ROADBLOCKS, DETOURS and ROUNDABOUTS

Returning to full-time teaching after such a long time away required a leap of faith. I went from a controlled, perfect little family situation where there seemed to be no problems at all, to a classroom where I was seen mainly as another challenge for the more aggressive students. The class knew they’d run out their previous teacher. If they tried hard enough, surely they could get rid of me too.

In fairness, they weren’t all bad. Most were average kids and some were darlings, but there were a few who made it their goal to make my day as miserable as possible. As for my coping methods, they were initially non-existent. I cajoled, coaxed, sometimes bribed, frequently lectured – all the things teachers do when they’re desperate for cooperation in the class, but which can actually make things worse. Gradually, though, I began to relax a little, and I found ways to insert a bit of my own personality and creativity into the class. If they still hated me, they didn’t hate me “quite as much,” and I began to feel the teacher in me come alive again, after years of hibernation. I loved it.

In the meantime, my husband took a job as Sales Manager to a dealership. The week he was to start, he fell on an icy spot outside and broke his wrist very badly. It was so smashed that they couldn’t even connect the parts back together. Instead, he wore a frame on the outside, and each week he tightened the screws so the bones would be closer and could knit. He was very lucky. It healed well enough. The job didn’t last long, though, and soon it was off to another dealership, this time as a Fixed Operations Manager. Things weren’t good there either. It was a long drive away, he was working ridiculous hours, and the profits weren’t what they should be. One day, he got fed up and quit. We grabbed the boys after their soccer game and flew to the Bahamas for our first holiday in years, then immediately began to fret about the cost of everything. Going on a holiday when you’ve just given up a job isn’t always as relaxing as you’re anticipating it will be.

We were home a week when he got a call to go into a consulting company with a woman from Vancouver. She wanted a partner and assured him he could get lots of work. The problem was, it meant he’d be away a good part of the time.

The boys were in grades 7 and 9. I was teaching Grade 7 and bogged down with work each night, and now my husband was away as long as two weeks at a time, usually in Vancouver. Both sons were at the age when they needed lots of parental guidance, and here I was, buried in my office marking schoolwork. I still cringe at the nights I had to get out of bed at two a.m. and hop in my car to pick him up from his red eye flight into Toronto. There were times I’d get lost and circle the airport for nearly an hour. I was drained, he was exhausted, and the kids were getting short-changed by both of us.

To make matter worse, the money was only 50% of what he’d been told to expect, but we were starting to feel like that was par for the course. And he and his partner were fighting. She lived in Vancouver, but kept sending him to Vancouver and taking the Toronto jobs herself. And she had the nerve to call me late at night and say that I was interefering by wanting him home more often.

The writing was on the wall. It didn’t last. By one good thing came out of it. While he was out west, he had lunch with an employee from Reynolds and Reynolds, a software company serving the needs of auto dealerships. Steve suggested they hire someone just like him to head a professional consultants group. The gentlemen left with the idea, and wrote it up for the company suggestion box

Two weeks later, Steve got a call from a headhunter for an interview. In the meeting, he began to describe a certain job, not mentioning the company. Steve stopped him and finished the job description. Then he named the company,. Sure enough, it was the job he had envisioned weeks before over lunch. He was hired.

That began eleven wonderful years for us. Life wasn’t perfect, but Steve was challenged and happy and in control, free to think outside the box and answering to few people, as long as he kept making them money. He had a generous expense account and gradually he built up an excellent team under him. He travelled a lot and loved it, and I accompanied him when I could. We made a wonderful group of friends, most of them part of his team or other colleagues. He felt successful in every way and life was very good. Yes, we sometimes overspent and had to cover more personal expenses than we anticipated, but we accepted that. Quarterly bonuses sometimes were a disappointment, but we still managed to buy RRSP’s. We weren’t paying our debts down as quickly as we should have, but we still felt it still was under control. Things will be better next quarter, we told ourselves. And sometimes, they were.

Why is it that we couldn’t even conceive of things getting worse? We refused to even entertain the possibility. And why is it that now, my son often says we are too negative. Gosh, I was so far from negative that a co-worker used to call me “up person.” It embarassed me, actually. To him, being so constantly happy was equivalent to being dumb. But when I think of it, being an eternal optimist, having blind faith in my husband and his co-workers, not seeing storm clouds rising, not preparing a cushion to support our fall…..maybe I was really just dumb. And maybe he was too.