boring for me. Now our little group has gelled, and the kids are a little older. I can really do stuff with them! I'm feeling like I'm good at this!

In the past month we've made play dough out of used coffee grounds, painted valentines with tempera paint, made rainbow spaghetti with food coloring, made and used homemade glue (for my littles who eat everything) for crafts projects, gone on a field trip to an art show, walked to the park in the wind, mixed snow with food coloring, chosen our favorite nursery rhymes on youtube, and read and reread more books than we've changed diapers (okay, it's pretty close to even there).

I'm getting more competent as I observe the kids and respond to their needs and interests. And I enjoy things so much more when I'm competent.

I Jumped!

And the parachute opened on the way down!

I FINALLY got up the cojones to e-mail the parents of both of the boys I watch and ask them about starting a teaching blog. And they both loved the idea!!!

So my teaching blog is up and running, with it's own facebook page and everything! I'm not going to link to it, because I'm anonymous here, and public there. This is where I come to tell all my secrets and wrestle with my mid-thirties angst. That will be the public face of my teaching journey, and something to put on my resume if or when I return to the workplace. And never the twain shall meet! Ha!

If you'd like to  check it out, though, leave me a comment with an e-mail address and I'll send you a link! I'm excited about this. I've been floundering professionally for the past few months, even as I devour information daily and become a better teacher by leaps and bounds. It's the community of colleagues that I miss. It's having people to bounce ideas off of, and discuss failures, and celebrate successes. I hope this is step toward creating that in a new way.

I hope this is a step into whatever future I discover -or create- as a teacher.

Schooling

My mom tells a story about my first day of school. I walked out of the red brick building at the end of the day and when she asked me: How was your first day? I replied: Well, I won't be going back THERE again. We laugh when she tells it, but I believe I was dead serious. I still remember my kindergarten teacher as one of the meanest people I've ever met. She brought her newborn baby to school one day in the middle of the year, and although I was a well-behaved and generally kind little kid, I vividly remember thinking: I'd like to hurt her baby. So she knows how she makes other people feel.

Another one my mom tells: Shortly after I started kindergarten we were driving through the city, and I was sitting in the passenger seat (back before the dawn of booster seats and airbags), gazing out the window at the passing scenery. Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" began to play on the radio, and I grew animated and emphatic, singing along with the lyrics: We don't need no education! We don't need no thought control!

In light of these stories, it's amusing that I became a teacher. Or it could be that I had strong opinions about education right from the start.

* * *

The first time I heard of the school where I've been planning to enroll my son, I gasped loudly in the middle of an Irish pub and then read aloud from the newspaper to my husband. Our city had just moved from an open enrollment plan to neighborhood schools, and kids were being moved from the schools they'd previously attended to whatever building they were assigned by a street-by-street district map.

We live in a middle-class neighborhood backed-up against poverty stricken pockets; our whole city looks like this. We didn't live here back then, but I was familiar with the name of the neighborhood. And parents from this neighborhood were being asked to pull their kids from a school with a decent reputation to send them to one that ended up being closed down a few years later by the federal government under No Child Left Behind (Remember how the government could come in and close down failing schools if they didn't make adequate yearly progress? That's what happened here.).

A group of parents banded together to sue the district. Their lawyer was quoted in the newspaper, commenting on the fact that these kids had to leave their school of choice to attend the newly-assigned school with the bad reputation: This school isn't suitable for middle-class children.

I gasped aloud over my entree, because I couldn't believe he'd say that out loud, to a reporter. But it's suitable for poor kids!? I said to my husband.

Of course, once we moved into the neighborhood, and I did my research, which school do you suppose I wanted my son to attend?

* * *

No Child Left Behind expired in January, along with parental rights to school choice. The transfer request form disappeared from the district website; the woman who answered my call in the district office chuckled when I asked about my chances at getting my son into the decent school.

She chuckled.

I'm guessing that means my chances don't look very good?

* * *

Because I'm at home, teaching these babies, and I have no colleagues to talk to, I've been reading voraciously: everything I can find on early childhood brain development, activities for learning in the home, self-directed learning, promoting literacy in young learners. I'm bursting with excitement every day for all the amazing potential that education contains!

I look at my boy, who never runs out of questions and ideas. He's full of stories and theories; he overflows with energy and joy. His mind races like his heartbeat, only faster, and I imagine I can see the neurons pulsing, the dendrites reaching out in every direction. They only grow when you feed them, you know. Some of them grow like weeds, and others shrivel and die, and this is just how the brain works, you know? But you have to feed the ones you want to grow.

* * *

All this is to say: I'm thinking about homeschooling. It's never anything I thought I'd do. But things change, and here we are.

Just Do It With Love

Emily, at Keeping Time,  invited us to Celebrate Parenthood today. I didn't know if I'd make the deadline. I wanted to, but my confidence level was low. And then I visited Emily's blog, and she said the following magic words: stream of consciousness. And the sun came out from behind the clouds and I thought: I can do this!

So here goes:

The alarm goes off in the morning, and I groan. But then I roll over, walk down the stairs, and start my day. I have about 15 minutes to myself before the first of the boys I babysit arrives; my kids are usually still asleep. I meet little Noah (not his real name) at the door, and lead him into the living room, where we read stories until we hear Lulabelle, my baby girl (see previous disclaimer :)) beginning to stir. He looks at me and says: Baby!

Yes! Baby's waking up. Should we go and see her? I ask, and we walk to her room.

The next hour is a blur of diapers, and dressing, and Milo -our other friend (and another not-real name)- arriving, and my three year old boy, Ben (last fake-name announcement!) waking up. It's booty-wiping, and hand-washing, and tooth-brushing, until we all make it back to the living room.

I lie down on the floor, and await their gifts.

Can you read me this? 

Looka dis!

My turn! My turn!

Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! (with much pointing)

I a airpwane on you yegs pwease?

Mommy, mommy, I need a turn! I want to go first!

Katy, Katy, you read a choo-choo book a me?

Uh! Uh! Uh! (with much reaching)

I read. I look. I remind: it's still his turn. did you offer a trade? maybe he will trade you for another toy. I decipher: I think Lula is showing us her rattle! Pretty cool Lulabelle! I airplane, and keep track of whose turn it is. I read again, and decipher again: Up? Up? You want up? Heeere we go!

Eventually the chaos settles for a moment of pause. I gather them in, my children, and the children who aren't mine, but who are part of our story nevertheless, and who need me to care for them in the same ways my own do. In the same ways someone else cared for my babies while I was at work.

I gather them in, and I open a book with feathers, furry animal patches, rough denim and straw, flaps of fabric populating its pages, and I begin to read.

What dat?

Where is the rooster GOING, Mommy?

I touch! I touch!

Me turna pages!

What dat? I say what dat? And what dat, too?

Mommy, Lulabelle is climbing on your head! She is like the rooster in the hen house!

Baby! Baby on you head! Dat silly!

I touch!

My turn!

The cacophony begins again.

In the half hour I've spent in this stream-of consciousness, I've also: helped Ben make "words" with foam letters, retrieved an early-waking Lulabelle from her crib, shared an armchair with my two children, had my "hair done" by tiny fingers, brushed a baby girl's barely there hair because she likes the feel of the brush on her head, offered board books and kleenex, stopped to sing a song or two, kissed and been kissed.

The floors haven't been fully cleaned, from lunch. There's a load of laundry, waiting to be switched over to the dryer. I really need a cup of coffee. And I think that's Milo I hear, beginning to stir, an hour early.

There's always too much. There will always be too much, as long as I do this work. I'll never finish. So then the question becomes: Did I do it with love?

The answer, almost every day, is yes. Yes.

Change

I read my post from the other day, and the Exceedingly Practical voice in my head says: hire someone to clean, fer Gawd's sake, and your load will lighten. Get that budget worked out, girl!

And Exceedingly Practical always has a good point, so you know it's true.

But I took a walk in the snow with my boy last night, and I thought while we walked, and it's not only the housework.

I'm almost thirty-six, and I chose a life of constant change a good many years ago. But I'm tired. And I look ahead...and it doesn't end. Our babies become toddlers and then children. My career will need to pick up again somewhere, and while I have a variety of lovely ideas, I'm just. tired. I'm jogging, here and there, practicing a little pilates, and a little more yoga. I don't feel stronger yet though, most of the time. Just exhausted.

The housework is part of it, but my body's tired too, and I'm existentially exhausted. I want to be a loving parent, and a joyful, playful teacher. I want to exercise, a lot, and to teach my kids to love their bodies. I want to plan menus, and keep the kitchen clean. I want to stop stepping on Cheerios and cheesy crackers, so often. I want to write, sometimes. I want to honor the things that are good in myself, and in all of us. I want to get closer to God. Oh, and I wouldn't mind figuring out who the hell God is, also. This stuff is hard, exhausting stuff.

And part of it, too, for me, is that the beautiful simplicity of mothering babies has been replaced with the challenges of parenting children who will someday be out in the world, dragging me with them, my heart naked and terrified, beating with fear in plain sight of everyone, outside my warm winter coat, unprotected, leaping forever in front of my loves. I didn't write often enough about how much I adored the baby phase it while I was in it because I was always afraid of sounding smug, sanctimonious, or straight-up-crazy. Who the hell loves the post-partum/newborn period?

*waves hand* *shrugs*

It's sad to say goodbye to the season of my babies -and my old job- because together they enforced a slow, gentle structure upon my life. Slow is my speed. Slow is my jam. I sat with my babies, soaking them up, and then I went to work and sat with other parents, and shared it with them, and they shared their babies with me. It was pretty wonderful. And I was lucky too, in that my babies were easy.

But now the easy babies are bigger, and they race everywhere they go, leaving messes in their wake. The house is on hyperspeed at all times. My husband has a new job, and so do I, both with longer hours, both with steeper learning curves. My boy will be starting school next fall. My girl's laughing at the word no. I'm picking up new yoga and pilates classes next month, and my kids will be trying another gym childcare. I have career plans in the works, and a long list of next steps. I still want to learn to make my own yoga pants. There's just so much change that's happened, and a bunch of change that's still happening, and when I look ahead I see more change that will happen. Even if someone else deep cleans the floors, I'll still be tired.

Change is exhausting.

Don't get me wrong though. I already told my husband I want to call the cleaning lady again asap.

Balance

Warning: this post is all over the place. I ought to edit, I know. But it ain't gonna happen. It was this or nothing at all. That's just where I am with life these days.

So I stumbled upon this article today. Go ahead and read it. I'll wait. What? You say you're in a hurry? Maybe you'll peruse it later? Fine, I'll summarize: In the latest round of the media concoction mommy wars, positing that stay-at-home mothers and work-outside-the-home mothers are at each other's throats for ratings purposes, enter Anderson Cooper and Dr. Drew to fan the flames, claiming that a recent study says working moms are happier, and asking if stay-at-home moms are lazy (is it just me, or wouldn't the stay-at-home moms be happier if it were all about being lazy!? You show me lazy, and I'll show you bliss! But maybe that's just me...) .

But this blogger (who I never read until today) did something I really appreciate: she followed the links back to the original study and read it. And what did it ACTUALLY say?

Basically, that I'm right about everything! :)

Okay, okay, it didn't cite me personally or anything (hmph!), but here's the title of the study: Mothers’ Part-Time Employment: Associations With Mother and Family Well-Being. Turns out it's part-time employment that offers the most benefits to mothers, kids and families. I read it, sitting on my couch, looking at the room I just cleaned that already needs to be cleaned again, and I pined for my old job back. My lovely, wonderful, I'd-send-it-to-the-Vatican-for-sainthood-if-I-were-still-a-practicing-Catholic, as close to perfect as can be, old job.

And while it had a number of things going for it, here was the very, very best part: it was PART-TIME! And the hours were FLEXIBLE! It was luscious. Delicious. A thing of great beauty.

I am still struggling with adapting to this (not-so) new (anymore) life, six months later. It's a lot HARDER than my old life. On the days the boys come, I work ten hours: 7:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. On the days they don't come, I have my two kids for the ten hours my husband is at work. On weekends, I have essentially the same job; it's just bring-your-husband-to-work-day, twice in a row. Oh, and the grocery shopping needs to be done too. My house ALWAYS (and I cannot stress enough that it. really. is. ALWAYS.) needs to be cleaned. And I don't feel like I can slack off on that when I have other people bringing their children here every other day. It's one thing to subject your own family to your irredeemably messy tendencies; it's another thing altogether to subject clients to the same. So the haven of my home doesn't feel like a haven very often. Sometimes it feels like a work-induced hangover that never ends.

By the definitions in the article, I worked part-time before, and I work part-time now. But my old job was twenty hours a week; this one is thirty (three more hours per week and I'd be out of the part-time category). My old job was divided evenly between five mornings a week; this one is three long days, with two days off (but my days off don't feel as different as they did when I worked outside the home). And having your home be your workplace is stressful for me. I recently said to my husband: It's like if you went to work one day, and they said: Good news! Grades and curriculum are optional now! Teach whatever and however you like! But -oh yeah!- the cafeteria workers and janitors have all been laid off, and we will need you to do their jobs. Also, people LIVE in your classroom now, and will treat it accordingly. It's up to you to keep it up to whatever standards you need to successfully teach. Good luck!

There are times I catch up on (or ignore) the housekeeping, and focus on the teaching. These are the times I enjoy most. But it's hard to focus on teaching when the students are eating feathers off the floor because they escaped from your throw pillows when you were busy building Pillow Mountain in the middle of the living room. Suddenly it's time to put Pillow Mountain away and vacuum. Again. And then it's time to serve lunch, and sweep, and mop, and throw in another load of laundry, and get it folded, and then...and then...and then. It's way too easy for the lessons to end up in last place, while the never-ending upkeep takes over my time. These are the times I enjoy least.

I'd love to sum this up, all pretty with a nice bow. But I have no idea where the bows are. Organizing the Christmas stuff is still on my to-do list. I just threw it up there on a Sunday night sometime early this month because the boys were going to be here in the morning, and I haven't gotten back to it yet. So, sadly, this is all I got:

Part-time work is the bomb-diggity-dog, and don't ever forget, you heard it here first! But balance? I don't haz it right now. And I don't know how to find it.

School

I want my son to go to school next year. I might be the only one who feels that way, though. He'll be 4 in July, and we live in a city that offers free Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) classes for all 4 year olds in the district. Our assigned neighborhood school isn't great, but another elementary school in our neighborhood is considered excellent, and I'm prepared to do what I can to try and get him transferred into the better one. I didn't think I'd be able to do that until kindergarten, but it looks like they just added a pre-K class, so I might be able to get him into the preferred school right away. I'm planning to start making calls next week, and official registration happens in March. We're headed down this path, I'm leading the way, and it seems I'm just dragging everyone else in my wake.

I started by talking to my husband about it. I worry, he told me. It seems so early to send him out into the world. Even for a half day preschool class.

Umm, it's full day, I told him. 9-3 if he gets into the school I want him in. 8-2 at the other one.

My husband grimaced.

I took my boy for a walk past one of the school playgrounds. That might be your playground next year, baby! When you go to school! Won't it be fun to play there?

My son squinched up his face and began to whine. I don't want to go to school! I want to stay home with you forever and ever!

We visited my mom for the weekend, and I told her about the dilemma. When I mentioned the 6 hour school day, she winced.

I guess I'm the only one looking forward to it! And it's not because I want him out of the house. Actually, we'll miss him here. He plays a great little leader role with the 2 year olds! My job might be harder without my helper.

But I used to teach UPK, and here's the thing: It's FUN! It's a play-based curriculum, and they do lots of amazing literacy activities (I'm very familiar with the district curriculum from my previous job), and develop pre-math and pre-science skills, and he'll get to socialize with other kids his age in large and small group activities. I remember my UPK classroom so fondly, and my boy is exactly the type of kid who will thrive in that environment. I want to give him the chance to do that. Does he need preschool? Probably not. But I think he will love it. Once he gets used to it.

So I'm going to make those calls next week, prepare for battle to get him transferred to the better school, and show up at registration in March with my boy's hand in mine. If I'm wrong? I'm wrong. It's never to late to learn something new, and make a better choice. We're not going anywhere, and he's always welcome back! But for now: it's time to get ready for school. And if I have to be chipper enough to bouy the whole darn ship about it, well then, that's just what I'll do!

Pre-K! Woohoo!

The More the Merrier

You wouldn't think the antidote to feeling exhausted by parenting two kids would be to invite two more kids into the mix. But today's our first day having the boys I babysit here after a 10 day break, and it's so nice to have them back.

Between caring for the kids all day and then sleeping in my daughter's room at night while she wakes repeatedly, nursing, climbing, and rolling on me, I feel less like a person and more like a creature with child-sized appendages. There has been no space between my body and the bodies of my children, and at times it's all I can do not to hiss: don't touch me.

But then the boys come, and because I'm not their mothers, they don't treat my body with the same sense of cavalier ownership. I hold them, sure, and ruffle their hair and give them hugs, but all of a sudden I'm something more than just a mother, and a sense of self emerges from the primordial ooze of constant neediness I've been navigating with my children.

They play together on the floor and I compose questions to facilitate language development. They bicker and I intervene to model age appropriate social skills. They begin to bounce off the walls, trapped indoors by the whims of winter, and I introduce a new gross motor activity.

It's the same things I might do with my own children -and do- but the distance I gain in the subtle shift of roles: mother to teacher, is just enough room to take a deep breath and by redefining my role, find and tap into some source of energy I've been lacking.

The kids, too, come alive in the presence of their peers. My boy is showing off his new train table and sharing in ways that eluded him when it was only his sister dismantling the tracks. My daughter deigns to remove herself from my lap and squeals with joy passing plastic food back and forth with her friends.

It's funny to find it here, but I think this is why some women value their work so much: it offers a chance to define the self in a new set of parameters, to discover and prove a different set of competencies. It's amusing that I can see it so much more clearly all of a sudden when I'm working from home, caring for other children in addition to my own. Because my professional work has always included a healthy dose of care-taking, it was difficult to discern the difference between what I did for a living, and what I did at home. Now the two spheres overlap more than ever, and yet the differences stand out more starkly.

Welcome back boys! We missed you.

Teacher

So, I've been reading. Reading like an addict, which is something I've been accused of on more than one occasion, and by more than one individual: You're addicted to reading. You just check out. It's like you'd rather read than hang out. You totally zone out. You don't even hear us when we talk.

Which, most of the time? Yeah. Reading addict. Confessed.

I've been soaking up SAHM stories wherever I can find them, and I've come to realize: I'm not a SAHM. I'm a teacher. A part-time teacher, working MWF from home, but I'm still a teacher. The teacher in me bubbles up to the surface; there's not a whole lot I could do about it, even if I wanted to.

So: Reading Addict. Teacher.

I always wanted a mentor. I spent years fantasizing that I would meet someone who knew everything I want to know. She would be a yogi, and a poet, and a storyteller. She would have practiced ballet and studied neuroscience, with a minor in anthropology, and she would always effortlessly look good (without ever having studied fashion) because her skin glowed with fresh air, pine trees and the wide open mystery of living. I never found her.

But the reading addict in me (she devours the written word like a crack addict; makes no distinction between the back of the cereal box, the New York Times, a hand-drawn graphic novel found in the woods, someone else's junk mail, an old love letter from my husband, Anna Karenina, Brown Bear, Brown Bear), she read somewhere (self help literature maybe, or a quote from Ghandi) that if you can't find what you want, try to become what you want.

And so I became a teacher, and I headed down the road I imagined my imaginary mentor would have headed down. Except it's slow going, because there are no gurus here.

There is just me.

And so I'm a beginner at yoga: teaching senior citizens and learning from books, websites, and practice. And I wrote poetry for a few years, when I was younger, but never really progressed beyond loving and imitating the Beats. Now I'm a storyteller for children and -occasionally- in this space. The last time I took a ballet class was in high school. Actually, no, that's not true. I took a class with two of my sisters when we lived in Arizona. Spring of 2000, I'd guess. I loved the barre work, still. I liked barre work as a child, too. I've studied neuroscience in the context of early childhood education, but anthropology remains a pipe dream, right alongside looking great without effort.

There's this image I've long held in my head, about turning 35 (which I did last March), and it's been flashing through my mind again recently. I'm in a large crowded hallway. If I examine it further, the hallway is a replica of the first floor of the Catholic elementary school I attended, which housed kindergarten through second grades. We're all trying to get in line, and I'm late. The line starts to move forward, and I slip in at the last minute, and I don't get caught. I made it! I am full of relief.

Just before my 35th birthday I returned to work, following maternity leave after the birth of my second child. Married? Check! Kids? Check! Job? Check! House? Check! I made it. Full of relief.

And then it all went to hell. Well, that's not precisely true. Only my job went to hell. Or wherever jobs go when they're killed by Congress. The back of a very long line of lobbyists, perhaps. A purgatory worse than hell.

I thought I was going to stay home with my kids. And then, you know, babysit. No biggie. But the imaginary mentor I've been imitating all these years? It turns out she's really, truly come into her own as a teacher. And every time enthusiasm bubbles up inside me and then overflows into joy? It's because I'm giving her free reign.

I'm a teacher. Losing my job doesn't put a damper on that, because it's not just a job. It's a calling. But it's also my career, and I'd like what I'm doing now to further it, even if I'm not technically in the workforce.

So in 2012, I guess I'll have to figure out what it means to be a teacher, working from home, with no employer. I've put the imaginary mentor on the job. And if she can't do it? Well, I guess I'll just have to do some more reading.

The Really Funny Story About The Time I Nearly Lost My Mind Taking Care of Five Kids Under Four For Ten Days

At least I'm hoping it's really funny, once it's over. Because right now I'm smack-dab in the middle of the story, approaching the peak of the narrative, which is probably where my brain explodes and my head shoots around the room like a loosed balloon slipping from your fingers before it's tied, or bounces off walls like a ping-pong ball in a greasy pizza arcade. Why? Because: BABIES!

Okay, perhaps I exaggerated. I blame: BABIES! I had five kids under four three days last week, and two days this week, and four under four today, and three under four the remaining of the ten days. But whatever. That's far more math than I'm currently capable of doing.

It's two: BABIES all ten days. An eleven month old (teething) baby, and a four month old (teething) baby, and for those of you who can't add, that's A WHOLE LOTTA MOTHERFUCKIN' BABIES!!!11!@#%! I warned you about math already. Brain no compute good. Because: BABIES. Need things. All time.

And the future love of my life, the cleaning lady, who is needed more than ever because: BABIES, has yet to start because I can't leave the house because: BABIES!

So all I'm saying is, there better be a really funny punch line coming up. Even if it's at my expense. Which I have a feeling it is. But I'm so tired I'll probably laugh really hard for a while before I even catch on.

BABIES!

*twitch*

Settling In

Have you ever been in a meeting, and there's an announcement about some upcoming changes in the way things are done, and suddenly everyone is bustling with questions, complaints, objections, and a long list of all the problems that are sure to ensue?

Well, that's the point where I'm totally silent, and what I'm thinking is: damn, you guys, quit harshing my buzz! this could be, like, the BEST. THING. EVER!

And then the upcoming changes become the new normal, and all the nasayers have generally adjusted by that point: questions are answered, complaints are addressed, objections are either sustained or overruled, and the long list of problems are solved or never come to be.

And at the beginning of the new normal I'm still like: potential best thing ever, right? the sparkly unicorns will be here momentarily?, and then around the middle I'm like: wait...no sparkly unicorns? nirvana has not descended upon us? not best thing ever? then...maybe...worst thing ever? ummm...how do i feel about this? paaanickyyy!?

So August was the buzz of the upcoming change, which was, of course, quite possibly the beginning of the best thing ever. That carried me through most of September, but then by October all I could see was that -WTF!?- life still consisted of a whole string of absolutely normal moments strung together, and things like eating, playing, cleaning, and going for walks had somehow failed to be fully transcendent experiences. So, did this mean I hated life?

Fortunately, November arrived, and with it the realization -yet again, because I seem to suffer the same delusions no matter the change, or my age, or circumstance- that: oh yeah! regular life! i remember this! it's just, like, normal. okay. cool. i can dig it.

A schedule with the little ones has evolved, mealtimes have settled down, and a certain peace has settled over the land. My husband built a walkway through the backyard -our final project before winter arrives- (we're going to pretend the whole fixing-the-snowblower-thing will be but a minor blip in the radar, yes, indeed we are), and then suddenly appeared back in our family life for the first time since August (it has seriously been 10-12 hour days every weekend completing projects around the house ever since I found out my job was ending. the house looks great. we are both completely burned.), and my loneliness abated.

The leaves are all falling, yellow, from the trees. I watch them from my perch on the couch, holding my travel mug of hot tea aloft in the air so the little bodies clamoring up and down don't knock it over. And although I know more changes are coming -winter's just around the corner- it feels as if I've finally caught up with the ones that have already happened.

This is my new life. And although the sparkly unicorns appear to have been waylaid somewhere along the way yet again, although nirvana has yet to show up at the door, let itself in, and take up permanent residence: it's still a pretty darn good one.

The Unofficial Performance Review

Have you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig? It's my dad's favorite book, so I read it one summer; I think I was 19. There's a section near the beginning of the book where the narrator -a former college instructor- talks about an experiment he did, eliminating grades for his writing students. The good students get better, pushing themselves harder than they've had to in the past, when the stakes were clear. The bad students get nervous and panicky, suddenly interested in what the criteria are for passing the course. Suddenly they begin to pump out work: more and of better quality than ever before.

I don't know if I'm a good or bad student in this comparison, but it's a little disconcerting that the goal posts have not just moved: they're nonexistent in my new life. And I'm running the gamut from panic to pushing myself harder in response.

I was always a good student: from kindergarten through graduate school. The criteria were clearly spelled out, and I did what I had to do to fulfill them. When I went to work, I did the same. If I had questions, I asked my boss, or did some research to find out what were considered best practices in the field. There were always rubrics and protocols, checklists to guide me. The challenges were usually intellectual.

Now the challenges are largely emotional, the terrain has shifted, and I'm out here on my own, with little guidance, and nobody observing, measuring, giving feedback, grading my performance.

I get nervous and panicky some days, like Pirsig's poor students, wondering what the minimum requirements are to consider this venture a success. Other days I go above and beyond what I imagine myself capable of, like the better students when the parameter defining the upper limit was suddenly lifted.

In the past week, I've finally gotten some concrete feedback, and it felt good.

One of the boys I babysit is dropped off by his grandmother once a week, later in the morning because he gets early intervention therapy at her house beforehand. She said as soon as she pulled into our driveway he began to pump his fists, kick both feet, and squeal with joy! This little boy has never been outside of the care of his family before, and he greets me each morning with a huge grin. It made me feel good to know I'm providing his first taste of life outside his family home, and that he likes it out here in the big, bad world.

The other boy has been in child care twice a week since he was born, with the same caregiver, before coming to me a little less than two months ago. His dad drops him off because he has such a tough time separating from mom, and he always cried and cried if she did the drop-off. But his father had a conference this week, and mom had to do it. She arrived, obviously nervous, with her son in her arms, and dropped down to one knee to set him on the floor. Suddenly my son opened his bedroom door and peeked out to see his buddy arriving. The little boy's face lit up, he yelled: Bye Mama!, kissed her quickly, and ran toward my boy, ready to play. She said in the year and a half he'd spent with his other sitter, he had never been so happy to leave her side. It made my day.

This is a challenging transition for me. Not the identity piece, which I expected, and which hasn't really turned out to matter a whit to me. I know who I am, and a professional title -or lack of one- doesn't change that. But the balance that I so carefully and deliberately set out to create for my life has been flipped topsy-turvy, and that is taking some time to get used to. I find myself more exhausted and emotionally depleted than I have ever been before. I find I need to dig deeper to find reserves of patience, compassion, and willingness to wait, to try again, to return to the same problems until they are solved to my satisfaction. I have to learn to take care of myself in ways I didn't have to before. I'm somewhat surprised to find out how hard on myself I can be.

But I'm doing right by these babies, if squeals of joy, pumping fists and feet, great big grins, and feet racing into our house and our hearts are any indication. And it's not like I'll be getting a performance review this year -or a raise!- so, hey: I'll take 'em! I will most definitely take them.

Mealtimes, Squealtimes

It's the mealtimes that are really challenging. I'm brainstorming to see if I can come up with a better system, but so far, I can't. Feeding four children, ages 0, 1, 2 and 3, is just very, very difficult. And very, very messy.

Here are my biases, laid out from the start: I've seen research that suggests that kids who are permitted to eat whenever they want spend more time engaged in learning. Kids who are forced to eat at preplanned mealtimes spend more time wasted: in lines, waiting for adults, sitting or standing around doing nothing. This is in a child care situation, not at home. There's plenty of research supporting family mealtimes, so that's not what I'm talking about here. Another bias I hold is that I think it's a good thing -and important- for kids to learn to listen to their bodies. To eat when and what their bodies crave. So my ideal is an eating area where children can come and go as they please, grazing through their day, getting the energy they need to learn.

You can probably imagine that this could easily be recipe for chaos, but you guys, I am already so far from my ideal!

The boys arrive in the morning and my kids are usually still asleep. They wake soon after the noise level begins to rise in the living room, and we all play for a half hour or so, until I get the hungry signal from one of the kids. Fortunately, once one of them wants to eat, they all want to eat, so I'm not completely abandoning my wait-for-their-signals approach to individual eating.

My daughter's in a high chair. The two boys are in small chairs with trays on the floor. My son sits at a child-sized table. When it's dry food, I let the other two boys sit at the little table. I like this: the camaraderie, the family feel of it, the opportunity for interaction between them. But if it's wet food, the 1 and 2 year olds will end up covering the wall and floor in it, and it's nearly impossible to clean off the wainscoting and out of the crack where the wall meets the floor. So I've limited that to dry food.

Breakfast and lunch work about the same way. I'm scrambling to get hands washed by holding each kid up to the sink and scrubbing their hands with mine. Then I pop the three younger kids in their chairs and click their trays into place, leaving my son to his own devices. I sprinkle dry cereal or snack crackers across their trays to keep them happy while I warm their food in the microwave.

The two boys bring their own meals (they need to, due to feeding and sensory issues, so it's not an option for me to provide the same thing for all the kids) and obviously I'm providing for my kids, so we have -at best- three different meals that typically need to be heated (that's if my kids are eating the same thing, which: sometimes).

Everybody spills, so the floors around each seating area need to be cleaned. Hands need to be cleaned. Faces need to be cleaned. Everybody has a variety of snacks in addition to the meals, so I'm just racing: back and forth from the kitchen with heated foods, with Clorox wipes for the floor, to rinse dishes and get them in the dishwasher, with high chair trays and rubber bibs, and cloth bibs that need to be tossed down the stairs to the basement laundry, with one more snack to try because low blood sugar is an issue, to slice that apple because he can't eat one independently, to peel that pear because she can't eat the skin, to refill juice glasses and make chocolate milk, and wash my hands again because I just used a Clorox wipe to get the oatmeal off the floor and I don't want to touch the banana with Clorox wipe residue all over my hands. My son is the only one who's really talking yet (we've got some special needs in the group), so there's lots of grunting, and lots of whining, and lots of frantic pointing, and it's all happening at once while I'm running, running, running. And also, I don't microwave plastic (ew, scary cancer stuff, I just won't do it), so all the food is scooped from plastic, to ceramic, back to plastic (they'll drop and break ceramic), and all those dishes need rinsing before they go into the dishwasher, and before I can even stop for one second one is whining to get out of the seat, and then another, and then another, and I have to clean up: the floors, the trays, their hands and faces, and everyone's whining all at the same time, and:

It's just really stressful.

I keep my cool on the outside because I am good at keeping my cool on the outside. It is, in fact, my job to keep my cool on the outside. But inside, it makes me feel like a crazy woman. An unhinged, panicky, crazy woman.

And that's not really good for anyone, now is it?

Today I tried to eliminate mid-morning snack-time (we have breakfast, then a mid-morning snack, then lunch, then an afternoon snack. Can you see why this is a problem?), but then I was hungry (I can't eat while they're eating; when would I eat?) and tried to sneak away to eat something and they all trailed me (like Greyhounds, they are!) and found me and wanted to eat.

For lunch today I fed them each individually, which was actually quite peaceful, but it took and hour and a half, and the ones who weren't eating were playing in another room and that's a long time for them to play without any interaction from me (I can see them, so they're supervised, but I wasn't in there playing at all, which -in my opinion- is a big part of what I'm here for, and: is the fun part!). It worked out okay today, but my daughter skipped lunch and went down for her nap early. I don't think it would typically work, and I'm not crazy about it anyway, as a regular thing.

I have tried to simply stop stressing out about it, but it's not working. Which leads me to believe that maybe I need to change the circumstances somehow, instead of trying to ignore the chaos. Figure out how to make it less chaotic.

But I'm not sure where to start. Anybody got any ideas?

Students and Teachers

My husband noticed he had a voice mail on Saturday morning.

What's this? I missed a district wide call last night? What could this be about? he asked as he dialed to retrieve the message.

And then: Oh. Oh God. No. Oh my God. No. Oh God.

He frantically scrambled for a pencil and began taking notes on the back of an envelope. When he hung up the phone he stared into space, shell-shocked. I glanced down, but could make little sense of the random collection of words he had jotted down: a boy's name, a small town south of us, the hospital where I took my daughter when she fell and hit her head.

I asked: What is it? Are you okay?

He just shook his head, and kept staring forward, looking at nothing.

* * *

Nearly three years ago a girl walked into my classroom with her eight month old son. She was a teen mom, there to take the entrance test to qualify for our GED program. Her son had never -since birth- been separated from her at that point, not even to sleep. He cried for 3 hours while she labored over math and reading problems. We took turns passing him from staff member to staff member, trying every baby calming trick we collectively knew, to no avail. He sobbed until he was back in her arms.

* * *

One of his students died on Friday night. He sustained a hit to the head during a football game. He continued the game for a few more plays; no one even knew there was a problem. He got hit again and went down. He rolled over, sat up. He could talk, but wasn't making a lot of sense, so they called an ambulance.

They were en route to the hospital where I took my daughter, when he took a turn for the worse in the ambulance. They headed for a closer hospital in the small town south of us where the game was being played. He died there, a junior in high school.

* * *

She qualified for the program, which means either her reading or math scores had to be below ninth grade level. I can tell you it was both. Later we found out she had a learning disability that had gone undiagnosed for her entire school career.

She was on her mom's public assistance case, and their welfare-to-work caseworker wanted her back in high school. The same high school, same district, that missed her learning disability for all those years. The same district that had shuffled her through to tenth grade when she was reading and doing math on an elementary school level.

They wanted to put her baby in full time daycare so she could go to school. They pay for it, but they don't pay much, so he'd have been in the cheapest daycare she could find. They told her it was that or find whatever job she could without a high school diploma, and they'd pay for daycare for that too.

They didn't want her in our GED program, where she would get parenting classes, and interactive time with her baby. She didn't know why they didn't support it, and they certainly didn't feel they owed her anything like an explanation for the decisions they were making about her life.

She'd never been a good student, and they wanted her in a substandard school that had already failed her. She had no work experience, and no marketable skills, but they wanted her in a dead end job. She had one thing going for her: she loved that baby more than anything, and her instincts were dead on when it came to mothering. She had that one thing, and they wanted to take it away from her.

* * *

My husband walked around in a fog all weekend. We took the kids to the farmer's market, and he kept forgetting what was on the list. He tried to plot out the sidewalk we're building through the yard next weekend, and couldn't focus on the numbers on the blueprint. The boy's story was on the front page of the Local section of our Sunday paper, and when I asked him if he read the article about Obama in the Opinion section, or saw the Victorian house for sale in Homes he shook his head and said: I didn't read anything except the article about my student. I never got any further than that.

* * *

I called my boss, and my boss called the caseworker's boss, but to no avail. They assigned her to high school, and she never went, never enrolled her son in daycare, just skipped every day and sat at home with her baby. They started docking her mom's public assistance, so her mom went down and screamed at the caseworker, who finally relented, and assigned her to our program instead.

She had perfect attendance. Her son, almost 2 at this point, still sobbed when his mom left his side. So we set up a desk in the nursery, and she worked there, while he gradually ventured further from her side. Finally we began taking her from the children's classroom for short -and then longer- periods of time. We were shocked to discover that working unassisted in the nursery she'd brought her reading scores from a fifth grade to a tenth grade level.

She was a month away from passing her GED when we lost our funding and had to close up shop.

* * *

The student who died would have been in my husband's first period, Monday morning class. Going into work this morning was daunting. I saw the weight of it across the slope of his shoulders as he headed out the door. I turned the tea water on, and wished there was something I could do.

Later, I took the kids for a walk and saw a large bunch of deep red mums that someone had tossed out with the trash, though they were still in bloom, whole, and beautiful. I picked them up, folded them gently into the hood of the jogging stroller, brought them home and arranged them in a vase. I placed it where he'd see them when he first walked in the door.

At some point between walking out the door of our home and into the door of his school, he squared those shoulders, heavy with the weight of the responsibility he bore for the students who would have even less ability than he to make sense of the senseless tragedy. He squared his shoulders, walked into that first period class, and spoke to the kids in his first period class, minus one.

* * *

I called her caseworker before our program ended and she assured me she'd transfer my student into another GED program. Her son is old enough for preschool now, and we pulled every string we could to get him enrolled. He cried the first time he took the bus without her, but overall, he's doing incredibly well.

The caseworker didn't keep her word, though, and refused to refer her to another GED program, after all. The day she found out, I invited her over for a bowl of ham and bean soup, a hot cup of tea, a honey crisp apple. We looked online for another GED program, one that doesn't require a referral from her caseworker. We're still trying, and she's worried her math and reading skills are slipping.

Her son is testing above the 90th percentile for his language skills though, a testament to her strong attachment to him, her willingness to throw herself wholeheartedly into parenting, to soak up skills like a sponge and then pass them on to him. She wants his life to be easier than hers.

We were texting last night, talking about her love for her boy, when all of a sudden I read the following line:

I was forest to have sex, thats how my baby was made.

I had to whisper read it aloud to myself, to be sure I understood.

I wrote her back:

You are an amazing person.

She sent me a smiley face emoticon before I went to bed.

* * *

I can debate educational theory all night long: Maria Montessori and John Dewey, the Reggio Emilia approach, and what the latest findings in neuroscience mean in the context of the day-to-day drag.

I have opinions about the politics of it: unions versus reformers, Michelle Rhee and what she did in DC, merit pay and standardized testing. And if my husband and I get started, the next thing you know the wine bottle is empty and we're both all riled up. A perfect date night for me would be back-to-back showings of the most recent educational documentaries followed by debriefing over generous glasses of Cabernet.

But what's missing from the conversation is the slope of my husband's heavy shoulders as he walked weary from our house into the still dark morning, saddled with the weight of what he'd say to those kids. There's no place in policy for the way my heart stopped for a moment and the muscles in my abdomen involuntarily clenched when my student sent me a text that spelled forest for forced.

We talk numbers, and strategy, and we have to. We have to. But every time someone's child connects a letter to a sound, sketches a still-life on a thick sheet of off-white paper, finally figures out what the hell fractions are all about ... there are billions of beating hearts behind it. And if it didn't start -and end- with our heavy, hurt, imperfect hearts: all the theory and politics in the world would come to nought.  

Schedules Unfolding

The children are all here today. Three are asleep while my oldest plays with wooden trains in the living room. I mopped the dining room and kitchen floors as fast as I could once the kids went down, hoping to find some time to sit here and write, although now that I'm here, a folded towel under my feet that I used to shuffle-slide across the still-wet floor to get to the computer, I can't remember quite what it was I was so anxious to say. I was thinking while I rocked one of the boys to sleep, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star playing quietly in the background, my mind wandering from the room where I sat. I was comparing my house to the classrooms where I've taught in the past, and...

...Oh yes, the unfolding. More about the unfolding. So here goes:

The first thing I would do as a teacher is make a schedule for the day. When I taught preschool, it looked a little something like this:

9-9:30: Arrival; Free breakfast for those who qualify; Free play for others in limited areas of the classroom
9:30-10: Circle Time; Make a plan for free play
10-11: Free Play
11-11:20: Kids meet with teachers in small groups and debrief: talk about how the play plan went (this, incidentally, -the making of, sticking to, and discussing play plans- has been shown to do more for a certain type of early brain development than any other single thing you could do in a classroom. I loved it.)
11:20-12: Outdoor/Gross Motor play and Small Group Activities
12-1: Lunch, followed by Storytime
1-3: Nap/Quiet play/Books for those who wake up

When I taught family literacy, with infants, toddlers and parents, it looked a little something like this:

9-9:10: Arrival
9:10-10:05: GED class 1/Parent and Child Interactive class 1 (half the parents went to GED while the other half stayed with their babies in the classroom)
10:05-11: GED class 2/Parent and Child Interactive class 2 (the groups of parents switched)
11-11:45: Parenting class; Kids with staff
11:45-12: Circle Time; Dismissal

You'll notice the second schedule was more for the parents than the kids. That's because while infants and toddlers need routines, each child will need a slightly different routine. If you have a group of them, a new routine will evolve. Their needs will change as they interact with the others. So I have four children to care for, and it's been six weeks, and we don't have a schedule that fits on paper perfectly yet.

Who do you imagine is the only person in the group who has a problem with that?

If you guessed me, you win the prize! It's a handful of goldfish crackers and a Thomas the Tank Engine sticker. Also, you'll have to swing by and pick it up. I drive a Hyundai Accent and there's no way four carseats are fitting in that sucker.

I like things written out on paper: schedules, to-do lists, projects I'd like to complete around the house, shopping lists, meals planned for the month, developmental checklists with little boxes where the abstract beauty of a child's first word or step can be reassuringly checked off, made concrete, filed in a drawer somewhere, perhaps never to be seen again. Doesn't matter. I just like the making of the lists.

But instead, I keep choosing things like caring for babies and yoga. Things that don't lend themselves to list-making, things that laugh in the face of the best laid plans. Things that unfold. That emerge, half formed, from an interminable period of time where one sits. Sits with discomfort, and simply observes it. Sits with sometimes a rising panic, a screeching JesusFuckingChristJesusFuckingChristJesusFuckingChrist inside one's mind. And why? Because the noodles aren't heating fast enough. Observes the screeching mind and says: it's only noodles, heating in a microwave, and the children are only mildly hungry. it isn't the end of the world. I keep choosing things that demand that I separate my better self from the screeching voice and say aloud, in a calm voice: the noodles are almost ready, my little pumpkins! patience, babies, patience! your food will be here in a moment.

They eat at regular intervals, and their naps are synced up, but the rest of the day -the learning- just won't adapt. Babies demand that the universe adapt to them, which is one reason why I like them so much, if you want to know the truth.

My son just interrupted me. He told me: Mommy, I want my engines to drive on the back of the brown couch! Not on their rails, just on the couch! I could tell he found this most amusing, although I wasn't exactly sure why. Do you want to come and see them? he asked me.

I asked: Can I come and see when I'm finished writing? and I saw his face fall, just a fraction of a millimeter, it's true, but I spotted it. Or can I come and see it real quick right now, and then finish my writing?

Yes! he replied with a giant grin, and he raced into the living room and leapt onto the couch. His engines were lined up and squished between the back of the couch and the seat cushion, and while I'm still not entirely sure why this is even funny, he burst into giggles every time he looked at them. So I did too.

It only took a moment, and that moment meant more to him than another half hour uninterrupted at the keyboard would have meant to me. And yet I yearn for a piece of paper that says: 1:30-2: Writing.

It's the silliest thing, when I can escape the screeching brain and just look at it slantways, out of the corner of my mind's eye, and see it for what it is. It's a way to feel some semblance of control. I keep walking off the edge of whatever cliff I've arranged my life upon, and then lamenting the lack of control in the free fall. It's the silliest thing.

So I'll sit with it, and see what happens. Something always does, eventually.