Mothering and the Academy Don't Mix (?)

Yesterday was Dead Day. You know, the "quiet" day on campus when there's nothing to do but grade.

Hah.

I spent my morning at Campus Health with the most recent contestant in the "Let's Try to Figure Out the Mystery Abdominal Pain" trivia game. Yet another doctor stumped, so I was shuffled off to the lab for tests. Gosh, you'd think that with the number of people who've played this game that someone would be a winner by now ::sigh::

Then I grabbed some lunch and scooted off to my study carrel to grade portfolios in the bit of time I had before I needed to be at the WC to interview the next crop of potential interns.

That's when my cell phone rang. Uh oh.

It was Nick's teacher. "I think I got confused," she said. Apparently, she thought for some reason that I'd be picking Nick up . . . and didn't put him on the bus to his daycare.

Not good.

I called W to see if he could pick up Nick, and it was taking painfully long for him to call me back so I frenetically scooped up my things, ran down three flights of stairs, ran over to the parking garage, ran up three flights of stairs. I was already to my car when W called back and said, "I wanted to do this for you, but it's a bad day at work . . ."

I raced off to Nick's preschool, trying not to burn my fingers on the steering wheel that had been baking in the 100-degree heat, consistently breaking speeding laws all along the way.

When I got to his school, Nick was out on the playground with an aide. "I thought he was supposed to get on the bus. I told the teacher that," she said.

I know the kind thing would have been to engage in conversation a bit, to thank her for watching out for Nick, but I was rushed. I mumbled something brilliant like "it's okay" (which, you know, none of this was okay), and steered my child toward the gate.

"Nick, let's play GO!" I said. And my child and I ran hand-in-hand to the car.

I got Nick to his daycare on the north side of town and rushed to get him unbuckled and into the building. I took him straight to his classroom and opened the door. He promptly threw himself to the floor and started screaming.

In autism language, that means, "Yikes! Someone's messing with my routine and I'm freaking out!"

Nick's teacher just sort of stared at all of this (super helpful--thanks), but fortunately a teacher from another class said, "He needs to go to the playground when he first gets here."

Oh.

So I scooped up the mid-meltdown child and led him to the playground. Then I went back to my car and choked down a sob before starting the engine.

I rushed and rushed and rushed back to mid-town. My cell phone rang with "where are you?" calls. I pulled into a parking spot and ran to the WC. I think I got there four minutes before the interviews were scheduled to start.

I put on my game face, and I don't think the eight undergrads that came in that afternoon could tell that I'd been racing across town like Speedy Gonzales on crack moments before.


All of this crazed running made me think about whether or not mothering and the Academy really can mix. People from outside of the Academy think I have a great gig--they think I can schedule classes for when my kids are in school and that I can do work when the kids are asleep.

In theory, it sounds ideal.

In practice, I'm racing through town mid-day, praying that I can make it back in time.