Sometimes You Forget You're Awesome

In her memoir, Becoming, Michelle Obama describes working part-time while raising her two young daughters as a “sanity-warping double bind.” This post goes out to anyone who understands how perfect her metaphor is. Sometimes you forget you’re awesome. This is your reminder.

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In the Beforetimes, before naptimes and kid-friendly hikes and pad thai with zero stars, my job was my baby and I was an A+ parent. It was no walk in the park, but I loved being a high-school English teacher. Not only did I enjoy the content (Books!), but for a long time I thought I was not going to have kids, and teaching allowed me to direct my maternal energy somewhere. It was the perfect job for me; no one got more satisfaction from teaching students how to organize an essay or use a semi-colon properly. I felt that by teaching them to track symbolism in Lord of the Flies, I was not only preparing my students to be solid writers and thinkers, but paving the way for them to navigate democracy and flourish as citizens. I wielded my red pen and assigned nightly reading not only as a job, but as a civic duty. In the nine years I taught full-time, I was English Department chair, Cross Country Coach, Literary Magazine Founder, Feminist Club advisor. I arrived early and left late. Pole position parking every single day.

Consequently, during my pregnancy, my therapist Ted suggested I take it down a notch. (Therapy, like bagels, is a native New Yorker’s birthright.) He told me I needed to get used to doing “B Work.” Unable to fathom the idea of doing work less well, my solution was to request a part-time schedule for the following year, after my maternity leave ended. The school district said yes, and the stage was set for me to continue doing “A Work” in the Aftertimes. If Ted had reservations, which I’m now quite certain he had, he did not voice them.

A total lack of understanding vis-a-vis the reality of parenting is a pervasive motif throughout this blog, and this humble post is no exception. As my due date / hiatus from work approached, I began to look forward to what everyone, including me, was calling my “time off.” (Go ahead and laugh, fellow parents. But none of you guys knew any better before the shit hit the fan, either.) I saw my leave as a grand vacation sprawled out before me like a silver platter of sweet maternal opportunity, devoid of the stress induced by the work-related trials that currently plagued me: Half a year without having to grade a paper, prep a lesson, or fix a paper jam! No more 5 a.m. alarm clocks or middle-of-the-night worry sessions about student progress! And goodbye, commute! Very little did I know, such on-the-job challenges would soon pale in comparison to the realities of parenting a newborn. Oh, to sleep through the night! What I would have traded for the need of an alarm, no matter the hour! How I missed my red pen and the sanity required to put it to use! There were many instances when, while reading The Little Blue Truck over and over and over, I gladly would have graded a mid-level essay, college app, or personal narrative, no matter the lack of coherence or insight. Literally anything requiring even a hint of intellectual stamina would have been welcome. And shout out to the copy machine, old friend, with whom I would gladly have spent some quality time after a few weeks one-on-one with a newborn.

As September and the end of my maternity leave approached, I looked forward to work with rabid anticipation. I had developed a primal need to interact with fellow adults (and honestly would have settled for anyone in the double digits). I spent August preparing. I stockpiled breastmilk and re-read 1984 to revive whatever sanity and sense of civic purpose I had left. I stopped eating second breakfast, as 9 a.m. spaghetti & meatballs would soon be a thing of the past. By the first day of work, I had secured a nanny, night-weaned, and sleep-trained the baby. I was ready.

This post is long, so I figured it’s time for a photo. My A.P. Literature students made this onesie for Levi.

But it turned out I was only slightly less unprepared for going back to work than I had been for becoming a mom. The list of ways in which work was different post-baby is endless. First and foremost, as any working parent can attest, the crippling fatigue was almost unimaginable. I am forever indebted to Starbucks and my own hormones, without which I never would have made it through that first year back at work. Co-workers’ claims of feeling “tired,” “busy,” or “stressed,” complaints I had previously considered justified for any teacher, were singularly outrageous to me now. Lesson planning, which had heretofore been the heart and highlight of my job, was reduced to a 5-minute interlude, puzzle-pieced between arrival at my desk, breakfast, and pumping. You guys, I had no idea how much time I would spend pumping breastmilk in the staff bathroom that first year.

Despite the realities outlined above, I would not call what I was doing “B Work.” My objective each day was that my students remain unaware of and unaffected by the 20 hours of insanity (otherwise known as my non-work life) that commenced at the end of my contract day, and came to an abrupt halt when the first period bell rang the next morning. Despite the normal workin’ mom hiccups (splitting a hole in the seat of my pants during 3rd period, a student finding a tube of nipple cream on my classroom floor, etc. etc.), I still loved being a teacher. I never forgot that as much as my son depended on me, I was an important person in my students’ lives as well. Because they could communicate without crying, and did not need my help with rudimentary life skills, my students were a refreshing delight to me. And while I might have felt like a basic parent for twenty hours of most days, I could still be a distinguished teacher for the other four.

Of course, I could never reach the level of dedication I had been capable of in the Beforetimes. I had given up my role as department chair before going on maternity leave, and found other teachers to advise my clubs. I no longer signed up for committee work, and I stopped volunteering with the cross-country team. I would not attend non-paid professional development. Happy hours with my co-workers were a thing of the past. I brought my A Game to the classroom, and I left it there. I figured I’d gone above and beyond for nine years, and now I could follow Ted’s advice and take it down a notch during this first, pivotal year.

That lower-notch year rolled into the next, and then the next. My baby became a toddler and then a pre-schooler and then a kindergartener, but upping the ante at work was no more conceivable than it had been the year before. I was working as I assume the rest of the sane world works – diligently, for pay, within the confines of my contract day – and not as I had in my former role as the martyr / hero also known as the “public school teacher.” I was trying to be the parent I wanted all of my students to have, while maintaining a modicum of my former professional identity.

I told myself I’d pick up my game when Levi started pre-school. And then pre-K seemed like a better idea. Then Kindergarten, and first grade. Each year, I requested a new leave, and each year it was granted.

But by the time elementary school was in full swing, I was actually beginning to feel the disconnect from the part of the job that required self-sacrifice. I appreciated having the bandwidth for participating in the PTA and chaperoning field trips and coordinating play dates. But I could not deny that I missed the collegiality forged during happy hours and after-work meetings. The sense of purpose that blossomed during professional development and district meetings. Connecting with students during extra-curricular activities. Somehow, despite having kept myself at a healthy distance from the life-sucking side of the profession for seven years, I was – miraculously – feeling the call. Years of observing the general deflatedness on my colleagues’ faces at the end of their full work days, had – against all odds – not quashed my desire to re-join the ranks. I wanted to feel like a “real” teacher again.

Since going back to work full time was not practical yet, I did what any “real” teacher would do: I committed to several time-consuming, unpaid opportunities that were sure to make me feel the full weight of my job title again. I led a staff book club. Attended union meetings. Joined a curriculum committee. I arrived early on Fridays so I could eat lunch with the English Department.

In the Beforetimes, these sacrifices would have been standard, par for the course. But any non-parent colleague reading this (And why would they be? They’re all at happy hour or doing yoga or eating pad thai with 4 stars.) would not believe the scheduling nightmare it requires for the parent of a school-aged child to attend after-work meetings, let alone volunteer with the cross-country team once a week. Yes, my child is a healthy 2nd grader now, and he does not need his mother in the same way he used to. He can walk and eat and use the bathroom by himself. But he still can’t sit on the curb for an hour after school waiting for my staff meeting to end.

It turned out that sacrificing extra at work was exhausting and impossible. I missed book club meetings that I myself had scheduled. I caved on curriculum work, agreeing to decisions I would have fought tooth and nail against in the old days. I was a no-show at happy hour. In my attempt to regain authenticity, I had become unpredictable in every way. I began to doubt myself: Was it possible for me to be professional anymore? Could I maintain respect and authority as an educator when I was not even physically present half the time?

Being an English teacher, I see symbolism everywhere. Events occurred that seemed like signs from the universe: if I couldn’t pull off the martyr/hero archetype, maybe it was time to move on from teaching. I was not in the department email chain; a long-time colleague forgot my name; my picture was missing from the staff section of the yearbook. And then, two weeks before the last day of school, I was evicted from my classroom, which was now assigned to a full-time teacher.

This last sign reeked of finality. I spent two work weeks grudgingly packing up 16 years of belongings, and trying not to cry in front of my coworkers. Clearly, while I had been organizing PTA potlucks and trying to get the Blippi theme song out of my head, things at work had moved on without me.

I would be sharing a classroom, and storing my things in the back office of Room 212, which, ironically, had been the room assigned to me when I’d started teaching all those years ago. Despite changing hands many times over the years, the classroom was largely the same. Walking through the door had triggered eagerness and anticipation sixteen years ago, but now only made me feel like I was going backwards.

After moving everything out, I went back to the old room at the end of the day to do a final sweep. As usual, I was in a rush, had to make it back in time for pick-up, didn’t have time for nostalgia. But this classroom was where I’d been the best version of my professional self, a reliable colleague, an A+ teacher. If I’d gone back to work full-time after a year like I’d originally planned, maybe I’d be all of those things again. Maybe if I’d joined more committees. Not left meetings early. Said yes to more things. I’d be a “real” teacher. Maybe I could have done it all.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the universe will offer you a sign that requires no analysis. When I snapped out of my what-if’ing, I found a parting gift that one of my students had left on my otherwise vacant desk. A dime-store mug with a golden inscription: “Sometimes you forget you’re awesome. This is your reminder.”

I had exactly 6 minutes to cry, and then I really had to leave for pick-up. I clung to the mug like a talisman, feeling all the feels. Gratitude: to my student and the universe for delivering exactly what I needed at precisely the right time. Pride: I had managed to keep my own chaos on the down low enough for a student to actually think I was “awesome.” And some kind of resolution: The part-time “double bind” had not proven entirely “sanity-warping.” I had the mug to prove it.

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Most days I still worry that I’m doing “B Work.” But then I remember that working part-time while raising her kids tested the limits of Michelle Obama. I figure I’m in good company. And I know there are people out there reading this on their lunch break or waiting for their kids at pick-up, who need to hear this one more time: Sometimes you forget you’re awesome. This is your reminder.