A Very Different Kind of Job

In another life, tonight would have been a school night. I would have been in bed by now, trying to fit in a good night's sleep before my alarm clock woke me up at an ugly 5:13am.  I would have rolled out of bed, put on professional clothes and high heels (flats while pregnant), and driven to school in the dark.  By 8:00am, my classroom would have been full of 30 teenagers (well, 29...there was inevitably a one strolling in ten minutes late, hair disheveled in that just-rolled-out-of-bed look) and my day would have been a whirlwind until 3:00. I would have answered questions, given directions, graded papers, talked to parents, eaten lunch in the same amount of time most people take to go to the bathroom, and heard the phrase "Um, Mrs. H--, can you help me?" at least 30 times.  I would have been a discipliarian, a cheerleader, a counselor, a colleague, a parent (yes, a parent - sometimes more of one than that particular child has ever had, sadly), an inquisitive mind... a teacher.  And at 3:00 when the room was quiet, I would have graded more papers, made copies and a few more phone calls, and finally attempted to make it home before 5:00. 

That's not really another life, I suppose - it was my life, one year ago. 

A lot of people have asked me how staying home with a baby is compared to being a teacher.  It's different, and in a way that's almost incomparable. But I'll try:  I rarely use my alarm clock now - but I have another one that is a lot more unpredictable and still sometimes goes off in the middle of the night. My new alarm clock doesn't have a snooze button.  No one calls me Mrs. H-- anymore, except in trips to Target or Meijer when I often see a student, but someday soon someone will be calling me Mama.  I don't ever talk about metaphors, similes, or indirect characterization. I don't ask anyone to make an inference or tell me what they think about the author's purpose.  (Okay, well, actually, I'd be lying if I said I haven't ever asked Nora a few reading comprehension questions while we're reading, or pointed out the alliteration in the sentence "Big N, little n, what begins with N? Nine new neckties, nightshirt, nose" in Dr. Seuss's ABC Book.)  But I do try to teach a little someone how to wave bye-bye or say "mamamamama." 

There are days when I am bored and miss teaching.  I get a little pang of nostalgia when I'm telling the story about the time I had a kid enthusiastically shout "foreplay!....wait, I mean, foreshadowing" while answering a question about Romeo and Juliet, or when one of my teacher friends emails me to ask about what I did while teaching The Lady and the Tiger, my favorite short story.  But then I remember that Nora crawled for the first time in the morning, and both Ryan and I were there to see it (he didn't have to go into work until later that day). Had I been back to school, I wouldn't have been there.  And I know that while I'm missing the good things about teaching, I'm also really glad to not be saddled with stacks of essays to grade and lesson plans to write, and that parent who thinks that surely I am the reason her son is failing English.

I know that I could do both, could be both teacher and mom, and I don't think for a minute that those who do are better and/or worse.  I've written before that I don't believe there's one right way to raise a baby, and I truly believe that good parents will be good parents whether they're working ones or not.  I'm glad, though, and grateful, that this is the course we have chosen for our little family.

And so it is different. So, so different. But it is good.

******

In other news: we definitely have a crawler on our hands.  About a week ago, our jaws dropped as we watched her pick up her right hand and inch her left leg in unison...then her left hand and right leg...and then again.  She was crawling.  When the world started spinning again, we grabbed the camera to catch it on video. It seems like she hasn't stopped since.  Yesterday, she took a journey from the office across the entryway and into the dining room. She stopped along the way to lay down on the rug, and then continued on. Once she realized that there wasn't much over there to see, she returned to talk to me in the office.  Poor Zadie is in for it.

 

We're enjoying the finally nice, not-so-lava-hot days.

If she could talk, she would tell you: "Mom put me in the laundry basket
because I kept crawling over to the dog's water bowl and trying to take a drink.
Now I'm trying to get out of here so I can do it again."