On my most well-behaved days, I do not covet my neighbor's Tesla. Or her 2,500 square feet. Or even her family's winery. But mornings are another story.
I guess this all started because I didn't feel like other people were hurrying as much as me. Or maybe it was when I realized that my husband might not delight in listening to me declare that I must be the only mom in Napa who speed-walked to her car after kindergarten drop off, trying to get to work on time. It also could have been the pajamas I wore to school. However it started, my thing about mornings leads to pie.
One of the great perks being a middle school teacher is that you never miss an opportunity to observe an arbitrary date-turned-special-day. March 6, for example, is National Oreo Day (Who knew!). And every September, I can count on a handful of students, and some very charming colleagues, to remind me of National Talk Like a Pirate Day, explained nicely here. In March, on 3/14, we celebrate... you guessed it: National Pi Day. It's as good a time as any to stick my thumb into my own pie problem.
My problem is this: there is no pie. No joy pie, no grief pie. And no morning pie. I first read it over a decade ago; of the thousands of Anne Lamott's words that I've drunk in, the ones about The Pie burrowed themselves the deepest into my skin:
"I know that when someone gets a big slice of pie, it doesn’t mean there’s less for me. In fact, I know that there isn’t even a pie, that there’s plenty to go around, enough food and love and air.
But I don’t believe it for a second.
I secretly believe there’s a pie. I will go to my grave brandishing my fork."
(You can re-read that if you want. Let it be the tres leches, and you be the cake.)
I have been waving my rhinoceros-sized fork down Highway 29 for months. I have wanted to stick it in the tires of the Mercedes Benzes that cruise into town without any child safety seats or stale cheerios gumming up their morning commute. I have harbored secret desires to use my fork to skewer holes through the yoga pants of moms who loiter around the kinder playground looking relaxed. I have yearned to throw a fork in the face of those who can depend on a longsuffering grandparent for help with their morning routine. And yet, that hefty sprinkling of bitterness has not made my pie taste one tiny bit better.
Mornings can be tough. It is not uncommon to be going- and without a minute to spare- for three solid hours until the minute I report for work. Which, by the way, is not 10:00. Not "when I feel like it". Is there a line at the gym because women are using shower stalls as their own private powder rooms? Fork. Do both my children still lack the ability to manage car seat belt, chest buckle, and middle buckle independently? Fork. Do I lose an extra 90 seconds when every. Single. Traffic signal. Is red? Fork! Do some moms make their own schedules? Work from home on Fridays? Did they inherit their house and never seem to be in a hurry, anywhere? I might need to start a flatware registry.
In this part of California, it is easy to feel like someone else beat you to the pie. We are not far from Silicon Valley, blooming with stories of entrepreneurs who retire as millionaires in their twenties. It has stretched the meaning of middle class. Our local economy is fueled by luxury wineries that, collectively, generate billions of dollars each year. It's impossible not to think that whoever is signing those checks must have a few family members who both make their own hours and enjoy calling themselves Hard Working Parents, while they hand their nanny the keys to the Land Rover. And let's not forget that some of the Bay Area's most notoriously affluent communities are less than an hour's drive away. I imagine they have time to savor designer coffee in the morning, go sailing in the afternoon, and have perfect teeth. That is a lot of big juicy pie. It's hard not to suspect that they must have stolen a little piece of mine and yours while we were racing around at dawn.
Here is the shocking part: no matter how white my knuckles turn, the grip on my fork has not made my pie any bigger.
Armed with whiskey in-hand and a supreme assumption of self righteousness, I've tried explaining to my husband that I was the only parent in Napa with these mornings. I'm not. When I think of the mom-colleagues I admire at work, I'd be deflated to consider that, behind their genuine smiles and simple strength, they were bittering up their pie as badly as me. The moms with whom I work are pillars; without them, our school's roof would crumple. We depend on them as part of our professional community, and they still have families. If they are harboring the same fork-flinging fantasies as me, they are doing so with infinitely more grace.
We've all got our thing. There are moms at drop off who are juggling four kids and look like they haven't slept through the night in years. Some of the dads are composed and casual, and they won't see their daughters again until bedtime. Some incredible humans manage to kick ass and be the only adult in the house. And, yes, there are also those at drop off who- despite Napa's steadily rising mortgages- will go meet a friend for coffee before they tidy up the house for the afternoon, and roll through their day at a gloriously slow pace. Making that a fork-able offense still hasn't done a thing for my pie.
Another day my school recently celebrated was Pajama Day. There was no National Day Calendar reference this time, just good old-fashioned middle school spirit week. (And, by the way, a teacher favorite.) It happened to coincide with my own self-reckoning about The Pie, so the wrinkle between my eyebrows was more relaxed than it had been in a while. I noticed a few sideways glances when I walked my son onto the playground, clad in a baggy velour sweat suit. She's finally one of us! I imagined a few moms in yoga pants thinking. (It could have just as likely been, Finally! Someone removed that stick from up her arse.) All the same, I sped through our goodbye routine and marched straight off to my car as if I had a job to do- because I did. And afterwards, I hit just as many red lights as I always do. But I decided to leave my fork at home. And what do you know? It made my morning a little easier, because I had two hands to work with.
There is no pie. Some people have predictable, easy mornings that involve slick-bottomed shoes and very little adrenaline. Some don't. It doesn't matter. I have often chirped to my own children in the midst of their tantrums, "The only person who is making you upset right now is you. The only person who can make you feel better right now is you." It's sound advice from someone who has a tendency to spend her mornings ping-ponging around Napa, heaping salt on her own slice of pie. These days, I'm trying to eat my own words as best I can. The pie is sweeter that way.
