Author: Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

Teacher Appreciation

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Come, Teacher, to the lounge

For here shall be brewed the day’s first coffee.

Please partake of the leftover donuts from yesterday’s meeting.

They are already kindly cut into fourths.

As the grounds are measured and you grip your mug with dry erase marker-stained fingers,

Remember last summer when you lingered over breakfasts –

Or over anything at all.

#

Harken to the percolation,  

Herald of the rising sun and the impending first locker slam.

The filling carafe draws all nigh:

Shop teacher, school nurse,

Part-timer with her omnipresent classroom on a cart.

The untenured. The veteran. The inter-building traveler.

The aide and the counselor. The music teacher and coach.

All the lanyard-wearing troopers who each morning achingly resist the temptation of the snooze button

To once again enter halls bedecked in inspirational messages.

Make Good Choices

Work Hard

Believe

#

Wait, drip by agonizing drip, and sort out the day with your fellow instructional pilgrims.

Is this a block day?

Who has lunch duty or pick up duty or playground duty?

Which students will be pulled from your class for trombone lessons, speech class, an interview with the newspaper, or a talk with the assistant principal?

Is there an assembly this afternoon?

Is today picture day or hearing tests or college visits or career day?

Talent show? Recital? Science fair? Book fair?

A fire drill? Tornado drill?

Or makeups for any of these?

Is there a meeting after school? During lunch? Right now?

Is it a team meeting? IEP? Grade-level? Department?

Is today the day to say goodbye to the secretary, hello to a student teacher, or welcome to another school here to observe?

Are Building and Grounds finally coming today to fix the heat in the hall that’s so chilly you wear gloves to supervise passing periods?

What day is this?

You just need to know because

There are papers to grade and plans to create, and your outdated bulletin board says

Fall Into Fall.

You need to know if

You’ll get time today.

#

Hear the coffee maker belch finis!

Fill your mug – the large one with World’s Best Teacher almost rubbed off from years of use –  and try to unscramble your To Do list from your

Really Have To Do list:

Write report card comments;

Analyze the last spate of tests which were given to predict future test performance;

Update the review game for next week’s quiz;

Find a moment to inhale a snack to prevent daily 10 am tummy rumble;

Decide if you can coach the debate team, cross country team, and robotics team;

Don’t forget you promised to bring lunch back up to your classroom to share with the student who told you her family can’t afford lunch and she’s too ashamed to take the cheese sandwich in front of her peers.

She’ll need your undivided attention, so updating the review game will

Have to Wait.

#

Hear the young laughter down the hall and know the day is about to start full force.

Maybe you’ll enjoy a few sips of this glorious coffee later.

But first, handle the Crises and Unplanned Things.

The substitute across the hall hasn’t shown up.

You offer to cover a class during your free period, as was done for you that week when the flu finally felled you.

You find your stickers and your stamps

 And a thousand ways to say

Try Again

Keep reaching

Yes, you will use this later on in life

Be magnificent. Be present.

Keep it up.

I believe in you.

Dig down so deep you feel the earth’s magma burning your soles.

Or maybe that’s the ache of being on your feet all day.

Brace for the nose blowing, coughing, the same question ten times,

And the magic moments when you have their focus and curiosity.

Usually, that’s when the intercom buzzes to ask for a child to come to the office.

You’ll then endeavor to recapture that momentum from a moment before

It’s gone

Somewhere.

(Perhaps out the window that never lets in enough air in late May.)

You’re ready for the handwashing and the lessons

Kindness

Tenacity

Coping

Striving

#

Clear a spot for your coffee amid the piles on your desk

But stop trying to match nameless papers with missing assignments when

 Someone knocks tentatively at the door.

A student who needs extra help

Or a student on crutches

Or one who will miss your class today

Or missed it yesterday

Or who is going on vacation and wants a week’s worth of work by lunch.

A student chomping gum up until the beginning bell

Who pushes you with his, “Yeah, but” responses

The one who wants her 99 to be 100.

Or who wants a chance to improve his hard-earned 80 because his father told him it’s not good enough.

Or who aches for the work to challenge him a little more and doesn’t know how to ask.

Or the one who struggles, or who is hungry or neglected

Or loved and still troubled by the mini-dramas in her life.

You don’t hesitate to invite that someone in.

#

Take a sip – two, if you’re lucky – and look at what is in your planner

And what is not.

The laughter, the “ohhhs”

The kids who show up with completed homework and the extra credit

And those who insist they never received it.

The ones who walk, the ones who run,

The ones who need help taking off

The ones who soar

The ones who just want you to see them.

All of them

Yours.

#

Grab your mug as the first bell rings

And smile into the cold dregs at those who blithely say,

“Those who can’t do, teach.”

Because you know that you teach because you can.

And you do – with all of your might

And the occasional boost of caffeine.

It’s OK to Say You’re a Mother

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The first piece of advice I got when I moved my career into the arts was “Don’t tell people you’re a mother.”  You’ll be considered one giant, boring, mockable stereotype. You won’t be considered for as many projects. It will be assumed that motherhood is your entire frame of reference.

I know this is not everyone’s experience, but I have bumped up against a lot of that — not only in the arts, but in the writing world, and in life.

As a culture, we laud motherhood. We narrow our eyes at mothering.

We are so much more than that one part of our lives, but nothing else we are is as all-encompassing,  rewarding, demanding, scary, promising, heartbreaking, joyful, or fraught as being mothers.

For those of us who gaze at our maternal navels, it’s the push-pull of it all. The messaging – internal and external – about motherhood is replete with contradictions. And if we spend too much time trying to sort it out (after all, the stakes are pretty high) the message is that we’re self-absorbed, that we’ve turned parenting into a gross religion.

In a desperate attempt to understand what is baseline normal (Psych! No such thing!), it can get competitive, or, worse, lonely. Too often in the writing world, motherhood is infantilized and considered a cute niche. We’re called “mommy bloggers” for heaven’s sake, a term that while not necessarily insulting, does not feel overburdened with respect.

That’s where Listen to Your Mother swoops in to save the day with a holy “Yes! Me, too!”

We’ve sloughed off the memes about yoga pants and chardonnay, and we’ve gotten raw and real about motherhood.

LTYM offers up personal stories about motherhood read by the authors. Our stories are our hearts laid bare. What is shared is real, tender, strong, heartbreaking, and hilarious. No one shies away from diving into the depths of motherhood, where we can be afraid and strong, direct and arch, vulnerable and impenetrable.

If there is a golden thread that runs through it all, it seems to me that we are cracked open and then put back together over and over again by motherhood. Being put back together isn’t the same as being made whole, though. Often there are rough places and beautiful fissures held together by sheer will and love.

This past Sunday, we had our final rehearsal for the Chicago show. I was honored to again hear the stories that reached in and stripped me completely and the stories that wrapped around me in ways I didn’t even know I needed. The stories that made me laugh and cry. The stories of our feet of clay and shoulders of steel. I don’t cry easily, but I cried the tears of being overwhelmed and the tears of being emptied – the tears of motherhood.

The stories are beautiful, belonging to the storytellers and gifted to the rest of us. I hope you will give this gift to yourself and to your loved ones.

And you will want to shout to the world, “I’m a mother*, too!”

For more information about Listen to Your Mother, or to purchase tickets, please click here.

*or “I’m a mother-figure!” or “I have a mother!” or simply “Hooray!”

Monopoly, pivot, pivot!

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“For Pete’s sake, Eunice, cheer up.”

We were not much of a board game family growing up. Oh, occasionally we’d pull out Pictionary or Scrabble, but more often than not, “family down time” was for individual pursuits, most likely all of us reading somewhere in the same house. Board games were usually like this:

 

Didn’t stop us from trying every six months or so. Almost always on vacation. Almost always not worth it.

So when my children ask to play a game –always when I’m feeling complete eviscerated by life, always when I’m exhausted, and always Monopoly – I groan.

Inwardly, I mean, because I usually say, “Ok.” If I’m lucky, I can put it off until some unspecified “later” – they always claim it, though. On rare days, they forget they asked me and get caught up in other things. That right there is the magic of parenting.

Usually, though, we play and it’s tedious and we practice counting (when they’re little) and strategy (when they’re big) and still there are winners and losers. I love the bonding time, I don’t like that I have to roll dice or gather play money or keep someone from chewing on little plastic pieces to get to the good stuff – the little life lessons, the small moments, the catching my kid trying to steal money from the bank. That kind of good stuff.

And sometimes there’s no good stuff. There is only the game and indulging the kids in a lot of what they want to do.

Board games. Bored games. BORED games.

When my husband and I were dating, he pulled out a board game – perhaps trivial pursuit, but I can’t be sure– and I honestly thought it was going to end our relationship because I thought I would die from the tedium of it.

Board games are the equivalent of square dancing: structured, rule-based, and involving at least one person stomping every few minutes.

Fun fact #1: We had three weeks of square dancing in 6th grade gym class.

Fun fact #2: I was one hell of a square dancer in 6th grade gym class.

Fun fact #3: I’m not proud of fun fact #2, but it’s a source of endless amusement for pretty much everyone but me.

I have yet to see a board game bring out the best in anyone, except for perhaps for latent competitive streaks and/or the best pout. (Mine is the best pout, btw.)

And this is the sort of thought that tickles at my mind when I’m not busy trying to work or be a better human or help my fellow Earth travelers. Banal thoughts like: Ddoes it mean something that I don’t like board games? Do I suck? Am I overthinking this? Am I completely un-fun? All of these can and will, of course, be answered by reading online comments on any article about parenting.

Because I lead a very interesting life, I’ve had conversations with people about board games, during which I tend to mention that they’re not my favorite activity. This usually prompts the listener to chime in “I LOVE BOARD GAMES!” (And it’s always Monopoly.) And they seem honestly troubled that I don’t. So, I go back to safer topics like circumcision or politics.

SORRY!

You know who doesn’t get tied up in knots about things like that? J.K. Rowling. She really cuts through the crap. Or she just gets rid of it by flinging it at appropriate targets.  I like that about her. I think we’d get along brilliantly. I hope she’s an introvert. Then we could hang out,  have meaningful conversations, not play board games, and trade good books every once in awhile.

Or, better, we could do this:

Pivot with me now:

There was a time I carried my Franklin Planner around with me. I don’t anymore, mostly because people kept thinking it was a bible and wanting to pray with me while I was trying to schedule things like dental appointments and leg shaving, which felt awfully sacrilegious. Also, I don’t carry a Bible around with me.

I still use my Franklin Planner for day-to-day stuff; however, for creative/writing scheduling, I am still using my Bullet Journal.

Maybe by 2018 I’ll consolidate everything into one BuJo (Look at me with the lingo). I will never convert to an electronic calendar system completely. DH and I coordinate that way, but that’s for the benefit of on-the-go scheduling, a sort of “who is able to do this other thing with the kids?” convenience. I’m not a technophobe, but I’m also the type of person who puts post-it notes on her phone. Like literally. Not the virtual kind. And this is not a bad thing.

Pivot again –  something to chew on that’s not bite-sized or petite.

Pivot! (We’re dancing here, folks!) “Any work of art quickly reveals itself to be a linked system of problems”

Pivot just because this makes me laugh:

Unrelated: I like Chekhov quite a lot. 

Last pivot:

This past weekend, I had my first rehearsal for LYTM, and I am excited to be getting to the next phase of it all.  I will write more about that later this week, but I hope you will catch one of the many LTYM shows across the country in the next few weeks. Check it out and see if you can find a show in your neck of the woods.

(Do woods have necks?)