Schizophrenia or My Life?

Is it just me or are the shifting roles throughout a working mom’s day enough to make you completely insane? Like the characters on “Lost” who seem totally okay, except when the random time travel starts to catch up with them and they get that telltale nosebleed indicating that their brains can’t take much more? (No, I don’t watch it anymore either.)

In the morning, I am the world’s worst drill sergeant, trying to get uncooperative kids off to school. They immediately have a million interesting things to do – or else are totally asleep because of all the interesting things they were doing at 11:00 the night before. My kids have perfected molasses-like movements in putting on boots and coats, etc. My script: “C’mon c’mon you’re going to be tardy, c’mon, C’MON!” In fact, I could run a recording of my lines daily, and get a little more sleep myself.

Then I try to turn into a productive member of society and go to work. Except I’m already mentally exhausted from the drill sergeant duty. It’s like 9 a.m.

I get to the law school. Get some work done. Maybe even teach a class.

Sometimes I shift into my creative writing personality – go off to playwriting class, sing crazy songs, talk about plays, check out everyone’s tattoos.

I return to the law school. Try not to fantasize about career as successful famous playwright. With many, many tattoos.

Meanwhile, those phone calls and emails and random ADD thoughts are coming in, relating to any and all of the above. Answer student emails! Call the school! Who’s picking everyone up? What meeting do I have to go to tonight? How did my kid get injured at preschool today? What’s due tomorrow? What’s for dinner? When can the law school committee meet? Who needs a letter of recommendation? What am I teaching in class this week? Who has to go to the doctor? What do I have to grade? When's the parent-teacher conference? What happens tomorrow?

That reminds me – human computer and calendar. My brain hurts.

In the evening, there might be some time as a loving parent. Unfortunately, I also have to be a child psychologist and social worker, and the occasional probation officer.

Not to mention the wife role, which I often ignore to my peril. Someone else needs my attention? Really? Now?

My parents are healthy, so I’m fortunately not in the position of having to parent my parents. But I see more roles on the horizon.

Yeah, I know I should slow down and enjoy this time. Too soon the kids will be teenagers, instead of pretending to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Jim and I will be older, and so will our parents. Work obligations and meetings won’t matter so much. There might not even be so many things on the calendar to keep track of, though I doubt it. (I mean, I’m sure to have a play premiering somewhere, right? Right?)

Until I can figure out a way to make it all work, the world whirls by, and I play catch up.

Say It Ain't So!

A new word has come into my home. "Ain't." Jonah picked it up at school, and now his little brother Mills is saying it too.

Growing up, I couldn't tell my parents about how "me and Melissa went to the store," without being interrupted with barely a syllable out - "Melissa and I went to the store," my mom or dad spoke over me grandly. Or else they'd ridicule: "Would you say, 'Me went to the store?'" Sometimes I would give up and refuse to tell the story. It drove me nuts, like they were more interested in correcting me than in hearing what I had to say.

Now I teach legal writing to law students, some of whom have never heard of subject-verb agreement. I can get a little nit-picky at times, I admit. But I know my students will lose the respect of some future clients (say, my parents) if their writing is incorrect.

I try not to be all over my own kids on grammar and usage. I mean, Jonah's only six, and Mills isn't yet four. I don't want to stifle them so that they don't talk to me anymore. Given my upbringing and occupation though, I can't always help myself. Still, it can be counterproductive. For example, now that Jonah knows I don't like "ain't," he uses it at every possible opportunity.

Lately, I've gotten used to my kids picking up language habits from their classmates in their racially and socio-economically diverse schools. A little Ebonics comes with the package, to be blunt about it. Parents whisper about this, but it's a pretty uncomfortable subject, fraught with race and class.

So I gently correct when Jonah pronounces "dead" as "deeyid" or when Mills tells me what another friend "brung" to school that day. It's a delicate balance - correcting their speech without judging their peers or the cultures they come from. I listened to Jonah exclaim "DANG!!!" for a couple straight days before I suggested that he might try to restrain himself.

The other day, when Jonah came home saying "ain't" I assumed it was more of the same. Wrong.

His teacher read a book to the class that day, entitled, "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!" So in kindergarten, where the children learn new words each day from their teachers, one of those words apparently would be "ain't."

I have a problem with this.

I wonder if there is a problem with me having a problem with this.

Jonah has a wonderful teacher. This year, he learned to read, to add and subtract, and much more. His teacher is so wonderful that I haven't been able to bring myself to mention my displeasure with the whole "ain't" thing. (Plus, I feel like the hyper grammar parent.)

On the sly, I looked up the offending book on Amazon. Supposedly, it is some award-winning beloved delight. Only a couple of grammar grouches like myself gave it bad reviews.

It's not like these are fully literate young minds reading Mark Twain. They don't know what is proper English and what is not. Their teacher is the wise guru at the top of the hill. If she says "ain't," it must be ok. But it isn't.

I remember a day in elementary school when the teacher taught us that the word was "ask" not "ax" and other similar lessons. Some students honestly didn't know until that moment. It wasn't their fault - they'd just never been taught the difference between colloquial speech and formally correct English.

I would think that this kind of teaching would still be a priority today.
Maybe it is.

Maybe it ain't.