Stress is not being able to pay attention to what someone is telling me because I’m still thinking about what I’m supposed to be doing next and then and after that.

Stress is knowing that even if I spend hours grading papers or writing plans, there will be a new pile, another set, the very next day.

The stress comes with me to work, to pick up my boys, and back home with me. It’s hard to remember when I wasn’t worried about what I wasn’t getting done, or when I didn’t answer, “It’s busy,” when someone asked me how things are going.

School will be done in five weeks. My stress backpack will be lighter then, but it certainly won’t be empty. There will be the all-day job of parenting two little ones, and then the teaching tasks to do after the boys go to bed – making plans for next year, finalizing my graduate school portfolio. There will always be dishes and laundry and bills, the adult versions of homework.

Today it was too much.  I threw in the towel, sitting down with the backpack and eating Ben & Jerry’s. Which means it’ll be twice as heavy in the morning.

So… carrying that around should help me work off the calories from my evening of indulgence, right?

Let’s go with that theory and see what happens tomorrow.

Writing is different.  Instead of filling me up, it is a letting go.  I sleep better after I’ve written.  Unless, of course, I am mentally revising every word.  But usually it’s better after I’ve taken a bunch of swirling, complex, confusing feelings and put them into some kind of structure.

I like structure.  And organization.  Sometimes I think I should quit teaching so I could spend all day while the boys are at school just organizing and reorganizing my house.  Not only does it seriously need it, but I’m pretty sure I’d be a much happier mama every day when I picked them up.

Anyway, imposing order on disordered thoughts gives me back the illusion of control, which is another thing that is important when living with small, messy people and their thousands of Legos. (I know, the plural of Lego is Lego, but my brain hates grammar exceptions, so it’s Legos at this house.)

Today my brain is thinking about finishing the school year and teacher walkouts and what’s next for our family, and I’d like to spend the time writing it all out so I could finally sleep again.  Sadly, after so long away from this corner of my brain, there is too much to say and too little time, and there are papers to be graded after all.

Still, even writing this much was a welcome release.

Finally in exasperation, I asked, “Why aren’t you cooperating more, Sebastian?”

He looked right at me and said, “I was cooperating with my teachers ALL DAY, Mama.  I’m tired of it.”

Well.

At least he’s honest.

And I guess if I had to choose, I’m glad he decided to be his best self in school and blow off steam at home.

Still, I’m glad it’s the weekend, and my new little kindergartener is cooperating with me again.

“What’s on the menu?” Sebastian chimed in.

“Stir fry, but I don’t feel like making it.  What do YOU want for dinner?”

“Shooka!” Theo replied without missing a beat.  (It rhymes with book-uh, in case you’re wondering.)

“Hmm… I don’t know how to make that.  Do you know how?”

“Yep.  First you put in the sugar.  Then you pour in the salt.  You heat it up and then you EAT it!  SHOOKA!!”

As the two of them proceeded to dance around the room chanting, “Shooka!  Shooka!  Shooka!” I made a mental note to involve them more in the cooking  process again.

After all, he clearly forgot the third thing that I often announce makes a recipe delicious:  butter.

Balance on one foot, and use the other to push down on whichever pedal is higher.  Ready?  Ok, try it.  

Five minutes later, Sebastian, on the eve of his fifth birthday, was riding his two-wheeler.  Twenty minutes later he was zipping around our street like he’d been doing it for weeks.

He’d spent the past year mastering his balance bike, but moving up to the regular bike without training wheels was something he’d resisted.

He would get excited to try every so often, give it a go while I held the handlebars and helped him, but he would get frustrated and go back to the trusty balance bike.

That day, I finally realized the problem:  he was having trouble Getting Started.  All he needed was some clear instruction on how to do that, and off he went.

Part Two

Theo worked quietly, putting his puzzle pieces together somewhat randomly, growing more agitated as the pieces wouldn’t fit.  He’d done this race car puzzle before, so I wasn’t sure what was going on.

The wheels go on the bottom, I told him, without touching the pieces.

Suddenly he put two wheel pieces together, then two more, and within a few minutes he was done with the puzzle.  He went on to do three more.

He just needed a nudge to Get Started.

Part Three

I spent this past week working in my new classroom.  It’s the first one I’ve had since Sebastian was born five years ago.  The years I worked part-time since then have been joining onto someone else’s classroom and curriculum.  Now I’m flying solo again.

I spent the summer flitting from one teaching manual to another, not quite sure where was the best place to begin, knowing I didn’t have all the information I needed.  But now I was finally back here, and there was So Much to sort out.

The first day I just sat on a table at the front of the classroom and looked around.  I’d set up many a new classroom, but that day I wasn’t sure where to begin this formidable task of setting up not only a learning space, but also a new curriculum in every subject, a new position, an enormous new challenge.

I decided to just set up the furniture.  No curriculum, no lesson plans, no posters on the wall.

Just Get Started, I told myself.

Part Four

I’m still learning this lesson, even as I see it play out with my children and myself time and time again.

I still want gigantic chunks of time in which to accomplish big goals, but there are no more huge chunks of time, and the big goals must all be broken into very, very small ones now.  We’re talking 15 or 20 minutes here.

I don’t like that.  I procrastinate.  I wait until I have “more time.”

I won’t begin writing again until I have time to do it right, I tell myself.

But there is no time like now.  So I’m here.  And in my classroom.

Getting Started.

Again.

(Feel free to give me a nudge if you see me stalling.)

It’ll be a brief one, because I’m tired of being sick and need to place a higher priority on being healthy.  But I wanted to pop back in, look around, remind myself of where I’ve been and how far I’ve come.

I needed to get my boys out of the house this afternoon, so I took them to our local children’s hands-on museum.  I hadn’t been there since last spring, but I used to go more often, especially when I was home alone with just Sebastian.  That was only three years ago, but it feels like more than a lifetime.  Probably because it is – Theo’s.

I sat happily while the boys played with an enormous train table and ended up striking up a conversation with a woman who had an almost-two-year old boy.  We talked about all the usual topics – speech or motor development, toilet training, playdates, and the transition to staying home with the baby after working for so many years.

I admit that I got tired of those conversations after the second year of full-time maternity leave.  But today I found them refreshing, especially now that I’m on the other side of some of them.  Sebastian is still a little boy, but he’s no longer a baby or toddler.  I told that mom that things get easier, and it’s amazing how fast these little danger magnets grow up.  She looked at me wide-eyed and then relieved when I told her that now I can just tell Sebastian to go upstairs and get changed, or to get ready to go, and he does.  All by himself.

It really is incredible how much tunnel-vision we get when we’re in the trenches of raising small people.  The second time around is much easier, because we’ve learned that it all does pass, and what seems like forever now will look like a blip in a year or two.  We will even miss some of it, I’m told, though I think you’re probably with me when I say that I will never, ever miss toilet training.  Ever.

Meanwhile, it was a lovely afternoon traveling down memory lane a bit and marveling at my boys who looked so big surrounded by littler people.  And then to scoop them up at bedtime and kiss their almost-chubby cheeks, grateful that they’re still small enough to enjoy that as much as I do.

Back in April, the year was setting on my job as the gifted teacher.  I’d gone around and around in my head and with various others trying to determine what I’d be doing now.  After much up and down, I signed the paperwork to do the job share as a fifth grade language arts teacher at a school a half hour away.

Almost immediately after I’d done it, the very job I’d wanted became available.  Gifted ed. position but two and a half days rather than one, at a school five minutes from my house.  I felt crushed, but there was no way I could walk away from the commitment I’d made.

Then another position came through, at another school close to my house.  And another.  Then another at my former school, where I already knew almost everyone’s name, in proper Cheers style.

I consoled myself by thinking that this proved I could get that position again in future years.  I also told everyone who asked that I was sure that someone at this school, in my new class, must really have needed me to be here this year.  The universe has its mysterious ways, and I could question them or go with it.  I decided to go with it.

As the summer ended and I began preparing to teach this new grade in this new partnership, I had no doubt that it was the right place for me right now.  Each piece fell into place, and I felt again that same thought: Someone here must really need me.

 The day before the kids and parents came to Meet the Teacher, I stood quietly, looking over the classroom.  Almost everything was ready, and I was excited to see who would come through our door.

(And when they did, they would see this bit of fabulousness my partner had up…)

Looking over the room, the air filled with anticipation, was when it hit me.  Not like a ton of bricks, but more like the knowledge washing over me.

Why had I thought I was here because a student needed me?

In that moment, I had an overwhelming sense that I am here because I need one of them.

I don’t know who it is yet, or maybe it’s all of them.  But I do know that it has turned my expectations of this year upside down, which I’m fairly certain is the right side up.

Maybe your answers look like some of mine:

Vulnerability is…

~admitting I’ve made a mistake.
~hitting publish on a post.
~inviting people to my house.
~taking my children in public.
~when my children are sick, hurt, or afraid.
~admitting that someone has hurt my feelings.
~asking for help.
~asking for advice.
~starting a new job.
~being a mother.

I was intrigued when I found out that the topic of the book Daring Greatly by Brené Brown was vulnerability, and when she says that learning to lean into it is the way to dare to be the selves we want to be.

This book is my kind of nonfiction, blending research, anecdotes, and humor into a self-help text whose goal is to address the common emotions and behaviors that hold us back, and how to move forward anyway.

I found that much of what she said resonated with me, which makes sense as she touches on emotions that are universal: vulnerability, shame, guilt, even joy.  I noticed that in her research she did what the authors of Blink recommend: find the bright spot.  She interviewed people who were what she calls wholehearted and examines how they manage it.

I found myself nodding along often at her assessment of the “armor” we use to shield ourselves from feelings of vulnerability – in my case perfectionism and/or refusal to try-  and agreeing with the mantras she or others created to build up resilience, cultivate gratitude, and “mind the gap” between who we are and who we want to be.

Her vulnerability prayer is one example:  Give me the courage to show up and let myself be seen.

She talks about what all of this looks like at home, at work, with our children.  There is so much in here that I loved and wish I could share it all with you, but really you should just read the book.  If you have ever thought, “I’d love to do ____, but I can’t,” then this book is really for you.  And me.

Because I do want to dare greatly, and I’m sure you do, too.

-Jessica

P.S.  I also loved: If you own this story, you get to write the ending.  That pretty much summed up in a sentence what I love about blogging.

I was paid by the BlogHer Book Club to review this book, but all of these opinions (and vulnerabilities) are my own.  If you want to join in the discussion or read other reviews of the book, click here.

However, I do feel the need to get into facebook arguments with my conservative friends – or, more accurately, their conservative friends – because I figure if no one voices an opposition, then they all get to live in an echo chamber where they all agree with each other.

And so, with the idea of spirited but civil discourse in mind, I’m going to spend today’s ten minutes on politics, and I more than welcome your thoughts on the matter.

My politics these days tends to be based on two deep, underlying beliefs.  The first is that facts are important and should drive policy decisions.  Facts can be slippery, tricky, taken out of context, put into an incorrect context, and misused.  However, in general, if one is paying enough attention, there are some relatively unbiased sources of factual information.  For example, the Congressional Budget Office.  I love the CBO.  They don’t care whether you are Republican or Democrat or Green or Couldn’t-Care-Less Party.  If you give them a proposal, they are going to whip out their calculators and start plugging and chugging and coming up with some numbers.  So when I hear that the CBO has evaluated someone’s budget plan, I pay attention.

I could go on and on about fact-checking and how to find reliable sources and my related deep-seated belief in science, but then I’d never tell you my second underlying belief, and it is the more important one by far.

My second deep belief is that we are honor-bound to take care of the children.  I evaluate every policy proposal I hear with this in mind.  We do, in fact, owe children food, shelter, health care, education, community, and love.  Yes, we do.  It is not their fault if they are poor, so there is no system on earth that I would support that would let children suffer in the name of “reducing government dependence.”  I support early education, free health care for all children, free and reduced school lunches, and decent salaries for the teachers, social workers, counselors, and coaches with whom we entrust our children on a daily basis.

It also turns out that one of the ways you take care of children is by taking care of their parents.  That looks like maternal care, low-income housing, and parent-education classes, just to name a few.  If people have children who rely on them, they need enough support to take care of themselves at a basic level so they can take care of their children at a level a little above that, or we will have only ourselves to blame when their children grow up ignorant, hard, uncaring, poor, or even criminal.  It costs more to jail a person for life than to educate her for one.

If we want peace in this world, we must start with the children.  So said Ghandi, and so say I.

If we want justice, progress, tolerance, innovation, or compassion, we have to start with the children.

————————–

To me it is obvious, but I wonder if it is to you: which candidate or which party would you say is more concerned about children and with using facts to create sound policy?

I wondered whether I should write more about teachers and their unions, which would indeed get me going long past my ten-minute time limit. Perhaps I should counter yesterday’s complaints about Task Lists with all the reasons why I AM excited to be back in the classroom, long weekends notwithstanding.

That brought me to the happy topic of how much more balanced life feels now most days. I love being the one that gets to kiss and hug the boys and walk out the door as a professional. I smile as I greet 23 students each morning. I have a bit of a skip in my step when I exit the building at 12:30 and pick up my boys at their own amazing schools. I read them a book and send them off to their rooms for Quiet Time, which is supposed to include a nap for the little dude. I change from teacher clothes into mom clothes and set out a snack for when they get up.

This afternoon the boys biked (or tricycled) up to the park. We laid on the grass and just looked up at the blue sky through the trees.

They gathered sticks and climbed trees and did all those unstructured pastimes children are supposed to do, which are all fun and games until someone almost gets a poke in the eye, at which point we tricycle home.

So I was pondering all of that, wondering if I managed to snap a decent picture with my phone at the park, thinking of how nice it would be to post something balanced for a change…

…when suddenly my reverie was interrupted by a spoonful of stir fry dumped in my lap.

Ah, back to reality: so much less glamorous than the rosy picture I just painted, but probably more entertaining.