excerpt
from
Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life
or How I Learned to Love the House, the Man, the
Child
By Faulkner
Fox
Harmony Books, January 2004 |
Joseph
did not like his first Gymboree class--if shrieking
non-stop was any indication of his mood. He kept blinking at the
bright lights in the huge gymnasium and recoiling from the shocking
red, blue, and yellows of the tumbling equipment. Nor did he like
the class finale: us moms holding an enormous parachute over our
babies who squirmed below on red tumble mats while Miss Kimmy, our
instructor, blew bubbles above the children’s faces, and we
all sang “The Farmer in the Dell” as loudly and enthusiastically
as we could. I had to drop my edge of the parachute in order to
bend down and pick up an utterly distressed Joseph. Miss Kimmy looked
askance since the parachute was meant to be an “independent
moment.” Too bad, Miss Kimmy. My child needed me, and moreover,
I needed the comfort of his sweet body pressed against mine as well
right then. If I’d been any less self-conscious, I might have
been shrieking along with my son.
What, exactly, did I
find wrong with this scenario? Call me overly intellectual or lacking
in a sense of play, but I realized I didn’t want to sing “The
Farmer in the Dell” with a group of other white women on a
Tuesday at 10 a.m. I might be cajoled to do this--ideally in a more
heterogeneous group--on a Saturday, but Tuesday morning was still
sacred in my mind. Tuesday was for work. Truth be told, I started
to fantasize about work as I stood there singing about the dell. Quick, I thought, let me call the other Dell, the high-powered
Austin one, and beg them to hire me even though I’m barely
computer literate. If they won’t hire me, maybe they can just
rent me a small cubicle so I can sit there and pretend to be part
of the adult world that matters again.
I felt split--deeply
so. I didn’t want to miss a second of Joseph’s day--I
could get weepy sometimes if Duncan gave him a bath without me--but
after four months of around-the-clock mom duty, I was also getting
antsy to re-join the larger adult world. I missed the world of working
adults periodically throughout my days at home as a full-time mother,
but the hunger was near constant at Gymboree.
This excerpt
is reprinted with permission from the author.
For more about Faulkner
Fox and her new book,
visit www.faulknerfox.com |
