Se Hace Camino Al Andar

Long before I was pregnant with Alice, I wanted to leave the school where I taught for seven years. It was poorly-run, the population was growing by leaps and bounds (from 1200 students my first year there to 1700 students when I left), I was feeling stifled, unappreciated and tired of being condescended to by the AP of English department, who had very little teaching experience.  In sort, I was burned out, or close to it. English is not a high-turnover area, so good teaching jobs are hard to come by. I sent out resumes, I called upon various contacts, but teaching full-time and looking for a job are not compatible activities. I was pretty sure, though, that I just wanted a change of scenery, and didn’t want to leave teaching altogether. I loved teaching and working with kids but I hated the environment in which I taught.

I stuck it out, trying to rise above my misery. When Henry and I talked about marriage and having children, he knew that I wanted to stay home with the kids–it was part of the deal. We weren’t expecting to get pregnant so soon after the wedding but we found ourselves with a honeymoon baby that would be born after the school year ended. New York City doesn’t really have such a thing as maternity leave– you get six weeks (eight, if you have a c-section) of some kind of pay cobbled together from various sources, and you can take an unpaid leave of absence for a year, if you want your old job back.  I was miserable, stressed out and though I didn’t have morning sickness, I still had the first trimester yuckiness. I couldn’t imagine getting through the whole year under such stress and still managing to have a healthy pregnancy. With Henry’s blessing, I left teaching after my first trimester, which happened to coincide with the end of the Fall term. It seemed as good a time as any to jump ship. Rather than go through the headache of filing paperwork to get a few measly hundred dollars a week or take a leave of absence, I decided to resign. We were planning to move out of the city anyway and I would be staying home once the baby was born anyway.

Fast forward 20 months later. I’ve been out of the classroom since 2008 and the longer I go, the more I begin to miss it. I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have my husband’s support, emotionally and financially, to have the opportunity to stay home and raise our daughter. But I’m also coming to understand that I need more social interaction, more intellectual challenges, and a reason to leave the house everyday. And if I’m being honest, I also missed having the second income and the privileges that come with that.  Raising a child is a challenge in and of itself but it calls upon different personal resources than a job outside the home does. When I found I was pregnant again a second time, I was thinking about going back to work. Alice was 13 months old, she was fully weaned and I felt like it was a good opportunity get back into the workforce until we were ready for baby #2. Man plans, God laughs, right?

The new plan is to go back to teaching in the Fall of 2011, since I am committed to being home with my children for at least the first year of their life, for a variety of reasons. In the Fall of 2011, Alice will be old enough for preschool and baby #2 will be sixteen months old, so I feel comfortable with a daycare situation at the point. In the meantime, I’m pursuing opportunities that will whet my teaching appetite (I have one coming up, but more on that later!).

Mmh… when I started this blog post, I had a point and now I seem to have lost it. That’s probably my cue to go to bed.

Update:

Huh. What do you know?  I visited SouleMama’s blog tonight and there was this quote from Peggy O’Mara, author of The Way Back Home.

“…understand that to nurture and love others with the grace you desire means taking care of yourself and cultivating your own inner harmony. Inner harmony grows not by finding ways to get away from your child, but by giving yourself the gift of a hot bath at the end of a long day, reading a book of poetry, talking to a friend on the phone, taking a nap, crying, getting a massage, having a day off from cleaning and cooking, staying in your pajamas all day, swimming, going out to eat, or attending a conference. Do something for yourself as you give. Learn to laugh at yourself and not take yourself so seriously.”

Well, that about sums it up nice and neatly…

Update to the Update:

This is what I get for writing a blog post when I should be sleeping. Upon review, I can see that there seems to be no connection between the above quote and what I wrote in the original post, but in my brain, there is. I just forgot to share it… A large part of my desire to go back to work has to do with doing something that’s for me. Yes, it’s wierd– why would WORK be the thing that keeps me sane? Other people do yoga, or go to the gym or take a class or whatever. Me, I want to go work. If I had some corporate hack job, I probably wouldn’t feel that way but because teaching is not just something that I do but something that I AM, it gives me immense satisfaction and a feeling of fulfillment.

So, I guess that was my point?