musings on work and motherhood

Labor Day.

I've enjoyed many a nice, relaxing Labor Day in my lifetime.

Barbecues, parties, lemonade, sunshine, badminton games.  Soaking up the last rays of summer even as the first leaves of fall begin to float to the ground, and the breezes take on the chill of September.

But I've never before felt the impending labor of the year to come so acutely as I did today.  You see, I have a baby now.  I am a wife, a mother, a violinist, a teacher.  I am a woman, like thousands of women, who suddenly finds myself pulled in many directions.

What did I used to think, that flippant girl of the past?  Some mothers choose to stay home, and some mothers choose to work, of course.  As though there's ever anything simple or straightforward about it.  Silly, unaware former self.  It would be closer to the truth, I suppose, to say that some mothers choose to stay home, some mothers want to but can't, some mothers choose to work, some mothers don't want to but must... and all mothers, I now imagine, agonize over these decisions.

I have no right to complain.  Most weeks this fall I'll be working less than 20 hours.  Some weeks, depending on orchestra schedules, there will be another 3-12 hours of evening and weekend rehearsals and concerts.  But still, hardly a 40 hour work week.  And most of my teaching I get to do from my home studio.  My students are, for the most part, a rewarding bunch of little people to work with.  My gigs involve Tchaikovsky and Beethoven and Brahms and Mahler, among others -- all quite exciting and certainly worthwhile.  It's not that I don't want to work.  I love my work.

With all these good things in my life, why do I still feel my heart breaking a little bit each time I look at my fall schedule, at the hours blocked off for lessons each weekday afternoon and every Saturday?

My work this summer was very light: maybe 15 students a week, and a few gigs here and there.  

My fall schedule is going to be much more complicated, with the added factor that Nathan's schedule is getting busier, too.

I've stared at this schedule for hours.  I've sent emails and made phone calls, trying to fit 26 current students plus four possible new ones into time slots.  I've scheduled in nursing breaks, and conversed with Nathan time and again to try to work out our respective schedules -- the ever-changing and never normal schedules of two musicians.  

Before Nell was born, we had it all figured out.  Nathan could keep most of his work at the college to the mornings and early afternoons, and then he'd be with the baby while I taught lessons in the after-school hours and played gigs from time to time in the evenings or on weekends.  

Then the ensembles Nathan accompanies changed their rehearsal times to late afternoons and evenings.  And he was asked to be music director for a theater production at the college, involving most of his evenings from September through early November.  And he got a new church job as organist at this church, too.  His change in schedule sort of pulled the proverbial rug out from under me in terms of all our plans for his help with childcare while I work.  

So here I am, with 26 violin students, a children's orchestra to conduct, and five orchestras I play with regularly, plus a wide variety of other gigs that come up from time to time.  And a three-and-a-half month old daughter.

I really, really don't want to have to get sitters for Nell all the time.  It's not just the financial aspect, although obviously losing as much as 20% of my hourly teaching income to pay for childcare (and probably more than 50% when it comes to orchestra per-service pay) wouldn't be my first choice.  It's not just the logistics of arranging childcare, either, although with my unusual work schedule it could certainly be difficult to find good babysitters for her with some degree of regularity.  

It's also that I just want her with me all the time.  She's still so little.  I'm still so new to all this.  I miss her when she's in her car seat and I'm in the front seat driving, for crying out loud.  

I've talked to a number of colleagues who actually kept their babies with them as they gave violin lessons.  So for now, Nathan and I have decided, that's what we're going to try.  This is what I want -- having her with me.   So I should feel happy that I have the kind of job where I can do this.

But I'm also worried, and stressed, and imagining the worst.  What if she's fussing while I'm trying to give a lesson?  What if she won't nap?  What if she won't nurse during the scheduled breaks in my teaching schedule, and then is hungry while I'm teaching?  What if she needs me and, in that moment, I'm torn between the need to be my students' teacher and the need to be my daughter's mother?

My students' parents are great.  They often offer to hold Nell, and never complain about having her in lessons.  In fact, I even had a student ask to switch her summer lesson time to a time when Nathan wouldn't be home to watch Nell, so Nell could be in the lesson.

So I don't know why I'm stressed about the possibilities of things going badly.  Worst case scenario: it isn't working to have her sit in her swing during lessons and she becomes a distraction.  I find some combination of babysitters to be with her during the afternoons, and she's still only a room or two away from me.  And Nathan's committed to taking care of her most Saturdays for the fall, when I teach from 10:00-4:30.

I suppose this uneasiness of mine is fear of the unknown.  No doubt things will settle into a routine, a new kind of normal, and whatever that may end up being, the reality of it will be easier to deal with than the unknown I gaze into right now.

Most boring blog post ever?  Possibly.

Just the musings of a mom whose heart is torn between all the duties and obligations of life, between the wants and the needs and the musts.

There are hundreds of other stories like mine, I think.  I'm looking at the mothers of my students in a new light now.  And I don't know how my friends who work full-time while raising kids manage it all.  And I'm pretty convinced, now that I think about it, that all these moms are the most amazing people in the world.  (I know mine was.)

I have a lot of things to juggle this fall.  

In the end, I can only do my best to be the best teacher I can be... while also being the best mother I can be.  

{Being Nell's mom: that's my most important job, after all.}