Anomaly

Anomaly: something anomalous: irregular: deviating from the general rule.  That's what my life seemed to be filled with. 

A fourth grade teaching position became available at the elementary school my second year of teaching.  It was my dream job, the grade I had always wanted to teach, and I really enjoyed getting to move up.  My students were delightful, the staff were my friends, the subject matter was fun, and I dreaded going to work every single day.

The problem was, when I was at school I worried about how things were going at home.  I felt guilty for leaving my kids, for not being there to potty train the little ones, to read them stories when they went down for their naps, to kiss their cuts and scrapes, dry their tears, and hold them close and love them. I missed going on field trips with the older kids, helping out in their classrooms, getting to know their teachers, and being involved in their daily lives.  Mom took over for me, and she was a wonderful surrogate mother, much better than I was, but I resented not being the one to take care of my own children.

On the other hand, when I was home with the kids in the evenings and on weekends I couldn't concentrate on them without feeling guilty that I was neglecting my school work.  I knew I would be a much better teacher if I prepared more elaborate lessons, spent more time developing learning activities, put more thought into teaching and testing methods, and worked harder on my classroom environment.  As it was, I just did the essential jobs and let the extra, creative part of teaching go for lack of time.

Every morning I rushed through feeding and dressing the kids, quickly studied the scriptures together, then ran them over to mom's so I could rush across town to get to school on time, the whole while dreading going there.  As soon as I walked in my classroom, though, I was fine.  This was my classroom, these were my students, and I was in my element.  But after school I rushed home to be with my real kids, get supper, make sure they did their homework, do the laundry, make tomorrow's lunches, referee arguments, patch up disappointments, dry tears, and dish out discipline, all the while knowing I should really be grading papers or preparing lessons.  Weekends were full of make-up work, and Sunday evenings were the worst because I knew the extra time was almost over and I had to go back to work in a couple of hours.  If only I could have cut myself in half and had one part of me totally focused on home, the other part totally focused on school.  But I couldn't.

Similarly, my relationship with Sheldon and his new wife was also anomalous.  On the one hand, I was pleased that he seemed to be changing, trying to put his life back in order and doing the things he was supposed to be doing.  I was proud of him when he was re-baptized and started going back to church.  On the other hand, it hurt like the dickens that he hadn't been able to make that change when we were married. 

His new wife was at once overly friendly and at the same time hurtful and angry.  She asked me to visit her one night so she and I could talk some issues out.  She began telling me how wonderful Sheldon was, how great it was that we were all one big happy family, and how delightful it was going to be in heaven some day because we would all live together, Sheldon and both of his wives, happily ever after.  I was flabbergasted!  There was no way in a million years that I intended being Sheldon's wife in heaven, or wanted to share him with another woman!  Then she went on to complain about stuff the kids did, sure that they were being mean just to spite her.  She accused the little boys of making her bathroom dirty on purpose, and was sure all the kids left their Christmas candy wrappers all over her living room just to be mean to her.  I tried to tell her that kids did stuff like that just because they were kids, they probably didn't even realize the wrappers had fallen under the couch, but she was sure they were making her life miserable just because they didn't love her as much as they loved me, and she wanted me to have a talk with them and tell them I loved her, too, and that we were all just one big happy family living in two houses. 

Sheldon went from being super cool to being super cold.  He never paid his child support on time, and for years was at least a thousand to two-thousand dollars behind.  But he called our old Bishop one night and railed at him about how it wasn't fair I was going to have a nicer house than him when our home was foreclosed on and I had to move into my brother's old house when he was transferred to a new city for work.

I did like our new house.  It was fun to live close to the same neighborhood I had grown up in, but the house itself was very old and had plumbing and electrical problems.  It was imaginatively built, with cute little cubbyholes here and there that added character and charm, but the water smelled like sulfur and came out of the kitchen sink a pale orange color, which made me afraid to let the kids drink it. 

I enjoyed our new neighborhood and ward, but I always felt like I was a visitor, never like I was home.  The first Christmas we lived there the kids and I chose two families to play Secret Santa to.  We planned twelve little presents, one for each of the twelve days before Christmas, and snuck up to these homes after dark to leave our gifts on their doorsteps.  On returning home the first night we discovered a package waiting on our own back porch.  Someone else was playing Secret Santa for us!  It was so much fun, and helped us have a really delightful Christmas.  On the last day I really hoped our special friends would let us know who they were so we could thank them for all the joy they had given us.  They alluded us, though, and I never discovered who they were.  It made me look at every person I knew with new eyes, though, wondering if they were our Secret Santa.


Still, I always had an empty spot in my heart, feeling like these wonderful people in our new ward welcomed us with open arms but I couldn't quite give myself up to them.  Half of me was left behind in our old ward, the other half was waiting expectantly for I don't know what, to be home I guess.  To belong, to get back to normal, to just be Gale; mother, wife, sister, ordinary Gale, not the divorced, single, working woman I was pretending to be at that time.