I found out tonight that the job I had worked all year for, the one I so badly wanted I could taste, I found out that I did not get.
But that’s not what I want to remember in posterity. What I want to document about the whole thing is the way that my kids carried this with me. This great cosmic-emotional-transfer, this bearing of my burden that they in their youth and babyhood, took ---it is beyond any price.
Picture us in the family room. Me and the girls playing a slow and sneaky-spirited game of Uno. Geoff and the boys playing Egyptian laser-chess. We are wrapping up and the phone rings. It’s the director of counseling calling on our house line. I have been waiting for this phone call since March, when the applications were due. I take the call and am shocked at the reason I didn’t get the offer: Not because of my evaluations, not because I still have a year til I graduate. The reason is because I cannot work on Saturdays or evenings. When I was asked for my availability, that was the one thing that would not budge for me. After school and weekends are when I am with my kids. There was and is no way I will flex on that. She said that I’ve grown in my work and am an excellent counselor. The team that they are putting together at this time needs to respond to the demand for counselors in the evening and weekends.
So there’s that.
I quickly get off the phone and proceed to do an ugly cry into a towel. Geoff has been sitting by my side the whole time and quietly shushing the kids to go back upstairs and asking them to wait for us to come up and explain. Then, Clara, refusing to wait any longer, runs down and quietly asks me, “Mom, what’s wrong?” I tell her that I didn’t get the job I wanted at CCEF. And it goes like this:
“I thought you had a job at CCEF.”
“No, it’s been an internship. You don’t get paid for an internship.”
“Why didn’t you get it? Maybe they’ll change their minds and call you back. Let’s just see. . .” Then her eyes dart between the floor and my face, looking for a solution. You can see, she’s thinking she can find one.
Then I say, “No, Honey. I didn’t get it.” And she studies my face for a sec and it’s as if my grief and tears slide right onto her face and she starts crying painful sobs. Geoff and I carry her upstairs where Benicio is with Calliope in her room.
It is in that sweet moment, that I remember that being a mom is my real job and that they will only be this young once.
