Working. Legion. ADA. Mas y mas.

It's time. I'm finally a full-time working mom. Although I gave birth over a year and a half ago now, this gig--meaning motherhood, and the balancing of it with life's other essentialimportantmeaningful tasks, still seems totally wild and new to me,

I challenged my colleague and brilliant blogger buddy to write about two things we will be doing differently this semester. The whole act of teaching after being gone for over a year, after rising at 6:00 in each morning to get myself into a decent state before I can get my daughter into a decent state and dropping her off, often crying, at daycare, and hurriedly eating and drinking coffee while finalizing my class plan before arriving at the classroom feeling like a wobbly foal, newly born and uncertain, well, this whole act is fresh.

But it would be a cop-out to leave it at that. There are concrete things I'm doing differently this semester. I chucked out a LOT of material and am scrambling to put together new assignments, fresher and more relevant readings, and new classroom activities. During my sabbatical, I learned a lot about disability and access and I'm doing a unit on disability in my college-level composition class. So far, students are receptive to texts like Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor's conversation on walking, available in video form and in an easily printable transcript. We use Edward Said's theories from Orientalism (an oldie but always a goodie) and the students are surprised to see themselves "othering" persons with disabilities in speech and writing, even as they disavow doing so against other groups. It's all a learning process.

Another commitment I have made is to use only captioned videos. This greatly limits the spontaneity with which I can incorporate current videos into our discussion, as most content is not captioned. But, it was a timely commitment on my part, as I have a hard of hearing student in one of my classes, and I would have had to eliminate caption-less videos anyway in order to comply with ADA law.

So, come on, publishers. Get with the program and caption your damn videos. As with many ADA/UDL recommendations, when access is built in from the beginning, it isn't a huge task to undertake. But going back and captioning them later, or having college instructors like me get permission to do the captions myself is a huge burden.

All this stuff is important. So important. I'm so fortunate to have a job that I believe is meaningful and that pays well enough to support a small family. But holy mother of god; I never appreciated what working parents went through before. I didn't realize it at the time, but beforehand, the game was so much simpler.

This isn't to say that life was easy before A; challenges have a way of growing or contracting depending on the energy and time we have to allot to them. I had more time to work and my lessons were more polished and that is a huge plus. I had time for reflection. Now, however, every minute has to be accounted for, and there is an acute awareness of all the tasks I am ignoring as I engage with the present one. I budget "A time" in the early mornings to remind myself that for at least that hour, she is priority. I allot "us time" at the end of the day so I can connect with my husband, assuming he isn't asleep by then. And yes, Legion is coming on WoW today, and I will have to allow myself at least an hour tonight to log on and see what the expansion holds for us nerds.

Today, Baby: Work

Today, baby, I want to share with you a little about the household you're going to be born into. Your mom and dad, well... we work a lot. Some may say this is not an ideal situation, but stick with me and I'll try to explain why it might actually work out OK.

I figured this was a good time to write about this because it is one of the hardest times of the year for me. I'm a writing teacher at a community college, and November and April are really tough months for us. I have a tsunami of papers to grade, and there always seems to be a hurricane of social events to attend. Because we have wonderful friends, and because I think the job I do is important, I put the time in. 

Last weekend, for example, I had two sets of papers to grade and some prep to do. Your father, who had work of his own to do, went grocery shopping so I didn't have to leave the house except to go out to dinner once.
(This doesn't mean I don't take breaks. I stopped once or twice a day to watch an episode of the Olive Kitteridge miniseries and sighed with relief at the reminder that some folks have harder lives than I do. Baby, I have a feeling I'm going to be taking lots of breaks for you :-)

Then, I actually go to work. Although my at-work days are comparatively shorter than some--I might be on campus 8-4 one day, 9:30-3:30 the next--you'll find me at my computer at home other times emailing and grading online papers. Because I also think it's important to give back to the campus, I do things like attend workshops or bother faculty about accepting blogging challenges, and I go to campus events to support our awesome students and friends and wake up the next morning craving for a few hours of extra sleep, especially since you've been on board.

But baby, I love this job so much. And I think your dad is intensely fulfilled by the studying and work that he does, too. I hope we bring home positive, loving vibes knowing we are trying to work in a way that positively enriches the world, that we aren't dumping oil in the oceans, stopping the president from passing mild immigration reform, or filling the Environmental Protection Committee with creationists who don't think that anyone except God can make a difference in the climate. 

I suppose there's a chance I could turn into one of those ghost employees that only shows up to work two hours a day, but I don't think so.

Maybe the kind of work we do (your dad is en route to being a nurse, by the way) will matter to you one day. Or maybe not. Maybe when you're older you'll resent us for working, for not being at home all day to keep the house super clean and organized and to sit with you on the couch after school while you watch a cartoon and eat fish crackers, if those are even allowed anymore.

I know we will do some of that stuff with you. I know that even when I'm about to fall over from exhaustion, I'll go to the kitchen and make macaroni and cheese with steamed broccoli. I'll sit on the floor and play with whatever your favorite toy happens to be. Your dad and I will tuck you in bed and sing songs--hymns from childhood, Tori Amos lullabies, Death Cab for Cutie, and more. I hope it's enough.

But just in case it's not enough, because inevitably we'll fuck up in some way we never imagined, we'll start a therapy fund, OK? It's probably a good idea for everyone to have therapy at some point in their lives, so we might as well get ahead of the curve.

P.S.
Baby, today you are 26 weeks old in there and, according to BabyCenter, you're the size of a scallion. Sigh.

Working Ma Blogs

I've been feeling so guilty about this pregnancy thing because I just haven't been journaling much. This may be the only time I ever experience the magical feeling of a parasite tapping politely at my insides, and all I'm doing at night is lying down next to Esteban each night and waiting until he stops playing with his phone so we can cuddle and sleep. But I've been doing so good with blogging over at Eat the Yolk that maybe the trend will continue here!

I still have four months left on this pregnancy journey, and there are little miracles that happen on a regular basis that I don't want to forget. Like, today, I lay in the bathtub, and for the first time I could see my stomach ripple as the baby fussed inside. Also, for the first time, I couldn't see my lady parts from a reclining position, so that is.... something.

One thing that has surprised me has been how seamless it is to work and be pregnant. It's kinda fun, in fact. My now-visible tummy inspires other women to tell me about their pregnancy and birth stories. For most women it makes them happy to think about these things, and that brings unique joy to days that are otherwise laden with accreditation concerns, grading student work, and worrying about that guy I dropped and whether he'll show up all mad to class with a banana cream pie to slam in my face.

The men react a little differently. The ones with older children beam with the recognition of bouncing babies ahead, who talk about how tough their wives were in the delivery room. They almost seem happier than the women, in a "I remember the first time feeding my daughter! I also remember the first time I did an olly on a skateboard. It was rad. See you later!" kind of a way. It's kinda cute. Male students have even been prompted to ask questions that are probably way more personal than they'd ask otherwise: "How far along? Five months? Whoa. Are you OK? My sisters were so much bigger than you at that stage!"

(Cue pregnancy anxiety, cue "am I gaining enough weight??" concerns)

(Body as a common space.)

Another interesting thing about work/pregnancy is a very faint sense of protectiveness and care. In the college environment, people are generally very sensitive and liberal-minded. This is awesome. But there has been just a hint of "She's pregnant so I should react this way." One way this manifests is with food gifts. Someone has made me a pie; I've been brought chocolate cake; a student schlepped his grandmother's homemade pan de muerto from Tijuana. This trend, I will say, is pretty amazing and welcome. This, and maternity jeans I hope continue after the little seal pup is born.