I have had a lot of jobs in my life, most of them unskilled labor. I was an incompetent secretary at 18; a sales clerk for Sears; a grocery check-out; a ward clerk at U. of M. hospital; a contributor to a craft store; a housekeeper/babysitter... I never made a lot of money, never really enjoyed my work, and certainly never felt challenged or fulfilled.
At 34, I went back to college to get my degree. I earned my A.S. in biology in 1986, my B.S. and teacher certification in 1989, and my M.S. in 1993. I finally started a career in 1993. I was 44. I was an instructor of biology and on top of the world. I loved my job, I was challenged, fulfilled, and finally was making decent money and was something beside a housewife and mother who worked odd jobs for Christmas money. I finally had a little status. I rose through the ranks, became tenured, was named to "Who's Who Among America's Teachers" four times, won the Foundation's Faculty Excellence Award twice, and made a place for myself. I was the lab supervisor for the McMinnville Center and lead person for the science program there.
As time went on, my happiness in the job deteriorated. Higher education in Tennessee is no place to find job satisfaction, appreciation, or even decent wages. My morale sank a little every year. But my love of teaching never wavered, nor my sense that what I was doing was important. I may have hated the way I was ill-used by the college, but I was committed to it, happy with it or not.
Still, some years ago, I began to toy with the idea of moving over to administration in some manner- maybe as head of the science department, particularly since the current head had been and was making my life on the job a living hell. I went back to school and earned my Ed. S. in 2003. I was promoted to Associate Professor, as high as you can go without a PhD. The promotion brought a glorious $600.00 a year raise in salary with it. I should have been happier.
Except at the same time, my husband was also promoted, and his promotion doubled his salary, which was impressive to begin with, and necessitated his being in San Diego at least two weeks of every month. Since he would be traveling extensively to other places the remaining two weeks, he asked me to take a one year leave of absence from my job to travel with him, at least to San Diego. After some very serious thought, I did just that. After all, it was just for a year, and might be fun. We set up an apartment in San Diego and bounced between Tennessee and California. I didn't do any of the other traveling with him because his geriatric mother lives with us, and likes having me around at least half the month.
After 11 years as a something, I went back to being a... what? I wasn't a housekeeper anymore, I have one. I am not a mother anymore, my kids are adults. I have always been a wife, but I am no trophy, so what am I? Men are not the only creatures who define themselves by their careers. It has been a rough year for my self-esteem and self-image.
Now the year is over, or almost over, and it is obvious that the travel to San Diego is not. Nor will it be. If I return to my job, I will seldom see my husband. If I travel with my husband, I cannot keep my job. I am facing a very unfair choice here, my marriage or my career. No matter how unhappy I may have been in that career, it is a big part of who I am. I have had a taste this year of returning to the "Dave's wife" status, and it has not been easy. Half of my life is now spent among people who do not even bother to include me in conversations. I don't work for Cubic; I am not a Cube, so that would probably be the way of things in any case; they are an insular, absorbed, uni-topic group. But it is hard.
I am going in to the college today to resign my position. It really is a no-brainer, the choice between husband and career. But it is not without pain and regret, and a certain amount of surprise and sadness that none of my nearest and dearest see it as any kind of a sacrifice at all. Yes, I was unhappy, but I was happy also, at least with the TEACHING component of my job. I enjoyed preparing for lectures, setting up labs, having the use of a lab whenever I wished, creating PowerPoints, figuring out new ways to present information. I enjoyed advisement and the interaction with the students. I loved the staff at my teaching center and my colleagues there. I will miss all of that terribly. I loved being effective, and seeing people grow in knowledge and confidence, and I love my subject area. For all the myriad things I will not miss about higher education, there are an equal number I will miss about teaching.
So my 11 year career ends today. I can't help but feel a little down about that. I was better at teaching than anything else I have ever done in my life, including being a wife and a mother. Somehow I must find the joy in being a... what? Again.

Shoes are not immortal

So my partner in crime Marcia and I are shopping at Peebles, a store that happily carries clothes in my size- which is to say, jumbo petite- when we happen upon a shoe sale. Buy one, get the second half price. I have just chosen three very nice outfits to take with me to the GFWC of Tennessee convention this weekend, so OF COURSE, my interest is piqued. Four pairs later, we leave the store.
My beloved husband likes to call me Imelda, suggesting, I think, that perhaps I have a bit of a thing about shoes. Well, frankly, I have a thing about many things. While it is true that things can't bring you true happiness, they don't exactly depress you, either. I am, by nature, an obsessive collector, and he seems to think that my "thing" about shoes is just another manifestation of that obsession. And, as per usual, he is wrong.
I am not obsessed with shoes, I just like having a nice selection. It has been my experience that most men are shoe deprived. They think if they have one black pair and one white pair, they are set. Most of the men I know have a three pair maximum- dressy, casual, tennies- and all three will be worn until they are held together by a single thread. Let a man spend a moderate amount of money on any piece of clothing, including shoes, and he will wear it/them long after they are stylish, the right size, or in fit condition to wear.
Women, on the other hand, and for the most part, seem to know that all things pass, including styles, and that nothing, including shoes, is immortal. I was simply conceding the frailty of life, the inevitability of mortality, and the changeable nature of the universe when I came home with four pairs of shoes. And I will look ever so cha-cha at the convention. Paint ALL your toenails, ladies, the sandal season it here!

And I came in here for what?

It is April 20th, and I am back in Tullahoma, trying to get ready for my woman's club Convention this weekend in Jackson, and to prepare for a Weekender's Party here on the 27th. My life is so full in Tennessee. Yesterday, my daughter-in-law Becca, my mother-in-law Mary, the baby "outlaw", Emily, and I took a day trip to Murfreesboro in search of "elusive" scrapbooking goodies. Becca and I share several obsessions, but scrapbooking is the newest and dearest to our hearts, especially since our family vacation in California. Next week we will get together to work on Delaney's birthday scrapbook. I am making each grandchild a scrapbook for their birthday this year, and will add a page a year until they graduate high school. Kendall loved hers when I gave it to her in March- Kendall who is now 10, to my amazement, and is showing the first budding signs of impending womanhood already- so I anticipate Delaney will like hers as well. I do a page for each year of each precious life. Emily's will be a bit skimpy this year; she will only be two! I am currently working on a scrapbook using all the antique photographs I inherited from my mother from her side of the family. When I am done, I will have each page color copied four times and give a copy of the scrapbook to each of my siblings.
But this is not what I wanted to talk about.
I do this a LOT- start off to do one thing and end up doing something else. Or going into a room and forgetting why I went in there. Or leaving a room and forgetting why I left it. Or losing my purse... my keys... my shoes... Or getting into the car and forgetting to bring whatever it was I needed the car to take care of. And I am noticing that I do this much more often in Tullahoma than in San Diego. I do it in San Diego, assuredly, but not as often. And the apartment is a lot easier to search than this wonderful rabbit warren of a house. First of all, I know whatever I am looking for won't be in Kelly's room or the main bath, and I can stand in one spot and see down the hall to the office, the whole kitchen, the entire livingroom and diningroom and into my room with a glance. Here I find myself making endless circuits looking for things, because, as I said, I go into a room and forget why I am in there.... what was I saying?

Post-polio, post Disneyland

1954. One year before Disneyland opened its doors. One year before the Salk vaccine. The year I had polio. By most standards, I was very, very lucky; I had a mild case of the disease; when I was ten, I wore a brace for about a year and a half; I was in physical therapy most of my childhood; I had surgery in high school, but it all seemed worth it. The curve in my spine straightened, my leg lengthened and its muscles did not atrophy. I know how much worse it could have been. I am now dealing with the sequelae of that viral infection, a condition called post-polio. A few years ago, a myelogram showed that the polio had had a "shotgun" effect on my spinal cord. Instead of a single devastated limb, the polio attacked enervation to muscle fibers throughout my body, with my right leg being the only limb to show immediate damage. Healthy muscle fibers have been picking up the slack for nonresponsive ones for fifty years, and they are now starting to give up the ghost themselves. I have lost, by latest estimate, 40% of the upper body strength I had just 15 years ago. My hand strength is diminishing at an alarming rate. My legs are in decent shape but easily fatigable, and my general energy level is lower, exhaustible, and slow to replenish. I really put my deficient body to the test this month with our family trip to Disneyland. With my dream vacation came four days of heavy duty walking and standing, plus travel by various modes, none of which love my body. I was smart and careful. I paced myself through the mall, the zoo, Disneyland, and California Adventure. I was slow but engaged, and took someone's arm whenever I needed to. I took it especially easy the last day in Anaheim, Dave and I sitting with the baby so the others could ride as many rides as possible, but even then I knew I was reaching the end of my energy reserves. It's funny, I can feel the energy seeping out of me like I have sprung a slow leak, and if I push myself too hard, I literally come to a stop. It's a nasty and indescribabe sensation and I take pains to avoid it. Still, with all my carefulness, I was limping severely, a sure sign of fatigue, by the time we got home, and was unable to walk at all the two days following the kids' departure. I am fine now, and proud that I did as well as I did, but I am also a bit nostalgic for the youth and energy I saw in my children and grandchildren. Even as a child, there were limits to my stamina. I would run and do all the normal kid stuff and then crash, seemingly needing to be inert to give my body time to replenish it's spent stores. No one made any concessions to the polio when I was a kid, but I must make concessions now, because I am not one. In a bittersweet sort of way, it seems that Disneyland and polio are bookends, in a way, to my life so far.

A dream is a wish your heart makes...

I am back in San Diego after three wonderful days in Anaheim with my children and grandchildren. My life-long dream of Disneyland is now finally a reality and a memory, and it was worth the 50 year wait. Kelly and I spent a day getting the apartment ready for company. I had ordered booster seats, a stroller, air mattresses and an air pump, and we set up the bedrooms. Kelly graciously moved into the office (twin sized air mattress) so that Jake's family could have the guest room. (King size bed, queen size air mattress and STILL plenty of room to move around- amazing!) Jake, Becca and the kids arrived in good order Friday evening. Dave and Kel went to pick them up and I made tacos. We had a great visit. Saturday we did the mall crawl. Becca and I decimated the scrapbooking shelves at Michael's, and we had lunch at the Fashion Valley Mall. J, B and the kids took a short dip in the pool- WAY too cold- and then warmed up in the hot tub before heading for home. Sunday morning we hit the San Diego Zoo, which is incredible. Kelly had an afternoon matinee, so naps and packing were on the agenda. We caught the Amtrak to Anaheim- nice ride- and three cabs to Disneyland. Until the very last stage of the trip, none of the kids knew where we were going, but as we left the station, there was a huge sign advertising Disneyland, and Kendall tumbled to it. Dave and I made plans to keep her sequestered from the rest of the kids until it dawned on all of us that telling the cabbie to take us to the Disneyland Hotel would be a bit of a give-away, so we told them at the station where we were going. The response was gratifying. We had two adjoining rooms, and had a room service dinner. We hit the park right after breakfast on Monday and spent 9 hours in the Magic Kingdom, which is beautiful beyond description. Several times during the day, I teared up with the sheer joy of being there. The kids hit all the rides, the waits were not too bad, the weather was perfect, and Emily, the world's most mellow and fantastic baby, was a joyous trouper. She rode the teacup ride with Becca and I and had her picture made with Ariel. The kids had autograph books and got the autographs of lots of characters, and we all got into trading pins- even Jake and Dave. Tuesday we spent at California Adventure and Dave and I kind of sat the day out, watching Emily so Jake would have a chance to have some fun. We are neither of us too keen on rides, and the Paradise Pier is chock-a-block with them. We had lunch at a neat cafe, and the kids got happily drenched at Bug Land. Tired but happy, and laden with souvenirs, we Amtraked back to San Diego that evening. Wednesday, Becca did laundry, and Jake packed the three boxes of stuff I shipped home to them- okay, so we were a little extreme with the souvenirs and toys- and we put them safely on a plane home at about noon. You couldn't have asked for a better vacation. Everyone got along so well and was so mellow; there was no fighting or bickering or impatience or pouting, all seemed to have a fun time, and to enjoy the first en masse family activity we have ever had short of birthday parties. It was a most wonderful vacation, and a dream come true.