Tuesday Slice: Big decision, new beginning

Life in quarantine was moving along.  End-of-school-year plans were being made, speculations about next year discussed lightly but without much purpose with so much unknown.  

On April 30th, my plans were turned upside down.  My neighborhood school librarian announced her retirement, a year or three earlier than I expected.  The school where I picked up and dropped off my children for eleven years, taught and interned for another three years while I worked on my library degree, was in need of a librarian for next year.

I was in shock for the next three days.  I weighed the pros and cons of applying with the library services director, trusted friends, colleagues in other Title I schools.  Other than the hectic pace of serving 1250 students at my upper-SES campus, I love my current job.  My administrators, staff, and assistant are amazingly supportive of my library program, as are the parents and students.  I am completely happy where I am.

And so I wrestled with this for two solid weeks, even as I applied for the position and went through a rigorous interview process.  Even as I was offered the job, and said yes.  Even as I announced, through my tears, my acceptance to my principal and our leadership team.

There are things I'm giving up by taking this job.  I'll miss daily visits (if we ever get those back) with my wonderful coworkers and students I've grown to know over the last seven years, these people who have taught me how to be a librarian.  I'll miss my wonderful assistant, who does her job so well that I can't claim to be her manager.  On a practical note, I'm giving up a spacious library that's only twelve years old, with windows on either side to view the mountain laurels and let in the sunshine, with an adult-sized bathroom tucked into the corner.  My neighborhood school was built in 1977; the library is small, completely enclosed by hallways in the center of the building, with no windows or natural light--and the bathroom is around the corner.

But...I will be gaining a fresh start, a chance to change my perspective, to focus anew on my "why" for being a librarian.  To pay back a little of what this school did for me and my children in their formative years.  To take what I've learned at an upper-SES school and figure out how to make it happen at a Title I campus.  To encourage another learning community to use and love the library as much as I do.  The three-minute commute and smaller campus--550 students--are pluses, too.

 

I've already received a very warm welcome from my "new" campus.  May I serve them well.  

Tuesday Slice: The eyes have had it

Dual laptop screens light up at oh-seven-thirty-a-m

Emails to read and respond

Presentations to record and tweak

Numbers to check, accounts to balance

Virtual meetings of ten, twenty, one hundred

The faces get tinier as the numbers grow

Straining to see who's talking

This one frozen, that one glitchy

I take breaks every hour, away from screens

A load of laundry here, a walk around the block there

A three minute solo dance party in the living room

A short trip to the bathroom to reapply lipstick

The timeouts help.....but by oh-four-thirty-p-m or so

The eyes have had it

And not even a book can hold their gaze long.

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As a school librarian, I (like most teachers, I imagine) am not used to staring at laptop screens all day.  My eyes are usually focused on students filling a learning space or up close asking for a book, focused on a teacher's face a foot away or the pages of a picture book at arm's length.  I even purchased blue screen reading glasses; they help a little, but can't seem to erase the exhaustion of "close reading" all day long.  Summer break will be a break for my eyes!

Tuesday Slice: Juxtaposition

Like planets aligning, celebrations will be juxtaposed this coming weekend.  My youngest, my second-born will turn twenty-two on Saturday.  Sunday we celebrate Mother's Day.

This has only happened three times before:  the weekend of his birth, 2009, 2015.  The next time it will happen will be in 2026.

I remember the coincidence in 1998 with a smile because of chocolate-covered strawberries.  I had been gestationally diabetic during pregnancy, and rule-follower that I am, had very little chocolate during my last trimester--we're talking three M&Ms each Wednesday, just to cure the craving.  My postpartum bloodwork announcing my normal bloodsugar coincided with the delivery of a dozen chocolate-covered strawberries from a local candy manufacturer, gifted to every woman in the hospital giving birth that weekend, in honor of Mother's Day.  I ate eight of them before leaving the hospital on Tuesday.

There are celebrations I didn't want to combine.  My firstborn's due date fell just four days before our December wedding anniversary, and I hoped they didn't match--how romantic is throwing a child's birthday party?  Fortunately, she complied....unfortunately, a bit too well, arriving on Labor Day instead. Yes, we all recognized the irony at the time.  She has had a Labor Day birthday three times since, and will have another next year.

But how can I deny the connection between my children's births and Mother's Day?  After all, I wouldn't be a mother if it weren't for the gifts of their arrivals.  Because of my son's timing, we get to co-celebrate every so often.  It happened the year after he was born and twice more since; it will happen again next year. I really don't mind.  His birthday, as well as his sister's,  always make me pause and remember what an amazing experience becoming a mother has been, and will continue to be.

Happy Mother's Day to all who celebrate this Sunday!