Half Full or Half Empty: At Least I Still Own the Glass!

I've been thinking a lot these past few weeks about the benefits of my new unemployed status.  Let me correct that:  I'm now underemployed.  I believe that is the official term for someone like me who currently works fewer hours than I desire.  All the platitudes have been running through my head.  When life hands you lemons, make lemonade!  Whenever God closes a door, He opens a window!  Those phrases are so life affirming, albeit hackneyed, when applied to others.  Being laid off is a grand adventure!  New opportunities are just waiting to burst forth!  Have you seen the handbills?  Jobs and money all over California!  Let's head west! [I apologize for the overuse of Steinbeck references.  I'm a native Californian high school English teacher for crying out loud!  What do you want?] The sunny optimism seemed reasonable when it was advice for my friends laid off last year.  That's because it came while I sat comfortably behind my desk, students in front of me, salary directly depositing once a month like it had for the past thirteen years.

Today, I must deliberately force myself to see the positive.  I have to actively push aside terror-filled thoughts of what will happen next year if my district still has no job for me.  I cannot focus on tomorrow; I must only see today.  Tomorrow is frightening and unknown.  Today, at least, I can control.  Well, let's be honest, as a mother of five thinking I have much control over anything is probably naive delusion, but you see my point. 


Here are some blessings I would not have in my pocket today, if I was still teaching full-time:

• This morning I had time to make fried eggs and toast with my two-year old.  While the baby slumbered, we dipped our toast in the sunshine yolks and talked.  I learned where each scrape on her knee originated, and she learned that when I was little I ate eggs just like she does.

• Last night I collapsed on the bed at 9:30 PM and didn't even bother to set an alarm for 5:00 AM.  No alarm needed!  I could still begin my day with relative sanity, even if I didn't rise until 6:36 AM when my eldest daughter said, "Mom, do you need to get up?"  That's right.  I had a human alarm clock this morning, and it wasn't followed by abject panic at the thought of thirty-five seniors waiting at a locked door while I yanked copies out of the jammed machine, cursing and sweating as the late bell rang.  I was frying eggs when the late bell rang, thank you very much.

• When my husband goes to the hospital on Friday to have a "routine procedure," I will be there.  I will not have typed any detailed sub plans trying to duplicate what I do for my replacement.  I don't need a replacement.  My current self can just be where she needs to be without enlisting a Mommy-doppelganger, or a wife-doppelganger to do the work I cannot do.  No matter what the doctor says afterward, I will be there to hear it.

• I have made brownies, oatmeal cookies with raisins, and three new recipes this month, and I have not driven my children to a drive-thru in quite some time.

• When this year's soccer practice schedule started coming into focus, I did not hyperventilate.  

Child #1:  "Mom, I have practice on Monday and Thursday from 2:30-4:00.  
Child #2:  "Mine is on Tuesday and Friday from 4:30-5:30."  

I don't know when Child #3 has practice yet, but I remain calm.  I can do it because I do not have any meetings or papers to grade or lessons to plan.  My children can have my undivided attention whenever they need me.  

• I will not overhear my two year old this year saying what her older sister said a few years ago.  Back then, my eldest was "playing school."  She was the teacher, and her little sister was the daughter.  In her best, exasperated imitation of me, she said, "I can't help you now!  I have to grade all of these papers!  Please go play in your room right now!"  Ouch.  I can still feel my stomach lurch and my chest tighten with guilt.  Working Mom guilt.

The lack of Working Mom guilt is a blessing beyond measure.  Its absence is ironic since I'm still working almost everyday.  However, you teachers who are teaching know:  our job is not like other jobs.  It is a flurry of executive decisions, putting out fires, manic talking and constant interaction with close to two hundred other human beings.  It's that for at least seven hours a day followed always...always...by prep and assessment work that needs our attention.  We are either attending to it, or we are distracted by the thought of it.  We are surrounded by stacks of ungraded papers, or they are resting ominously in our teacher bag near the door like some heavy, simmering beast with bad breath, just seething there, attempting to get our attention.  

No such beast currently resides in my home. 

• I mean, I braided hair and read Olivia and Dora books at bedtime more than once this week people!  My six year old has had, not one, but two pre-tests on her spelling words!  Pre-testing was not pre-empted by backwards mapping for sophomore English.  
• I know my eight year old didn't write D'Nealian "k"s on her homework and had to do it over at recess.  [It is a sign of my high school teacher status that I had to look up the spelling of said cursive style--elementary teaching is a whole wonderland of things I do not know!]  I also do not know the current boyfriend status of any of the junior class girls, let alone their penmanship struggles, and I'm fine with that.  
• My beginning flute player daughter is concerned that she can't also take choir because it coincides with her Thursday soccer practice.  Working Mom probably wouldn't know that until she had been reminded of it at least three times, but I only heard it once yesterday, and it's still in there!   No parent phone calls or department meetings have taken its place.  

• I will leave this campus today and calmly go pick up my children at school down the street with only my purse in my hands, and I will not return here late tonight after the baby falls asleep to make copies for Friday's sub, so I can leave for the hospital with my husband on time.  I will not lie awake worried about the boy who seems angry all the time, going over what I said to him today in case I added to his melancholy.  If I lie awake, it will be to worry about my husband, or my daughters, or my baby boy.  I may even worry about the nation's economy or the lack of world peace.  Why?  Because I can!  

This optimism won't last long.  It's quite possible that I have only $3.62 in my checking account right now.  I haven't received a paycheck since the end of July.  Eventually I will have to deal with the fact that my ten year old wants an iPad for Christmas but isn't at all worried about the expense because--and I quote-- "It's okay Mom, I'm just going to ask Santa for it."  Oh, good.  Glad I don't have to worry about that then!   By next summer I may cringe when the phone rings because I will know it is my mortgage company, and I do not have what they want. 

However, those are not worries for today.  The glass can be half empty tomorrow or the next day.  Today it is half full, half full of orange juice leftover from a breakfast with my daughter because I'm a...

Teacher Not Teaching


Recipe for Eggs in a Hole