Abstract:

Many teachers have two groups of children--their classroom, and their own. Mother's Day leads Laura Reasoner Jones to think about what troubles her about motherhood--and some things she has done right.

Jones, L.R. I hate mother's day. Teacher Leader's Network diaries. Retrieved from the Teacher Leaders Network 11 Apr 2008. Link: http://www.teacherleaders.org/old_site/diaries04_05/LJ38_04_05.html 

Full Text:

I Hate Mother's Day

I hate Mother's Day. It makes me feel inadequate and lonely, although I couldn't ask for better children. And I have always hated it, even before my children were old enough to forget it on their own. There is just something about it that puts my teeth on edge.

The funny thing is that my wonderful husband hates it too, even though he did give me fabulous earrings that say "In one ear" and "Out the other." He hated it before I met him, so we are a perfect match. He has even written about it from his perspective of his previous work in a church. His issue is that the holiday hurts many people while trying to celebrate for a few lucky women whose children caused them no pain. (And these women are where?)

I don't hate it for other people. I hate it because my kids never really think about it or get me anything. They just kind of let it float by. And this year, I decided to examine where I went wrong.

I guess I want too much. I want the whole enchilada—the breakfast in bed, the cards and presents and flowers, and the day off from responsibility and work. And I want it planned by them, with no reminders or money fronted. This Mother's Day, I did three loads of laundry, dusted and vacuumed the downstairs, cleaned four bathrooms and cooked dinner, all before Julie got up. And then she went off to the beach for a week, leaving her undone chores. Later, Christie called from the airport in Indianapolis and yelled at me because she told me she was going to San Francisco and I forgot. I don't think she ever told me.
Where did I go wrong?

What does this have to do with being a teacher or a teacher leader? Well, I think it has a lot to do with it. Unfortunately, more and more of us teachers find ourselves becoming parents to the children we teach. We bind up their wounds, we support them through crises, and we feed and clothe them. And don't think that the teachers in the inner-city are the only ones who do this. I work in a generally well-off county with children who have more than my children ever have, and I still ended up being a mother to them, and sometimes being a mother to their mothers.

Being a teacher these days can be like being the tree in The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. When I was young and naive, I thought this was the sweetest book in the world, a meaningful parable about becoming a mother and giving unconditional love to your child. But now that I am old and jaded, I see it in another light. We mothers, like we teachers, give and give and give, and can be left at the end with nothing of ourselves.

However, as a mother, I ask myself again, "Where did I go wrong?" And maybe I didn't go so wrong after all. The other night, Julie came home from a large wild country music concert and told me how she had watched a young girl her age start to get beaten up by her drunken boyfriend. Of the hundreds of people watching this scenario develop, Julie (5 ft tall, weighing fewer than one hundred pounds) was the one person who went to the security guards and insisted they come and stand nearby because she felt 'something bad' was going to happen. And so, when the inebriated boyfriend started to strangle the young girl, the security guards immediately took care of him.

I asked her, "How did you know what to do?" "Why did you feel you had to do something?" And she said, in a slightly scornful voice, "Mom, you know you and I would never put up with someone hitting us!" I guess I did do something right.

And then I remember how last year at this time, Christie was determined to help one of her friends, a single mother with two teenage children, win a "most inspiring person" contest sponsored by the Connecticut radio station where they lived. She wrote page after page of stories about this woman and called me frequently to ask how to word a sentence. All this work to honor someone else, from a girl who has significant written language learning disabilities. I did something right there also.

As I look back, I know was a better teacher for having been a mother, and I hope I was a better mother for having been a teacher. The two roles–parent and teacher–have so much in common that it is easy to get tangled up in them. And families these days seem to have lost their boundaries also, needing parenting from teachers that wasn't needed before. But we teachers need to protect ourselves and set appropriate boundaries. My fellow diarist Ellen Berg wrote about this earlier in the year, and I am echoing her sentiments. We need to work to be sure that we are not left at the end of the day, or at the end of our lives, with nothing but a stump.

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