Lately, everything I do has seemed like a metaphor for parenting. (I blame it on Anymommy, who finds meaning in life's most mundane moments--if only I could also write like her...)
I took the kids roller skating last weekend. I knew how to get there from the neighborhood I grew up in, but it seemed silly to detour out there instead of just driving in from where I've lived for over 10 years now. I never got lost--I knew where I was at all times--but I kept getting confused about how to proceed, and it took me several trips around various blocks to get on the right bridge. The whole trip took a good twenty minutes longer than it would have if I'd just gone back to the old neighborhood first. The kids, however, had no preconception about how long it should take, and since I got us all there, were oblivious to all the stress and confusion. It all felt so MEANINGFUL to me. There was that sense of not being truly lost, yet not being sure how to go forward from here. And I found great comfort in the realization that we got there safe and sound, so who cares if it didn't go smoothly along the way?
Then after a lousy day at work on Monday (first time in 15 years of teaching I've had a parent yell at me), I was driving in again Tuesday morning. It was dark, and drizzling in a way that my windshield wipers just smear across the window, unable to clear. At first I thought it was some sort of metaphor for going into work feeling negative about it, then I decided it was just pathetic fallacy. Then I decided that I really am an English teacher, huh.
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