Confession. I spent four of the five days of last work week doing something at Jake’s new school. Not a little bit of four days. A significant portion of four days. A portion I could have devoted to a work project. A portion that made me miss my yoga practice. Or my lunch. Or, occasionally, my sanity.
How does a person with an actual job who is also trying to write a novel and practice yoga every day and devote her evenings to her children manage to cede so much of her valuable time to her son’s new school you might ask if you didn’t know me. Here’s a sample of how:
Monday: Produce an outline for giving tours to prospective parents (Asheville elementary schools are run on a magnet model in which parents can choose to send their child to any one of the five). Practice tour endlessly in front of bathroom mirror, in the shower, walking to pick the kids up. No expectation of giving a tour any time soon. Just can’t stop.
Tuesday: Attend my first A+ Committee Meeting as the new parent representative, thus cementing my land-speed leap into a PTO Board position in direct contravention of my vow not to over-commit, having—I thought—learned my lesson during my harried year as president of the preschool PTO. Consider monitoring whether Jake retains his school lessons more efficiently than I.
Wednesday: Fulfill my longstanding commitment to attend every single field trip my children’s classes take. Realize this was far easier when Jake was the only one whose class took field trips. Try to enjoy the sight of five-year-olds meeting farm animals without checking off on my mental school field trip checklist the third of four field trips in four weeks I must attend lest one of my children accuse me of duplicity and bias.
Thursday: My first morning of weekly volunteering in Jake’s classroom. Cut out approximately 120 paper hearts with words like “can” and “see” on them and stuff them in individual baggies for new readers. Count to 100 with one of Jake’s buddies and then try it again with a child I will not label as having ADHD because I don’t believe in such labels but decide I probably would if I were a teacher.
Friday: Pause to do work someone pays me to do. Plan to place order for giant canvases for A+ Committee project on Monday since paying client is selfishly preventing me from doing so today.
Which is, in fact, just what I did before sitting down to write this piece about how I’m maybe slipping into a world I need to back away from.
Six or seven years ago I used to wonder why my sister-in-law always seemed to have some school-related obligation. Did she really like chaperoning band trip overnights? I wondered. Did she have to bake all those cookies for the bake sale? Didn’t she have something better to do?
I don’t ask those questions any longer. My enthusiasm verging on over-extension is quite understandable to me, if my blithe disregard of the rather potent danger that I won’t be able to fulfill my school obligations and still, say, work is a bit less so.
For one thing, it’s public school. I’ve spent the last 28 years defending public schools, waxing passionately about their social benefits, insisting that my children will attend them, and finding a home where they could do so amidst a shrinking supply of possibilities. I not only feel an obligation to contribute to this cash-strapped, maligned creature. I feel a calling.
Plus, there’s still a frustrated little performer/educator in me who won’t be beaten down by pesky things like the knowledge that I don’t have it in me to be an actress or the fact that I spent several years teaching law students and know for a fact that kind of daily performance schedule isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Nope, nothing can tamp down the thrill of giving an enthusiastic, informative, and oh-so-articulate tour of a public elementary school to a bunch of harried parents who will ultimately make their decision based on the color of the sweater the teacher in the room they visit is wearing. On Thursday I had to remind myself to leave Jake’s classroom after my hour of volunteering because darned if I didn’t feel up to the challenge of counting to 100 all day long with my new little friends.
But the biggest reason I don’t question my over-involvement impulse—and the one that demands I consider carefully and proceed mindfully—is quite simply that this is about my children.
It isn’t always easy going on field trips when there’s a work deadline looming at home. PTO meetings can be a drag when it’s the end of the day and I’m tired and I really want to be the one to do Jake’s reading homework with him even though Mike’s perfectly capable of doing it and probably wishes I would let him more often. Researching grant opportunities sucks away many a frustrated hour of my evening time.
And yet I turn off any complaints and soldier ahead because I’m doing it for my kids. I’m good at this because I’ve had over a decade of practice holding uncomfortable yoga poses. Same diff.
Except that there is a difference between transcending discomfort and actively creating it. And I’ve got to wonder if that’s what I’m doing, even though I don’t really wonder because I don’t want to do any less even if it would be better for me.
In a way, I’m back to the mentally unstable days of Jake’s first eighteen months—that time when I was suffering from postpartum depression but didn’t quite realize it until I got pregnant again and stopped crying in front of my toddler every time I had to pack up the car for a trip that took longer than half an hour and finally realized that there was something very wrong with this behavior.
When Jake was born, I was seized with a strong need to love him constantly. Literally. “Love” as in hold, touch, stop from crying. Yes, I could hand him off to Mike at 5:00 in the morning when I needed a few more minutes of sleep. But when I awoke at 5:30 and Jake wasn’t there right next to me because Mike had taken him for a walk I stewed, unable to breathe, in the living room until they returned. Sure, I understood that babies cry, but not without me holding him until he stopped, his wails making any kind of activity that didn’t involve soothing my crying baby impossible. I really did feel grateful when my mother-in-law pointed out it’s okay for babies to be bored sometimes, but it seemed so much easier to just be bored myself if it made Jake happy to have me endlessly hand him, over and over, the funny giraffe he didn’t yet know how to grasp himself so Mommy could go take a shower.
I told myself I had done everything I wanted to in life and, at 40, I was ready to be a mom full time. I told myself it was perfectly normal to spend 19 hours out of every day feeding my infant in a bastardized version of breastfeeding when the normal way didn’t work for us. I told myself that a little passing discomfort was unimportant. What was important was my child.
Did I mention I went a little crazy? The first year or more of this blog has entries filled with anxiety, longing, identity questioning. Seeking balance.
Now, having found it, am I in danger of tipping over again, hoisting myself on my own petard of maternal insanity?
The concept of balance—or samatva—is central to yoga. The Bhagavad-Gita, one of the central texts of yoga, defines yoga as samatva, balance, equanimity. So if parenthood is, in some ways, one long yoga lesson, it stands to reason my sense of balance is transitory, my need to recapture it constant, the lesson life-long.
The Laghu-Yoga-Casishtha (4.5.12) says that samatva is what remains when all volitional activity has ceased.
So the practice here, I think, is to discern what is volitional activity and what is the part that remains once the volitional activity has ceased.
In other words, there is certainly a volitional element to volunteering at Jake’s school. But there is also an element of nonvolition. I signed up for exactly one PTO committee at the start of the school year. I said I’d like to help write grant applications, figuring it would be a relatively easy way for me, as a writer, to help the school secure much-needed funds. This one act of volition led to the chair of the committee asking me to help out a teacher with a grant she was seeking. That grant turned out to be for an A+ Committee project. My work with her to secure that grant led to an invitation to be the parent rep on the Committee. Which put me in charge of making sure the grant project proceeded.
So was saying “yes” an act of volition or an act of yoga, of accepting what the Universe brought and not thinking I can control everything, ensure in any meaningful way that I will never find myself over-extended and anxious?
My heart tells me it was an act of yoga. I received a gift from the Universe. I feel so strongly not only about being involved with my children’s education but about helping the public schools that I have to believe this happened for a reason. If I turn away, I truly believe, I will not only miss an opportunity to move in directions I’d never have imagined for myself, but I’ll be no less in control.
This can be an unsatisfying answer for those who want control. We want to know that we’ll never fall down. But that’s not balance. That’s hubris.
Public school PTO, I am learning, is like moving into a new level of yoga, or a new, difficult pose, or maybe a new school of yoga altogether. I have the foundation and the learning to rise to the challenge. And the challenge is part of the reason for doing it. It’s not just about being there for Jake and Lily or being there for the public schools. It’s also about me and the experiences that are offered to me.
I suspect there will be times when those experiences are difficult indeed. I know I will lose my balance with some frequency. But I also know I will be stronger, happier, and more enlightened for trying.
Just another way of saying I will be a parent.
I offer you today the opportunity to challenge yourself. If you’re a practitioner, choose one asana you’ve never tried before or never felt confident trying. And try it. Seek the balance between volition and equanimity. If you’re not a practitioner, maybe your challenge is to go to a yoga class. Or challenge yourself in some other way that is open to you but requires one act of volition that will give you the opportunity to discover equanimity.
YogaMamaMe 