Working in Sales

A woman I know is out of work. She was laid off in February. "I kept telling them they didn't need my position. I told them they should cut it. Promote me to do something bigger." She laughs. "They listened to the first part and not the second."

She doesn't know what she'll do, once she's on the market—when her unemployment runs out, she'll look again. "I was in sales for thirty years, but finally put myself out to pasture. I can't sell anymore." Then, as is her way, she corrected herself immediately. "But that's not true, because I will have to sell. All of us have to sell. All jobs are sales jobs. Right?"

It struck me because it's so true. Principals, teachers, baristas, writers, roofers, crossing guards, lawn care workers, lawyers, tree trimmers. They all have a thing they want to be valuable—and valued—by others. Naturally, I thought about being a principal in the midst of online learning. There's not a soul on earth who asked for COVID-19 and the ongoing aftermath; as such, there's not a soul who wants the product—and in my world, the product is online school. Selling something no one wants to buy is an uphill battle, friends. No one could stand the thought of a shuttered school. No one liked online learning, no one thought it was a legit replacement for face-to-face instruction, no one trusted it, and no one will miss it when it's gone.  But still we had to sell it as a product because it was the only product on the market, and we had to convince people that its value surpassed that of no product at all.

I've been overcome by the product my district and school put out there, by the way. It was on-point. It was precise, sharp and clean and fluid, matched to every family's home environment as best as we could.

But some people were mad about it— justifiably so—because direct instruction looked really different than they'd thought it should; it seemed spotty and confusing; posted assignments felt like busy work; and, worst of all, differentiation was hard to get right. Some kids needed a lot more and some kids needed a lot less and some kids, honestly, didn't "need" anything. Home doesn't feel like home when it is a domestic battleground, the uncomfortable host of ongoing fights about homework, sibling disagreements, and screen addiction.

Beyond the people who were mad, a lot were grateful. And said so.

Most were really quiet. I suspect they were simply... enduring.

I Tweeted and Facebooked and made videos and phone calls. I was the principal of the school and I was by-God selling this thing, because I believed in it and it would do, for now. But I'll be so glad when I can go back to selling other things:

Early literacy intervention.
Hugs.
Canvas book pouches.
The endless parent pickup line.
Fire drills.
The postman's cheerful wave, every day precisely at 11:14.
Social studies.
Reader's Theatre.
Cafeteria chicken nuggets.
Crayons worn down to bits.
Dried-up glue sticks.
Ice pops on Field Day.
Math.
IEPs.
Belly laughs with Jaclyn, my fun, smart, sassy assistant principal.
Bags of ice for playground scrapes.
All the Post-its.
Library books.
Staff potlucks.
The walkie-talkie.
Recess. Indoor or outdoor? When is the rain coming?
Bus exhaust.
Science kits with beakers and sand domes and virtual worm dissections.
Carpet stains from Godknowswhat, covered by a circle rug of butterflies and honeybees.
The turtle aquarium.
Social stories.
Did I say hugs?
Lost and found, ridiculously overflowing with 45 gloves with no match.
The lounge microwave smelling like lunches of fifteen people before me.
Choir risers.
Bathroom breaks.
Gogurts and Lunchables.
Numeracy games.

Those things. They are the things I'm interested in selling.

Mother's Day

I launched this blog because I'm a school principal and I have a lot to say about that. But over time, I've sometimes wished it were something else. I feel a pull to tell personal stories and overturn memories. Especially now. I'm in a mood. I have professional fatigue with these days. So many edu-blogs feel judge-y and pretentious, both adjectives I'd rather avoid, thankyouverymuch.

So let's talk about Mother's Day.

No, no, no!  Don't leave! I don't want to talk about my kids making me breakfast in bed (god, no, please) or the cute cards they created from bits of construction paper and a marker from the junk drawer (we're long past those days) or about our fabulous takeout meal (the restaurant asked if we could please call back in an hour and a half... so we had frozen Ora Ida french fries and soup).

So, no, not that. Imma write about Facebook's Mother's Day.

I reallllllllly monitor how much time I spend on social media. I post rarely, and try to limit myself to ten or twenty minutes a day of scrolling. Even though I'm a grown-ass woman, I constantly wrestle with social media anxiety, which has me believe everyone is prettier, smarter, wiser, more wealthy, more accomplished, more good, more generous. I mean, seriously, guys: Everyone else is awesome and I suck. Or so says Facebook.

Thus the limits. I log in, scroll for a few minutes, and leave, before my mental stability has a chance to quiver.

But: Last Sunday, Mother's Day, I let myself go, because I couldn't not. I scrolled for the better part of a morning. Far from making me anxious and less-than, I felt caught in this perfectly perfect moment where the world came together to honor women who'd been mother figures to them. There were many stories of love, real love, grateful love, the kind of love where there aren't really words to adequately capture it. Not really. Not ever. Sooooo many people taking a moment and talking about Moms.

I know it wasn't everyone. Many people have painful pasts and heartbreaking Mom stories, and they were abstaining from the day's celebrations. I know. And some posts made my eyes pricker in tears, particularly from mothers who have lost a child. I saw a post of a friend who, a few years back, had sobbed into my neck after her daughter was killed in a senseless, stupid accident. "Losing a child is beyond anyone's pain tolerance," she wrote, describing a life lived with a hole in her soul. There were stories of a miscarriage—women honoring babies they never held. There were women who wanted to be mothers who can't, or aren't, or won't. They raised their hands, publicly: Don't forget us. We want to be mothers, but we can't. This is hard. Today is hard. And there were eulogies to lost mothers.  I miss you every day, Mom. I wish you were here, Mom. Thank you for the gifts you gave before you left, Mom. What I wouldn't give to have you back, Mom. 

To balance out the sad, there were countless stories of ridiculously pure, simple love. Thank you, Mom. I love you, Mom. You're my best thing, Mom. And because we know other-daughter relationships are complicated, we can also know each story hid layers of hard times and fights and misery, but the posts showed forgiveness and grace, patience and understanding, healing and health.

And! The photographs! I studied them, pulling similarities between generations of women: A dimpled smile, a big nose, a head-thrown-back-in-laughter, hair color matched in a perfect shade, all caught by someone's camera in a still moment of uncanny likeness. "Oh, yes. That's definitely her mother," I would think, seeing my friends with their mothers or mothers with their daughters, caught in an embrace or sharing a moment in time.

Everyone has their own mother story, as varied as dandelions and their wishes. And for one untethered Sunday, I scrolled until I got a glimpse of all I could hold, filled up, again, with the touch that only a mother—and a day set aside for mothers—could bring. 

Lilacs

When I was a kid, my mother adored lilacs. She still does.

There was only one lilac tree on our farm, and it was a spindly little thing whose flowers barely bothered to open. It grew, reluctantly, from behind the dilapidated workshop where my father repaired broken farm equipment. Seven or so years after they'd move to the farm, my father tore it down and built a bigger shop, this time with a real concrete floor and a functional garage door. It had a chain, even, to raise and lower it. He saved the lilac tree. "Probably the only thing I did right in this marriage," he mused to me once, which seemed a dramatic thing to say but actually was probably true, given the decades-long implosion of my parent's marriage, an implosion that was so quiet and slow it took forty years to come to a final, painful, legal conclusion.

The lilac tree never flourished.

But there was a grove of lilac trees in the swampland a few miles from our farm. Eight or nine of them, I think, enormous and full of lilac blooms so thick you could almost feel the pollen as a real, furry, fuzzy, live thing. My mother hunted those lilacs like a starving woman. Driving home from the grocery store, she'd turn left on Willow Road, and my siblings and I would wail: "Noooooooooo, Mom!" We knew what was next.

Mom parked the station wagon along the ditch on the gravel road. She dumped the groceries out of the brown bags, piling the pasta and ground beef and cracker boxes and Comet on the floorboards, and sneak over to the lilac trees, her eyes shining, the happiest criminal on the planet. She broke off the lilacs, branch by branch, and filled the grocery bags. Armfuls and armfuls of them. Us kids watched out for the telltale green pickup of the State Wildlife Ranger. I was terrified they'd arrest her and take her to jail. I knew somewhere inside me it was ridiculous, but I was a very worried child and jail was the worst thing I could imagine. I pictured it: Us four, walking home, carrying the groceries, and telling my father, "Mom got arrested."

"What for?"

"Stealing lilacs."

He'd shake his head. "Sounds like your mother," he'd say, and go on fixing whatever was broken that day.

She never got arrested. At home, she'd shove those lilacs into Mason jars and scatter them all over the kitchen. She placed one in each bedroom, too; mine went on top of my worn-out antique dresser—antique not in the collector sense, but antique because it was so damned old. I could see them as I fell asleep, and their scent nestled up in my dreams. I'd stare at the purple blooms, up against the repeated pattern of my Holly Hobbie wallpaper, and I'd feel the coming of spring.

I stole lilacs from my neighbor today. She has a beautiful lilac bush. She wouldn't care; I'm sure of it. She'd tell me to take more. Still, though, I snuck them, my eyes flitting around like I was stealing cash from an ATM. I scurried back to my house to look for a Mason jar. I wondered if stealing lilacs is part of my joy of having them. I took a picture and sent it to my mother. "I can smell them from here," she said.