Recreating a Life

It’s been kind of a hard semester so far, and now I’m scrambling to figure out how to make life go a little more smoothly. Summer was full of kids and travel and moments of sibling rivalry which left me wondering if we’d make it through to September, and I think I went into this fall needing a break already. (Next summer? The city-run daycamp at the local park is where H and J will be for a few hours each day. We all need some respite from each other sometimes.)

Anyway, coming into the academic year feeling frayed around the edges has meant I’m doing some refiguring. What can I drop? How can I make up for lost income if I drop something that pays? And so on. More than anything, how can I have the time and energy I need to supervise homework with three kids without losing patience and keep the house semi-together and food in the fridge when the amount of food eaten daily is kind of amazing now that H and V especially are clearly GROWING boys while still doing my paid work well? And then there are lunches and laundry and so on…

I think part of what’s got me down right now is 1) teaching freshmen for the first time in a year–hard to come back from teaching children’s lit and older, mature students and have to start thinking like a newbie. All kinds of basics, like cell phone etiquette and getting rid of the seat-time mindset are needed, and I’m doing my best, but it’s definitely a bit more of a drag than usual. Three of my four classes are freshmen, so I’m spending most of my work week in that world. Large class sizes–five more students per section than when I first started teaching–suck, too. 2) Watching baby nephew once a week is wonderful, but it makes me want to slow down to watch him more, as his dad did for us when our kids were babies. So I’m feeling torn.

However. My kids all have teachers they’re learning a lot from, teachers we’re thrilled to know are passionate about teaching, and school has been relatively smooth going for all three of them so far. The weather is beautifully cool and colorful right now; my hydrangea is producing all sorts of last-minute blooms, the pink roses are consistently colorful, and the magnolia tree is blooming like mad. And the mysterious shrub next door is perfuming the air as it does each fall–our neighbor says she came across one of these plants in China and knew she had to have one. So glad she does!