Twinning - A Bedtime Story

Hard-Boiled

I’m tired of being a hard-ass.

Warning: this is going to be one of those really whiny, irritating blogs.  The kind where I kvetch, complain and vent, thinking it will somehow be helpful and that I will feel emotionally cleansed afterwards, but in reality I will just wind myself up even further, and waste precious time I could spend living life to its fullest (snort) in the process. 

A friend and colleague recently pointed out that she didn’t perceive me as a hard-ass, and was curious to know what particular part of my daily life leaves me feeling that way.  I was at a loss for an answer:  I just assumed that it is clear to everyone around me that I am never not a hard-ass.  But then again, this friend benefits from working at a reasonable distance – of more than forty feet perhaps – from me for most of the day.  The difference between working consistently forty feet from someone and living or working closely with someone is like the difference between taking care of twin granddaughters and raising twin daughters.  The first situation can be enjoyed and then escaped by choice, while the second is both exasperating and interminable.  This particular friend has the advantages of both distance and a voluntary escape hatch.  Family members, colleagues, students and parents of students who have to work within twenty feet of me, do not. 

My question is, to what extent am I forced into being a hard-ass by the combination of my particular situations and relationships, (wife, ex-wife, daughter, mother-of-many, mother-of-teens, mother-of-twins, mother-of-many-girls, colleague, teacher of young children raised by affluent helicopter parents, musician), and to what extent am I simply a hard-ass by nature?  Did my “Just say no – firmly and frequently” philosophy come from years of practice, or is that who I am?  I wonder - do teachers, mothers and wives become hard-asses out of necessity, or do the very natures of these jobs bring out killjoy tendencies in some percentage of them?   Do all celebrity males become sexual addicts, or vice versa?  Do all surgeons become arrogant?  Do all orchestral conductors become megalomaniacs?  Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Quite frankly, I’m not sure I want to own the responsibility for being a tough nut since birth.  I’d much prefer to blame life’s circumstances for who I am, and who I’ve become, and let that be the end of it.  I really don’t want to think, talk, or write about this topic anymore.

I am perfectly happy, however, to talk at length about the chicken and egg thing: which comes first, and what happens next. 

We are raising chicken eggs in the PreK classroom right now.  Twelve lovely small white eggs laid by crested breed hens are rotating gently in the incubator as I write – hopefully at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  We had some initial trouble maintaining the temperature in the incubator: our building maintenance crew decided last week that it was time to turn off the heat for the year (New England in mid-April – what the fuck were they thinking?), and the incubator temperature has fluctuated with the nightly chilling of our classroom.  It took some hard-ass arguing on my part to get the heat back on.  But I’m not going to talk about that anymore.

The eggs have been incubating for twelve days now.  If all goes well (as it seemed to be until this morning’s disaster), in about nine more days, we will have some peeping and wiggling, and tiny cracks and holes will appear as our baby chicks use their egg teeth (egg tooths?) to open their little houses and join PreKindergarten.

I have been acting like a mother hen since their arrival; worrying, driving back and forth on weekends to make sure all is well, adding water and worrying and adjusting the thermostat and worrying some more.  As our class learns more and more about the development of chick babies in eggs, I am feeling more and more emotionally invested in a good outcome – a successful hatch.  I’ve taped the classroom thermostats in the “on” position, and posted signs ordering local classroom tourists and maintenance staff to keep their hands off the incubator and thermostat.  Don’t mess with my eggs, you asshole. 

But I’m really not going to talk about that hard-ass thing any more.  Back to eggs and chickens.

In an odd sort of thematic coincidence (oh alright, so eggs and spring do go together), an acquaintance recently posted a link to a website that has a running live video of a Bald Eagle nest on Catalina Island in California.  Two adorably fuzzy gray baby eaglets, just about two weeks old, are resting, eating, peeping, and staggering happily about their nest, flopping over in an endearingly clumsy way.  Mom and Dad take turns with the eaglets and the feeding: first sitting on the babies to keep them warm, and increasingly stepping back and letting them explore their world.  The video coverage is hypnotizing: I find myself visiting the website several times a day to watch the action – even when all are sleeping and there isn’t any. Each time I check, I hold my breath and am relieved to count two fuzzy babies, and see them move.   I’m not quite sure why the Bald Eagle nest fascinates me so much, but it does.  The parents are patient, protective and attentive, and share the care.  Dad brought two fish today.  One parent is always there, keeping a lookout.  If the eaglets edge too far from the nest, both Mom and Dad make sure they get right back where they belong.   I turn the sound up on my computer as I watch, and I can hear the wind, the nearby waves, occasional chirps and peeps and calls.  Food, water, shelter, and love: it all looks so idyllic and simple.

I do realize I am being horribly anthropocentric, and have possibly gone off the deep end by romanticizing the family life of Bald Eagles.  A storm could blow a baby eaglet off the cliff tomorrow; Dad could go off in search of fish and never return.  A hunter could creep close to the nest and blow them all away with a double barrel shotgun (though Mom would hopefully peck his eyes out first).  But I’m not going to think about the potential for disaster.  Life in the eagle nest seems blissfully simple; the birds depend upon each other, and the rules for survival are clear.

This morning I drove to school to discover the heat off again.  We had a hard frost last night; the classroom was chilly, and the incubator temperature had dropped from 100 degrees to a possibly deadly 97. I’m embarrassed to say that when I realized the thermostats in our room had been turned off, I lost it.  I marched over to the office of our Director of Buildings and Grounds and chewed the poor man out roundly and shrilly for our chilly classroom.  I ended my rant in full steam, with wildly flailing arms, shouting, “I don’t know about you, David, but I don’t want to be the one to tell thirty-six parents and eighteen children that their baby chicks died in the eggs because someone ignored our signs and turned off the heat!”

At that, I spun a quick one-eighty, and marched back down the hall and out the door.  As I stomped back to our cold classroom, it did occur to me, somewhat sheepishly, that I was acting exactly like an angry mother hen. 

You know – and I promise, after I say this, I’m not going to talk about it any more - hard-asses get really upset when the things they love and care about aren’t being taken care of, or taking care of themselves, in ways that will keep them happy and safe.  We feel responsible for our children, our partners, the students and animals and pets in our care.  We are responsible, and we are emotionally attached.  Because we love them, when things go wrong, it becomes all too easy to direct all that emotion into anger, and come down hard in a desperate attempt to make things right. 

Hold on a minute, Karen.  That was a nice mushy paragraph, wasn’t it?  I mean wow, great rationalization, dipshit.  I’ve just excused my bad behavior, and made myself sound wonderful, altruistic, loving and caring in the process.  I’m tough on people when things aren’t to my liking because I have to be?  I have no choice?

No, I don’t have to be a hard-ass to get things done.  In fact, I wish I weren’t.  But how do you change a way of being that has developed and cemented itself over forty-six years?

Yes, I’m tired of being a hard-ass, but I think I’m too tired to try not to be one.