Far too many Monday mornings, I would prefer to stay in bed rather than roll out of bed and go to work.
Sometimes I think I actually would do that – if I hadn’t spent 30 years ignoring my children’s plea of “too sick, too sleepy” and forced them to go to school. One son in particular frequently responded to my “Up and at-em” with a sleepy whine of “I don’t feel good today. I can’t go to school.”
“Well, why don’t you put on some clothes and see how you feel,” I would urge him as I turned away to haul clothes to the laundry room.
A few minutes later, wearing jogging pants and a T-shirt, he would meet me at the wash machine with the second verse of the same song of “I don’t feel good.”
“Try eating breakfast and see if that doesn’t help,” was all the sympathy he received as I poured laundry soap over dirty jeans.
He and I went through those mornings piecing him together until the clock struck “school time.” By then he was clean, dressed, fed and ready to leave without further protest – usually. I refuse to disclose what happened on other days, but it was not a pretty sight.
Of course, my grandchildren never have one of “those days.” They love school. They love their new friends.
The excitement coursed over the telephone back in September when the kindergartner told me, “We had Red Day. Everyone had to wear red. I wore red pants and a red shirt. Some kids only wore one thing that was red,” he scoffed. “And one girl,” he reported in a shocked voice, “did not wear anything red at all!”
He likes Red Day, Blue Day – any day is good day in kindergarten. He likes to walk the few blocks to school every day so he can talk with his friend.
That first week he and his older sister woke up early, dressed quickly and sat waiting at the door for 15 minutes for my son to get his cup of coffee and walk with them to school.
Then one day big sister woke up and announced, “I don’t want to go to school today.”
Her dad shrugged and introduced her to the family’s work ethics, “Tough. You have to go anyway.”
As the initial excitement of the new year wore off, she began dallying around in the morning until, one day her dad and brother left – on time – without her.
She did not like that.
She liked it even less when her dad came back and said, “The first bus gets to school on time, but the second bus leaves when I am ready to go to work” …. about an hour after school starts.
She got the message.
A couple weeks later her father reported that in a description of herself, she included a statement that she was responsible because “I get to school on time.”
Her statement reflects my philosophy that getting to school on time is up to the individual. Even missing the bus was no excuse for staying home.
When we lived several miles from the high school, my husband drove our only car to work. The day of freshman orientation there was no bus, so our new high schooler voluntarily rode his bike. When he returned, I emphasized that if he missed the bus to the high school, he would be riding his bike to school.
He got the message.
He dragged his feet plenty of mornings, but he never again rode his bike to school.
With that kind of background, with my late in life plunge to a full-time career and 40-hour work week, I don’t dare miss work because I just don’t feel like it.
After all, I don’t want one of my kids to find out and snap at me, “Tough, you still have to go.”
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)