During my 8:30 class one morning, the instructor admonished a late student taking the seat in front of me that she really needed to arrive earlier. As she threw off her coat the woman replied, “Any time you want to get my kids off to school for me before I leave the house you come right on over.” The instructor has three grown sons of her own and understood what those mornings are like and then double it for single mothers so she nodded a silent acknowledgment. A good percentage of the students in my program are women in challenging life situations working toward a stable future for themselves and their children.
It’s an inherently demanding profession we’re chasing and for most of us it will take longer than the two years the school advertises. I figured that out early on and have written about it to death in the Skool Daze entries, most recently Keep Moooving, where I lamented my stagnation in Group D. The classmates I started with a year ago, all in Group C now for the past semester, have been holding a seat for me and calling out encouragement as we enter our respective doors that face each other across the hallway. This past week I passed a crucial test that enables me to spend part of the day in C so I went over there yesterday for the first time.
It’s a bigger room. Things go faster and the atmosphere is even more intense. I expected this. I also expect that by the time we reach Group A in the next building we will all be so corked we’ll be mainlining ex-lax. Having support through this kind of pressure is imperative. Nobody has to tell me that I’m lucky to have a stable home life with grown, independent children, some available savings, and a husband with both a caring nature and a good job. Our plan for the future is for me to be out in the field happily freelancing in my new career while Husband steps back from his demanding work for some long-awaited leisure and academic pursuits. You’ll hear about what actually happens but anyway that’s the plan.
During the course of the school day I hear all around me the sounds of people living lives infinitely less smooth. Overheard phone calls in the parking lot reveal frustrated women with unemployed, critical husbands; schools reporting a child’s truancy or behavior issues; employers making demands that create conflict and anxiety; babysitters who don’t show up; kids sick with the flu. Seated beside me every day are students distracted in class by the weight of their world on their shoulders.
When we hear rhetoric about ‘family values’, I think of Jackie Kennedy, a devoted mother with a laser focus on the importance of imbuing the family unit with love, support and a positive vision of the future. The words she said that ring in my ears are, “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.” If only the desire and drive to do so were enough to do the job right.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos reveal it’s just another Ordinary Day
tea bag in a phone booth
broken hydrant
painted on metal, dries in seconds
