Lilac Colored Glasses

I was not born a morning person.

My parents can vouch for this.
As a child I never found it easy to get myself up in the morning. I was never one of those teenagers who spent two hours locked in the bathroom before school, primping and preening to look my best. I was the sweatshirt/t-shirt and jeans girl whose hair was always swept into a ponytail and who rarely wore makeup. Not because I didn’t want to look nice, I just could never get up on time to put anything more fashion-friendly together. That and I was too self conscious to try wearing anything too trendy, since most of my friends and classmates were a size 4 and I was a 12. In retrospect and compared to what I am now (16W…sigh), I should’ve flaunted more of myself when I had a nice figure to flaunt. But I digress.

Me. Not a morning person.
Until CB and I started talking regularly and my insomnia faded off. After a few months of almost daily chatting, I figured out that if I woke up at 6 in the morning, that was right when CB took his lunch hour and we could chat for an extra 45 minutes or so before I went to work. But of course, I had to be showered and dressed for work, so that led to me to getting up around 5:30 in order to be ready for work before we started talking. At the time I was also taking night classes a few days a week for my masters degree, so I wouldn’t get home until after 9 in the evening and then I often had readings or assignments or parent conference materials to work on, so I had no trouble falling asleep before midnight and getting up early the next day.

After CB visited me the first time, I briefly changed jobs, before returning to my old daycare (the new daycare had had better benefits and a 401k, but the staff was verbally abusive to the children and no insurance policy is worth selling out my morals). Upon my return I was assigned to a new classroom and given a new schedule. For the first two years at CHCC I had worked the 10-6 shift and had spend almost an entire year trying to get that changed, unsuccessfully. I had also been trying to get moved to a classroom where the two main teachers got along better, also unsuccessfully. Now, upon my return (despite my tendency towards the school of hard knocks, I do often emerge as the prodigal child) I was in a the 3 year old room (which meant I got to stay with the kids I’d been with in the twos room) and my schedule was 8-4. Work was a lot more pleasant and I had almost two hours of talk time with CB in the evenings instead of a meager 45 minutes in the mornings.

So basically, I converted myself to a morning person (and quit smoking, thanks to the power of loooove). And I liked it that way! I liked the early morning darkness and quiet and solitude. It’s why I really didn’t mind working the opening shift in the Brussels crèche. It wasn’t the waking up early that bothered me at all, it was the way the commute sucked up so much of my time and also how the boss and managers treated me like dirt and made me the fall guy for everything that didn’t work out how they wanted. Even after I started my job at the coffee kiosk, I was still set internally to wake up around 5 in the morning until recently.

See, now I work the evening shift, which is usually from 1:30-2:00 in the afternoon until 9:30-10:00 at night. this means I’m not home until 10:00 or 10:30 and often not in bed until close to 1 in the morning. So my body clock has finally given up its hold on the early morning wake up time and has now flip flopped and I find myself waking up around 10 am or lately even closer to 11 am. And I hate it! I feel like I’ve slept the whole day away. And it doesn’t help that Cb has never been, nor has ever converted, nor likely ever will be a morning person. So he’s pretty cool with me not moving or fidgeting or turning on the light before dawn anymore. But seriously, 11:00 in the morning? This can’t continue. There has to be some sort of happy medium and I have the next two days off, so I guess I’ll try to start reprogramming myself tomorrow.

She slides her change across the metal counter carelessly, the coins skittering out past the cashier’s waiting hand. She misses the sour look the cashier gives while gathering up the change…

It’s been a long day filled with deadlines, memos, an angry e-mail from one of the higher ups berating her department for sluggish sales. She longs for a muffin or maybe a brownie but she’d still like to lose 5 pounds before her cousin’s wedding this spring. She’ll stick with the latte, she decides, just as the cashier slides the cup into her hand…

She turns with an artificial smile and walks swiftly through the tunnel just as her train is announced and mounts the stairs to her platform. The evening air still has an edge to it, reminding her that spring is still a few months off. Probably could’ve had that brownie after all. But now she can see the train’s single headlight approaching the station, so she readjusts her satchel strap, takes a sip of dark espresso and cloudy foam and settles into her seat, thinking wistfully about the vacation that had planned for this July: two weeks in the south of Spain, nothing but salty sea breezes and sand; a blessed release from the cloudy summers and constant rain here. But none of that would happen now…

The trains screeches and clanks to a halt at her tiny station. she descends the small metal stairs and picks her way through the frosty grass, cringing as the damp penetrates her stockings and pinpricks her ankles. She fumbles for her keys and pushes the button on the fob, searching the parking lot for the flashing headlights of her Citröen. She climbs into the drivers side, turns the ignition and cranks up the heat, impatiently pulling out of the lot before the windows are completely defrosted. All she wants to do is go home and climb into bed, but the day isn’t quite over yet…

Several minutes and calming deep breaths later, she puts the Citröen in park, grabs her satchel and walks through another parking lot, larger and more sprawling than the gravel lot at the train station. She doesn’t notice how her pace slows as she draws closer to the large white brick building and the swooshing sliding glass doors. She doesn’t notice the blood draining from her cheeks as she greets the check in nurse at the front desk with a wave and a smile. She doesn’t notice the weary set at the corners of her mouth as she receives her nightly report from the head nurse of the pediatric oncology unit.
What she does notice is the darkening circles under her small son’s eyes when she walks into his room to read him his bed time story. She notices the waxy feeling of his feverish fingers as they lay loosely grasped in her own cool palm. She notices how hard it is becoming to hold back her tears as she holds him close and asks him to tell her about his day.
But he grins at her with his dry lips and pearly teeth and eagerly begins to speak…

And back at the beginning, the cashier opens the front door of her row house. She climbs the two steep sets of stairs leading to the living area and steps inside. Her fiancé turns to her and smiles.
“How was your day?” he asks.
“Fine,” she sighs, stretching her sore back, “but this one lady totally threw her change at me, even though I was holding my hand out for it. I swear, it’s like her only goal was to ruin my day.”

Written in response to Writing Challenge 9 at {W}rite-of-Passage

Once upon a time, in a land called Yerp, there two little boys named Frankie and Willy (actually, for this particular story, I guess I should call them Wouter and Jean-Pierre, but I’m the author and I’m American, so just go along with me, okay?).

Frankie and Willy were twin brothers, but they couldn’t be more different. Frankie was hard working and industrious. He worked long hours in the fields, took care of the crops and studied hard during lesson time. Willy was laid back and preferred traipsing about the wilderness, fishing and trapping muskrats to bring home for supper. He didn’t care too much for lessons, finding it much easier to laze about until the truancy officer eventually insisted he study a bit.

Frankie’s favorite color was gray, Willy’s was green.
Frankie’s favorite snack was pastry, Willy’s was sausage.
Frankie spoke a language spoken by few, Willy spoke a language spoken by many.
Frankie earned money by doing the daily chores, Willy nicked the money from Frankie’s piggy bank.

And the two were always fighting.

Frankie insisted that Willy should work harder around the homestead. He stomped his feet and told Willy that his language was important too, and that each brother should speak each other’s language.

Willy smirked and refused. Why should he work harder when he knew Frankie would just continue to do all the hard work himself? Why should he bother earning his own money when he knew Frankie would just continue to fill the piggy bank. And who wanted to speak Frankie’s language anyway? It was silly and little and hardly anyone else used it anyway.

The twins fought and fought, nearly coming to blows until their father, Russel (or Ruxelles, if this fairy tale isn’t already transparent enough), stepped in and negotiated a truce.
See, Russel was the head of a large pottery company called West Urn Yerp  and ever since he had been given his position, he had been under a lot of pressure from his boss to show that he could hold his company together. And how can a man be trusted to hold an entire company together if he can’t even control things in his own back yard?

So Russel, who was in the middle of his own identity crisis and was struggling with drinking problems and sinking ever deeper into a life of crime, decided to patch up the relationship between his sons in the easiest way possible.
He raised each of their allowances and promised them that, no matter what, they’d be treated equally, as long as they held hands and pretended to get along.

Willy, who was never one to ignore the insistent knocking of opportunity, grabbed hold of Frankie’s hand as tight as he could and promised he’d try harder. He even learned a bit of Frankie’s language (Frankie had already mastered Willy’s language long before, since that was the only way Willy would bother speaking to him) although he rarely bothered to speak it, since he knew Frankie already understood him well enough.
Frankie grudgingly held onto Willy’s hand as well, knowing that without Russel, he’d have a much harder time finding enough chores to do to earn money for his piggy bank.

And so it went. Frankie continued to work hard to earn money and learn new things while Willy continued to wander around and pluck the coins from his brother’s piggy bank. If Frankie complained, Russel threatened to stop giving him chores to earn his allowance. If Willy demanded too much, Russel scolded him a bit before patting him roughly on the head and heading down to the bar to join some of his sleazier friends for a round of drinks.

And so it continues to this very day, far far away in the land of Yerp. Frankie and Willy are still forced to hold hands, despite their constant squabbling while Russel grins falsely and continues to hold onto the day to day management of West Urn Yerp, ignoring the troubles in his own back yard.

The tale doesn’t end here, of course, for there is always the matter of trying to clear the wild Turkeys out of Frankie’s garden, or the inexplicable flow of Morro Cans into Willy’s forrest.
But the hour grows late and those are tales for another time.

If you ask me when I’m awake, I’ll tell you that I’m totally unstressed.

I have a wonderful boyfriend who loves me and two sweet cats who cuddle up to sleep with us on most nights. I have a job that seems relatively secure, pays a decent wage, and is not too much of a drag. I’m getting married in less than 4 months and I’m totally excited for it.

All the plans have basically been made. Now it’s just a matter of hammering out small details with the photographer and DJ. So really, I have no real reasons to be stressed.

Which is why I can’t really figure out why I have only slept through one night in the past two weeks.
And why my tri-yearly migraines have suddenly become almost a daily thing.
And why my stomach constantly aches or feels too full when I don’t usually find myself eating very much on a daily basis.

Why am I having nightmares so frequently? And why has the recurring nightmare of being attacked/bitten by large, hairy spiders suddenly been replaced by humiliating scenarios in which I am back in high school and basically told by my entire soccer team that I’m not good enough to play and that I’ll be the only person riding the bench the whole game?

I really love my wedding dress.
Why did seeing a picture of myself wearing it fill me with disgust?
I’ve lost almost 20 pounds since that picture was taken. Why do I still want to gag when I look at myself in the mirror?

I keep seeing old friends on Facebook and it really looks like most of them have gotten nothing but thinner and healthier, while I still have about 30 pounds to lose just to be in a normal weight range. I hate it. I feel like I’ll never ever ever look how I wish I looked.
I keep seeing old friends who have careers and post grad degrees and families of three or four, while I’m working as a barista in a train station with a useless bachelors and pretty much no hope of anything higher unless we move back to the US.
There are a few job opportunities in Gent to work with children right now that don’t require a language test, but I’m afraid to apply. I don’t want to apply. I’ve never been a job hopper. I prefer to settle in, get comfortable, feel useful. And even if I did apply and get the job, with the experiences I’ve had so far in Belgium with childcare, I don’t trust that I won’t be abused for my labor somehow.

And all in all, my “step up” from coffee maker would be to “glorified babysitter.”

Yes, I know that I, of all people, should not think of things that way. I know that childcare workers are important and that caring for a classroom of 20 two year old children is a lot harder and more involved than babysitting for one or two children. I know that most parents truly and sincerely appreciate the people that care for their child(ren) on a daily basis. I know I would play an important role in a little person’s life.

But the salary and the social status pretty much says it all: glorified babysitter.

A big part of me wants that masters, or even that doctorate; wants that ability to choose between hands on or academia; wants to take my visions of early childhood education to another level.

But another big part of me just wants the first part to shut up and be happy with what I have: the amazing boyfriend, the sweet cats, the stable job, a roof over my head.

Because really, I have no reason to be stressed.