In Praise of Knowing What You're Really Upset About

Sometimes a snow day is more than a snow day

Since my kids started school, I’ve lived in abject fear of random days’ off. While my kids rejoiced about “Professional Development” days for their teachers, I’d be in the corner chewing my hair and screaming into a pillow. Resistant. For years my story was that as a working mom, those many half-days and school holidays fell harder on me than on my husband. This burden had nothing to do with my husband’s willingness to jump in and spend hours with the kids or divide the day with me. The problem was my own internal conflict. I felt like I was supposed to drop everything— including the legal briefs due in federal court the next day— to make memories with my kids. Every second that I typed away on my computer, I imagined I was supposed to be downstairs making brown butter on the stovetop to drizzle over a Nordic pastry that I’d taught the kids to bake. I felt this deep in my guts, and I wasn’t even on Pinterest!

Photo by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash

And good luck trying to wrest my victimhood from me. No matter how evenly my husband tried to divide the day, I felt responsible for all of it. Why? Because my job was smaller (i.e., brought in less money). Because it wasn’t my deep soul’s desire to write briefs to file in federal court. Because I was socialized as a woman in the culture to put my kids first, ESPECIALLY if my job wasn’t my soul’s absolute calling. I wrestled for the entire day off. So unpleasant, and not just for me. I tried not to complain in front of my kids, but they could feel my thrumming unease. How must that have felt to them?

I learned to manage the holidays— those teacher in-service days in October, February and April. I girded myself. I made plans. Internally, I still went a little bonkers, but I gained more insight each year. Plus, let’s be honest, my kids got older and became teenagers who slept until 1pm or made plans with their friends. They want to walk to Starbucks with their friends, not make a pastry with me.

Last week, my kids’ school sent a notice on Tuesday night: “School closed tomorrow.” A snowstorm was expected in Chicago, and the administration didn’t want kids and parents risking life and limb to attend school. I love my community and want everyone safe too. Yes, I side-eyed the email because we are Chicago! We can do snow! What’s two inches to us! (Also, I have PTSD from the YEARS my kids were home during the pandemic.) I wasn’t buying that this “huge” winter storm was going to make traveling unsafe. (In the end, we got 2 inches of snow over several hours in the afternoon, and even my children agreed that they should have gone to school.) I admit it: the day was actually sweet and enjoyable— my kids went to lunch together, and I had plenty of time to do my work.

On this recent snow day, I remembered how much I hated days’ off as a kid. Snow days, in-service days, Texas State Fair days— I hated them all. I needed and loved the structure of school. At school, I didn’t have to entertain myself—the packed schedule occupied my busy brain. Spelling tests. Math lessons. Reading time. Recess. Being at home on random days’ off never felt like a treat. It felt like flailing in a suburban abyss. As much as I loved Price is Right, what I wanted was to be at my desk with my sharpened pencils, classmates all around me, and my teacher keeping tabs on all of us. I knew I was supposed to rejoice about days away from school, but I couldn’t. At home on a holiday, I had a sense I was supposed to be entertaining myself, but I wasn’t sure who I was: I wasn’t quite bookish enough to while away the hours in a window seat reading all of Laura Ingall’s Wilder’s oeuvre. My friends didn’t live within walking or biking distance, so I wasn’t building a tree fort down the street. It was 1980 so I wasn’t a video gamer or a porn addict. What was I? Lonely. Also, by middle school, my disordered eating had progressed to the point where unstructured time often meant binges or endless mental struggles about what to eat or not eat. Ugh. Just let me go to school!

Once, in third grade, the Dallas streets were icy, but my dad bravely drove me and my brother to school. There, we were two of about five kids who showed up for classes, which hadn’t been canceled. Because I was the only third grader, I got to sit in my brother’s fourth grade classroom where Miss Crawford gave me a blank map of the United States and told me to fill in all the states. Hell, yes! I correctly labeled Texas, California, Louisiana, and Oklahoma but got the other 46 wrong. Who cared? I was at school on this frozen day, happily chattering with the other kids. Such a cozy day! I felt sorry for my friends stuck at home watching Bob Barker smarm into his tiny little microphone.

Now, I’m fifteen years into motherhood, fearing another imminent school cancellation during this endless, grim winter, and I just tapped the root of my discontent. My hatred of snow days is more about how I felt as a kid than as a working mom. It’s never too late to peel back a layer of “days off” hate and to remember I’ve been a person who clings to structure, schedule, and regularity for a very long time. Probably my whole life. For many years, that rigidity saved me. And as my husband says, “Isn’t it great that our kids don’t need that like you did?”

Yes, yes it is.