" Kleine Kinder Kleine Sorgen, Große Kinder Große Sorgen."

  Literal translation:  “Small children, small worries, big children, big worries.”

     “Kleine Kinder kleine Sorgen, große Kinder große Sorgen.”  Loosely translated: as your children grow, so do their problems.  My father said this so often, especially after the fourth time I crashed his car.  Until recent years, I never really comprehended the value of this German adage.  I remember one important moment in my early days of motherhood, sitting outside with my visiting neighbors.  I must have looked exhausted and spent, as I held my newborn.  My neighbor, a mother of three teenage girls, turned to me and said, “This is as easy as motherhood is ever going to be.”  I couldn’t believe she said that!  How could that be?  I was an exhausted slave to this tiny being who insisted on nursing for eight hours a day.  It had to get easier!

     My sons did not navigate their preschool and elementary years in typical fashion.

Teachers and Summers!

Photograph by Erika Munz

By Erika Munz
-Dedicated to my dear friend Monica Coash; a teacher who never had a summer off and who was my loudest cheerleader in all endeavors. 

     I’ve been a telemarketer, a stage manager/technician, a preschool teacher, an auditory training technician, and a department store cashier.  (Among other jobs my fifty-five year old brain refuses to acknowledge.)  My favorite was the substitute preschool teaching position, even when the two-year olds whined for their Miss Nancy to return.  (Apparently preschoolers have an aversion to walking in single file.)  All experiences I would have missed if I hadn’t become a teacher and had summers off.  As I sat in my third training this summer,

A Working Mother?

     
   
     There is no role with which I have identified more than that of a working mother.  Like most humans, I’ve carried many labels.  I've been a daughter, sister, student, teacher, friend, and wife.  None has ever defined me as much as being a working mother.  Becoming a mother was a huge role that I wholeheartedly dove into and which did become a major part of my identity.  Going back to work, when my sons started school, thrust me into the role of working mother.  I wore that label like a badge of honor.