On Boundaries

In my final year of teaching at my daughter's school, she ignored me. Or, it would be more clear to say, she insisted I ignore her.  She was in second grade, and starting to enter that time when everything a parent does embarrasses her.  Until second grade, I would join her for lunch in the cafeteria.  She would wave to me as her class went past my classroom on the way to art or gym class. She was proud that I was a teacher at her school.

But when she hit second grade, that time was over. 

Bones is letting me down

Bones is letting me down.

I know, I know. Bones is just a fictional forensic anthropologist who solves crimes and writes novels on TV. She can’t really let me down. She’s not alive. Nonetheless, I have this feeling of disappointment that I can’t shake.

When I look at it closely, I realize that I have felt this way before.

Report from an Undercover Agent

I received a comment here on the blog asking for my recommendations for improving our schools. I can certainly oblige.

I spent the last four years as a high school teacher. I feel like I’ve spent four years as an undercover agent in the K-12 education system. And I am happy to report to the rest of you.

Changing the Blog Name

Four years ago, I left college teaching for high school teaching. Many of my friends thought I had made a bad choice. I didn’t then, and I still don’t. We all have different needs at different times in our careers. High school teaching, with its substitute teachers and regular schedule, suited me in a time when I was single-handedly raising a kindergartener and caring for a mother going through cancer treatment. I liked going to the same school with my daughter. I liked really knowing my students. I liked working with people dedicated to making children’s lives better. I liked being able to take scheduled days off to take my mother to cancer treatments. However, now that my mother is cancer-free and living on her own, and my daughter is entering the third grade, I am ready to return to the professional venue for which I was trained: the college classroom.

I’ve been hired at a local community college, where a large number of the students are first generation college students, and a number of those are single mothers. I am excited about working with all the students, but I feel I can offer something a bit special to single mothers. I know how hard it is to be a single mother, but I also know that single mothers can succeed as students and professionals. I know single mothers can make their lives and the lives of their children better. I know because I’m doing it. And I want to help other single mothers do the same.

I think, now, I can be in the academy as a single mother and a professor, when years ago it was more difficult. The book Mama PhD has made a difference in the lives of professor moms in the years since I first published Mothering in the Ivory Tower. Now, I hear reports from the front lines that suggest mothers and fathers are more accepted and supported in academia. I saw children in the offices of my new department members (something a former Chair of mine had discouraged in a memo ten years ago). My new Chair left a meeting saying that he had to take his children to the orthodontist. And I’m pleased to report that this department hired me knowing full well they were hiring a single mother. Hopefully, then, I won’t feel compelled to perform childlessness as I have in the past. I will be able to be both a single mother and a professor.

Since I am changing, I am thinking it’s time for the blog to change, as well. So, you’ll see a new title here. You’ll see more writing about my work life. You’ll see more speculating on the nature and scope of our educational system. And you’ll see me continue to explore the life of one single mother as she lives, works, and loves.

Single Mother PhD's?

I went to a college event recently where I was surrounded by other PhDs. I watched the women, wondering: were they mothers? were any of them single mothers?

The book Mama PhD. explores the complex role of mothers within the academy. I love the book, but I'm now wondering about the role of single mothers as well. What are the numbers on single mother professors? Are single mothers, like those marginalized by race and sexual orientation, also under represented at our colleges and universities?

I think people are starting to finally address the problems that mothers face in the academy. Mama PhD has been successful in creating discussion in the community. However, I think we also need to address the problems single mothers face as a separate but connected category. I have been both a partnered mother and a single mother -- and I can tell you, they are significantly different experiences. So, what is that difference when a woman is a single mother professor?

When I started the column Mothering in the Ivory Tower, I was a newly divorced single mother, trying to find a place for myself. I was raising both a young child and caring for a mother with cancer while holding a temporary visiting assistant professor position and looking to reenter a tenure-track job after two years of full-time motherhood. My finances were stretched. I couldn't travel to conferences. I taught over 100 students per semester. I got in trouble for needing to take too many days off for chemo treatments for my mother and for my daughter's sick days. I had a hard time making blocks of concentrated time available for research. I got no childcare help from my ex-husband and saw a sharp reduction in financial support. Being a professor and a single mother was not easy.

The job search was even harder. I often made the first cut for interviews, and in my two year job search, I had some great interviews. No one ever asked the illegal questions about my marriage/caretaking status, but I am sure they did a google search on me (I would) and found my publications on being a single mother (all too obvious). So, I didn't get a job despite having an excellent CV -- with publications -- and having great interviews. At the time, I wouldn't have believed it. But looking back on it now, I can see that my job search was disadvantaged by my status as a single mother.

Single mothers, like other minority groups, may not be heavily represented in the academy for reasons that have nothing to do with ability, but more to do with others' perception of them. People sometimes believe single mothers are unreliable employees (all that taking off time to care for sick children). People sometimes believe single mothers are single because of a character flaw in them (divorced, shunning the importance of fathers, not able to be on a team, or man-haters). People sometimes believe single mothers can't serve as positive role models for students (sorta like getting pregnant teenagers out of the high school so they don't influence others). Sometimes people believe single mothers are helpless victims (and therefore not powerful like professors need to be). Regardless of the particular stereotype they apply, people tend to judge single mothers not by what they can do, but by who they are.

So, we could see single mothers as a group that needs to be considered when we discuss diversity on college campuses, and if so, couldn't the same arguments that are made for increasing diversity also include single mothers? I think so.

The Feminist Reading Group met recently to discuss Women in Academe. Here are a few of the points they discussed:

• We briefly addressed the Globe and Mail article in terms of the numbers and how mothers make less money than single women and single mothers even less money than mothers who are partnered.
• There is a set stereotype/idea/understand
ing of what makes a successful academic and it usually involves publishing and conferencing. This idea needs to be transformed ideally in such a way that it is more inclusionary of people who don’t fall into the presumed categories of single, male, childless, etc.
• These two things, publishing and conferencing are problematized and difficult if you are a mother.
• Student Parent Associations are a good way to both make connections to other parents on campus as well as can be a place where exchanges occur in regards to babysitting, outings, etc.
• There is all of guilt involved with being both an academic and a mother, no matter what you are doing, studying, reading, writing or spending time with your child, one always feels like they should be doing the other, thus guilt sets in.
• Mothers or even partners, couples, within departments often feel marginalized, that their children or their significant others are not welcome at functions. The discourse around this marginalizing is complex.
• One member evoked a discourse of “outing” in relation to their position as a mother, she felt that it was time that she moved to creating more exposure of her position as mother by letting others meet her children and partners.
• This discourse of outing relates the position of academic mother to other marginalized people within the departments, queer academics for one.
• Most of the academic articles on women in academia emphasize the need for exposure and for alliances to be made between all the marginalized people within any department or university, mothers, queers, racial minorities, etc.
• These articles also emphasize the need for more studies to be done on women in academe in general, both from a pedagogical standpoints as well as economic standpoints.

Out of the Ivory Tower

I've posted before (March 5th, for example) about my life outside the Ivory Tower now that I have changed my career for a more family friendly environment. And I ended my last post on the topic saying that the high school students I now teach had ultimately won me over. Seeing students every working day for 50 minutes made more of an impact on a relationship than meeting with them twice a week for 90 minutes, or even three times a week for 50 minutes. The increased number of contact hours meant high school teachers get to know their students far more. I also was able to see students outside of class--having lunch, in assemblies, doing sports, and going to their lockers. They didn't disappear once the class was over. We moved in the same spaces. And that changed things.

Before this year, I had never received any Christmas presents from students. Yes, I had received Christmas cards. But never presents. Homemade presents--some created by parents, some by the students themselves. I received cookies, fudge, boxes of chocolates, wine, and more. The gift that absolutely floored me was a beaded necklace. The student gave it to me, saying, "I chose the colors because you often wear black," first showing me that she paid attention to the smaller details of me. Then, she said, "I used some of the bead from my grandmother's necklaces," which linked me with other older women in her life who had made a difference. I touched each bead, thinking about the time, thought, and kindness that had put them together. At that moment, I thought, "I really do belong here."

One of the next significant turning points came when my mother, my daughter, and I went to a local street fair. Usually, I walk though the small town I live in without seeing anyone I know. After 10 months, I am still a stranger here. This day, however, we ran into a number of my students. I wasn't sure what to expect. College age students either ignored me or came over to stiffly greet me. Certainly, I knew students who had taken more than one of my classes or joined an organization of which I was the advisor enough for them to come engage with me in conversation, to let me become part of their lives. As the director of a women's studies program, I became the front line crisis counselor for many students who had been impregnated, dumped, slighted, rejected, abandoned, raped, beaten, or otherwise injured. I wore a path between my office and the counseling center as I walked them over, and I seriously considered getting a degree in counseling to cut out that walk. I had good relationships with many college age students--don't get me wrong. However, that day at the fair, every student I saw smiled, came over, and gave me a hug. They made a fuss over my daughter, and were thrilled to meet my mother (about whom they had heard stories). I was startled and pleased at the recognition of me as a person with a family and a life outside of the classroom.

The most recent moment happened at the Pinewood Circus. One would think this kinda thing--where kindergarten and first grade students become circus performers for the benefit of the crowd--would not be such a big deal. But at Pinewood, this was a big production, including elaborate decorations, props, costumes, make up, dancing, music, and scripts. Before the circus began, I met with my 2nd period class to take attendance and then walk over to the gym for the show. Some of the students asked, "What will your daughter be wearing?" I explained that she was assigned to be a lion, but wanted to be a dancing girl. She scorned the brown, fuzzy lion's costume the school had provided, saying with tears in her eyes, "Girl lions don't have manes like that. I don't want to be a boy lion." My pink encased, rhinestone and sequin encrusted, high heel wearing girly girl had a point. I told my students how my mom and I had worked to created a pink, fluffy, princess lion to please her. They loved the story.

When we got to the gym, and the children came parading in, decked out in costumes and face paint, my students, who were sitting close to me low on the bleachers, reached their hands out to the little ones as they walked past, getting 'five." Many of these students played their own roles in the circus years before, and I imagined could remember how the little ones felt facing that crowd of big students. They offered encouragement and enthusiasm. When my daughter came by, a cheer went up among my students, and many of them mouthed to me, "She looks great!" They went on to be one of the loudest sections of students in the gym. I was so proud. Not only of my daughter, but also of these students for putting aside whatever teenage issues they faced to remember, for a moment, what it was like to be a child.

Don't get me wrong. All is not perfect. Sometimes these same students can be difficult, rude, arrogant, temperamental, frustrating, moody, disrespectful, offensive, and everything else that teenagers can be. But now, I see the individual behavior I may not like as part of them, not all of them. Like the feelings I have about my daughter when she acts up, I can dislike the behavior, but still like the person. And I do like my students. All of them.

Out of the Ivory Tower

If you’d asked me in my first six weeks of teaching high school if I had made a mistake leaving college teaching and the Ivory Tower, I would have screamed, “yes.”

I can explain my initial shock in the first few days it in one word: duty. I’d never had to “monitor” students’ behavior, and suddenly, I had “break” duty, which meant I had to stand in a designated spot like some ancient guardian statute protecting a sacred passageway from incursion. I also had “lunch” duty, where I watched a pack of middle school students whose actions often caused me to think to myself “what the heck are you thinking?” (both them and me). I had “traffic” duty in which I yelled at parents who tried to cut off each other to be the first to get in line to pick up their children who stood fighting on the sidewalk with their siblings about who got the front seat.

And then, I had another form of “duty”—classroom management. Never in my 10 years of college teaching had I experienced students talking while the professor was talking. If I had a few unruly freshmen who hadn’t yet learned the rules, I reprimanded them, and that was it. Not these students. Talking. Talking. Talking. Oh, my goodness, talking. I thought I had gone to hell.

In addition, I could never figure out where I needed to be quick enough for the insistent ringing of the bells. Did I have duty? Do I go to lunch? And when was that meeting? And even once I knew where I needed to go, I had trouble gathering my materials and getting there in the short amount of time between the “change class” bell and the “late” bell. I was accustomed to moving to new classrooms—no one stays in the same classroom at the college level--but I wasn’t accustomed to having to do it so fast.

I also found having no office to go to when my shared classroom was in use disconcerting. I didn’t know where to go, and once I found an empty table in the teacher’s lounge, I couldn’t get much work done without a computer, my files, and my books. And sitting the lounge wasn’t conductive to work anyway. Someone came in every few minutes to check her or her mail or warm something up in the microwave. I ended up talking more than I’ve ever talked during a workday.

At the end of the first week, I lost my voice. Completely. I had never been “on” so long. A college professor isn’t required to be on campus all day—much of the work is of the mind, and like a surgeon or a lawyer, the real work they do is not done in an office. As a college professor, I would teach, then retreat to my office. I would meet with students, and then I would shut my door. I would lead a committee meeting, and then go home to do the rest of my work at my home office. I graded papers in coffee shops. I spent hours in the library doing research. I had work to do, but where I got that work done was up to me. I was in control of my own time and my own space, and trusted to get my work done—where ever it got done. Therefore, being a college professor means spending a lot of time alone.

I love being around people, but I like having some control over my social interaction. Most people think I am an extrovert, but really, I am not. This new job brought my secret out into the open where I had to confront it. I was a closet introvert facing the challenge of never really being alone during a workday for the first time in my career. I couldn’t shut my office door and have privacy. I couldn’t go finish my work in my home office. I had to BE THERE and be ON--constantly. I tried to make private space and alone time for myself by eating my lunch sitting on a bench outside, way away from where I thought anyone would be at that time of day, but then the PE students trotted by. I felt I couldn’t get away. I would go home at night and fall asleep with my daughter at 8 pm, exhausted from so much contact with people.

I get e-mails from professor moms who wonder about what has happened to me since I left the Ivory Tower and ended the column. The underlying question for each of them is: could I do it to, too? The answer is "yes--but make sure your personality can take it." I was, for a professor, quite social. I knew many who were not, and those folks I would worry about if they tried to do what I have done. I can say that now--because I have made my way through the worst of it, and can look back to see my path.

After those first six weeks, I started adjusting.

Like so many other caretakers of the sandwich generation, I felt guilty when I wasn’t caring for one generation or another. Add to this the pressures of a new job. Doing something totally, completely, and only for me was not common. If I wasn’t carrying for my mother, I felt I should be playing with my daughter, and if I wasn’t with my daughter, I thought I needed to be cheering up my mother. And besides this, I had a job to do. I became lost between the different claims made on me.

A few weeks into my new job, I knew I had to change that. As I found my work life more full of people, leaving smaller gaps for me to be alone and peaceful, I had to work to bring those moments into my home life. Yoga, listening to music, sitting on my porch after everyone else was asleep, writing—all these helped.

But that made the difference was a change in the way I experienced “peace.” Until then, I needed exterior peace to feel it inside. Quiet, solitude, beauty, calmed me. But with less time for these moments, I had to change the way I arrived at that peaceful feeling. Moving through my new environment, I started to work on carrying that feeling with me, regardless of where I was, who was with me, and what I was doing.

I imagined myself in mountain pose—grounded and strong--and the wind blowing around me, creating swirls of dust and debris. The mountain cannot bow to the wind, but remains itself in the middle of the chaos of otherness. I tried to be a mountain amid the multiple demands pulling on me.

Some days I was more successful than others. But overall, now I can say that I am now feeling more like a mountain than a valley.

Now, well into my second semester, I love my new job. The students, more than anything else, have won me over. (more later)

As a single mom teacher in a public institution, my job is no longer secure. Last night, Republican Jim DeMint was elected US sentator from my state of South Carolina.

For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, here is the info:

From the AP story at http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2394024

In a debate Sunday with Democrat Inez Tenenbaum DeMint said openly gay people should not be allowed to teach in the state's public schools.

DeMint defended that remark during an interview with the Aiken Standard on Tuesday and said he would feel the same way about single, pregnant women who lives with a boyfriend teaching a third grade child. He said teachers should be held to a higher moral standard.

From the Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40620-2004Oct17.html

The Republican nominee in South Carolina's hard-fought U.S. Senate race apologized yesterday for saying gays and unmarried mothers should not teach in public schools, but he stopped short of retracting the statements.

Jim DeMint said he regretted the comments, made in a recent debate, because they distracted voters from "real issues" such as jobs and national security. Repeatedly asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether gays and single mothers should qualify as teachers, DeMint said local school boards should decide.

Here is his "apology" from http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2394024

In a prepared statement Wednesday afternoon DeMint said he was speaking as a parent who wants the best for children. On Wednesday he released this apology:

Those of us who are parents know that feeling in your gut -- every time you drop your child off at school, it’s an act of faith. You trust a group of people – the principal, the teachers, even the janitors, with the most precious thing in your life – your children. And you just want what’s best for them. So as my wife often reminds me, sometimes my heart disengages from my head and I say something I shouldn’t – and that’s what happened yesterday. I clearly said something as a dad that I just shouldn’t have said. And I apologize. As a Senate candidate, it is my responsibility to present ideas and to answer questions in a way that will let people know what I will do as their U.S. Senator. I did not do that in this instance.


You can see why I am concerned. Overall, he presents his apology (in this and other venues) by making a claim for himself that he doesn't allow for the gay and single mother teachers: that his public and private lives are separate. He presents his private role as "dad" who opposes "immoral" people teaching his grandchildren as separate from his public role as "candidate for senator." He argues that his private views will not affect his public life. He, as the public senator-hopeful, steps out of it, saying, "let the school boards decide," while as the private dad, claiming the statements as his own personal beliefs makes it clear that he will encourage school boards to follow his very public lead through his personal example. The sad part is that these statements probably helped him get elected in SC.

It's not that DeMint accidentally said something that didn't represent his beliefs. He accidentally said something that did. And it is the beliefs I have a problem with. The principle of natural rights says that I can continue on pursuing my beliefs, desires and dreams, acting as I wish with freedom--until my path impinges on another's right to do the same. Saying that single mothers can't pursue their professions because they are immoral is impinging on others' rights. In particular, mine. And it is illegal as well as immoral.

While I am not teaching 3rd grade, and I don't have a boyfriend living with me, I am still a single mom teaching in a public institution in the state of South Carolina. That my fellow South Carolinians would elect such a man to represent them in the Senate makes me wonder about my future in this state as a teacher.

I am an award winning teacher with ten years experience in higher education, but this senator-elect values my personal life over my work in the classroom, and, apparently, so do many of my neighbors. Wouldn't you think that they might be glad someone like me stays in the classroom? And stays in SC? But politics are more important than education, then individual lives and dignity, than loving your neighbor. Judging your neighbor has become more important.

Unethical southern politicians on both sides of the aisle have often focused on dividing voters into an "us" versus "them" mentality. Now that politicians have learned that they can't openly use the race card to win elections, they have chosen new scapegoats to rally the voters: gays and single mothers. I hate that this technique continues to work despite the claims for a "New South." We should be smarter than that. But we aren't. Really, there is no "New South"--just new ways of playing the same old game of bigotry.

I have to say, that as a southern single mom teacher, I am quite discouraged right now. I have battled throughout my life with my conflicting love and hate for the south. Yes, I know it is cliche for southern intellectuals to have this ambiguity, but it has become a cliche for a reason. Repetition.

We keep fighting the same battle over who counts under "all men are created equal." In the beginning of the US, only white men who owned land could vote and were considered "human." Later, white men who didn't own land were added to the legal definition that allows full participation in our society. Then non-white men. Then women. But we all know that this wasn't really practiced. So, the Civil Right movement of the 1960's and the Women's Rights movement of the 1970's worked to reaffirm those rights. So, now it is illegal and completely uncool to attack someone because who they are. Instead, the GOP claims to attack people for what they believe and how they act, using "morality" as a sword rather than as a lesson. But it is still attacking people for what they are--gays and single moms--and while they can cloak it in all the so-called morality they like, it is still bigotry.

So, I walked into my classes today, and though I have not yet this semester discussed politics, I told my college-age students that they were being taught by a single mom teacher and that if they wanted to leave my class for the fear that my immorality might affect them, I would let them. We then discussed DeMint's definitions of who can be a teacher in South Carolina public schools. And because they like me and also voted for DeMint, they battled with their own ambiguity. To get out of this quandry, I imagine many of them used the age-old southern mental trick of "you're an exception" to the larger rule that devalues your group, the same logical fallacy that has allowed some southerners for generations to love the individual black people they know but hate the race.

I am mad about it. If I had tenure, or even a tenure-track job, I might wear a tee-shirt that says, 'Single Mom Teacher" on the front and put a picture of handcuffs on the back. But, no, I won't. I don't have that kind of freedom of speech. I can't risk my job. After all, I am supporting my family.

Well, if DeMint gets his way, and I lose my job, hey, I can always go on welfare, and really become what he hates.

Can a mom leave a tenure-track job to care for children, then, when her children are older and she is single again, get another tenure-track job? We'll see if this one can.

Now is the time that colleges and universities start the hiring process for next year. First, the job list comes out in October, interviews happen at the MLA conference in December, and then on-campus interviews take place between February-March. While there is much variation within that schedule (for example, a school finds out a faculty member will be leaving in the middle of the year), this is the way it generally goes.

The job list is out, and last night, I ran a search for assistant professor positions in 19th century American literature located on the East Coast. My now ex-husband recently moved from the San Francisco Bay area to Atlanta to be closer to our daughter, so I have promised to try to stay within the same time-zone, more or less. I know limiting myself by geography is not a good idea; I should be willing to go anywhere. But I am not. I am not willing to move more than a reasonable plane ride from family in North Carolina and now in Atlanta who can help me raise my child. No way. Not again. So, already, I am limiting my chances, I know. But that is a risk I have to take. But it seems not such a bad one. The search engine gives me back 16 good sounding job announcements.

I look at the 16 and think, this is manageble. With my 4/4 teaching load, the research projects, my child care duties, and my need to sleep, I can handle applying for 16 jobs. I've reworked my vitae, am waiting for updates on reference letters, and added a new writing sample to my dossier. I am ready. Or will soon be. Now, I need to start on the letters. I have templates, but each must be rewritten for the particular school and job. Better get to it.

Oh, what money can buy.

Most of my friends would be shocked to hear me say that about money. but right now, I am glowing with the money. Because I now have a nanny. A fantastic nanny. A woman who I also like as a friend. A care giver who thrills my daughter when she arrives each day. A mom herself whose daughter the same age as Sarah comes with her each day to our apartment. A woman I trust and who has made a commitment to us. A helper who will stay.

I feel like I have been released from a tar pit, a primeval morass of blackness pulling on my flesh, my bones, my heart. Last semester, I could feel it thoughout the day, sapping my energy and strength. I feared its depths, its hold on me. Now it is gone. I have a nanny.

Don't get me wrong. Last semester wasn't as bad as it could be, I know. Fortunately, my work in the academy is such that I can take some of it home. Like doctors and lawyers, professors don't do the bulk of their work sitting in their offices. Their work happens elsewhere. The offices are just convenient meeting places for seeing students and colleagues. So, ultimately, I can have more time with my daughter than most full-time working mothers who are chained to a desk nine to five. And, also fortunately, the preschool that Sarah attended last semester was the best of the best. I know I was lucky compared to other single mothers even last semester. Even amid the tar pit.

But I still had to leave my daughter for 5-6 hours a day in group care, and that kind of care, no matter how good, comes with problems.

Then, I watched good teachers spread themselves too thin. Now, I know that Sarah will get specialized attention, will eat when she needs to eat, will sleep when she is ready, will not be forced to anyone else's schedule because of numbers.

Then, I saw favorite teachers leave the school as they moved on to other jobs. In addition, Sarah's care givers would change throughout the day, sometimes to people neither she nor I had ever met before. Now Sarah has consistency: she is with the same care giver each day, every day. She can count on that.

Then, most days I would leave Sarah crying. Now, when I leave to go to work, Sarah smiles, hugs me, and turns back to play with her new friend. I go with a light step. Nothing holds my feet to the ground. I have escaped the tar pit of guilt and walk freely to class. Because I know my daugther is happy. And THAT is worth any amount of money.

Other mother friends have said, "How do you afford it?" All I can think is " How can I not?" Yes, I won't be able to buy the things I might have bought, or travel where I might have wanted to travel, and I will need to pinch pennies. But I am buying something far more worthwhile each time I pay my friend the nanny: freedom from black ooze between my toes and in my heart.

The MLA.

For most English, Language, and Writing professors these three letters conjure up images of 8,000-10,000 people in glasses and tweed descending on a unsuspecting city, stress-filled interviews in cramped hotel rooms, and hours of conference presentations in a strange, secret language. Actually, I was surprised. Usually, I hate going to the MLA. This year, it was a holiday for me.

Only life as a single mother professor could make the MLA fun.

It's been years since I attended, but I went this year with daughter and soon-to-be ex-husband as childcare provider in tow. I tell you....things have changed, or maybe I have.

I saw children there. Many of them. They ran through hallways, banging on doors. The stood on the chairs in the lobby, waving out the windows. They climbed wrought iron railings along the stairways leading up the mezzazine. I even went to a cash bar in which parents were passing around an infant. I don't remember seeing so many children at the MLA before. But then again, maybe I didn't notice them because at that point, I was wearing the lenses of a non-parent that allowed me to not register children, except as a nuisance. "What IS that child doing?" I thought of the MLA as an adult play space: no kids allowed.

This year, however, I felt welcomed as I trotted through the lobby with my two-year old daughter. Other conference goers smiled and laughed at Sarah's exhuberant tap dancing on the marble floor with her new ruby red shoes. One handsome man even watched us as we clicked across the floor, a longing in his eyes. I was flattered by his face, his acceptence of me and Sarah as a team, his obvious interest. I didn't expect it. I expected to be invisible, like children and mothers once were to me. As a mother, I never thought anyone would notice me.

I also never imagined how wonderful it could be to have a wife. During those four days in San Diego, I had the team player I always wanted in my husband. He took Sarah to the zoo, the aquarium, walking on the beach, and out for ice cream. I went to paper sessions, met old friends for lunch, and actually went out for a drink one evening. I had not taken this kind of personal freedom since Sarah was born. I was giddy. Of course, it was only a moment in time. My soon-to-be ex-husband went back to his regular self the minute the conference was over. But those glorious few days. Wow. So that is what it is like to have a wife. No wonder men don't want to give up their traditional wives. I wouldn't either.

So, for a few days, I integrated my work and private lives. I heard a conference paper, then went upstairs to put my daughter down for nap, then went back to hear another paper. I moved through spaces filled with professors, my daughter's hand in mine. I met with helpful professional friends who gave me advice on the job market, sure, but also on being a mother in the academy, on getting by on my own, on surviving divorce. My two worlds came together, and I felt powerful and respected and important in each.

Now my job is to carry that feeling with me as I move into my daily life. The barriers between my two worlds is created mostly by me. I know some of it may be reinforced by what is in the academy, but only if I let it in, can it make me feel lesser. Only if I internalize the oppression, can it really wound me. Time has come to stop expecting or hoping for invisibility.

I think that at times I have tried to make myself smaller than I am in an effort to be pleasing. A southern girl at heart, I have masked my intelligence so no one would think I was "putting on airs." I have purposely played down myself so that others would not find me intimidating. I have remained silent when I should have spoken. I have remained still when I should have moved. And this thinking has traveled with me into motherhood, at least in part. Don't stand out. Don't make yourself visible. Subsume yourself in your motherhood. Be the role. Yet, I know I am more than the role. I have more to say, more do, more to be. So I am in conflict with myself. Wanting to be seen and not seen, to be and not be, to lose myself in the role and to find myself there.

This trip to San Diego brought it all out. And I felt, once again, how good it feels to be see, to do, to be. And there is no going back now.

I look through the glass into Sarah's classroom. She has her back to me, but other children around her notice me. Their faces light up, and they drop their toys to run toward the door. Sarah, seeing the general movement, turns to see what has gotten them so excited. I push open the door and am nearly knocked over by the small bodies wanting to touch me. I hold out my arms and give a big, group hug. I wish my own students were even 1/10th as happy to see me as these.

Then my own little one works her way through the crowd, and puts her arms around my neck. Claiming me. She looks me in the eye and says, "Go home, Mommy?" Yes, we are going home. We get her coat from the cubby, say goodbye to all her friends, and we head out the door, her small hand in mine. She is triumphant.

Right now, I am her "best thing." Later, I will be replaced by a doll or a friend or a rock star, but right now, I get to be the rock star, even just for a little while.

I met my last class for this semester on Friday. What a relief. I am now a set of graded papers and exams away from the end. I don't think I have ever had a more difficult semester, nor do I think I have ever handled challenges better. After moving across the country, teaching four sections of composition, starting divorce proceedings, initiating a national job search, and learning to mother in a new way, I am still here. Still teaching. Still mothering. That is a testament to something.

Today is the last day my daughter's favorite teacher at the USC/Gateway Child Research and Development Center, Katie, will work. She is taking her warm smile and her MA in early childhood education to a job with better benefits, hours, vacations, and pay. And we professors think we don't get enough for what we give. Early childhood educators get even less. I hate a system that values teaching children so little as to not offer the pre-school teachers who teach the young children the same retirement plan, pay, or health benefits package that we the professors get for teaching the older children. I hate a system that ranks preschool teachers lower than professors. I hate a system that couldn't hold on to Katie.

I can't understand why this news hit me as hard as it did. When she first told me earlier this week, I cried like I had been told a relative was dying. I left the building, sat in my car, and cried some more. All day, my stomach ached with a new sense of emptiness.

Now, here is the last day, and I need to go buy her a present. I want to find her something that will thank her for making it ok for me to leave Sarah and go to work, for helping me through this very rough transition, for giving me faith that Sarah would be just fine. But I can think of nothing that would honor her enough. Flowers? Candy? Books? A little statue that says, "great teacher?" They all seem too trite.

To compound my sense of emotional turmoil, I don't even know what teacher will be in the classroom with Sarah on Monday. I know Angie and Andrea will be there in the morning, teachers Sarah's knows and likes, but she doesn't run to them like she runs to Katie. Katie makes Sarah smile even on her grumpiest mornings, knows how to play with Sarah's hair to put her to sleep, and remembers that Sarah's favorite color is pink. She holds Sarah in her arms to play with her, laugh with her, and to comfort her when she cries. I've watched other teachers try to talk children through their tears, as if words can ever be enough. Katie knows that the human touch is the most important comfort, and doesn't leave a child to cry alone. Katie isn't afraid to touch, cuddle, and love because, I think, she realizes there is enough love inside her to go around.

Why can't we reward USC/Gateway preschool teachers like Katie with decent wages and benefits? What is our problem?

Unfortunately, I don't think it will be only Katie that we lose. Andrea, Angie, and other excellent teachers will be next if we don't do better for those who are doing so much for our children. We need to honor our preschool teachers with the dignity and money they deserve.