Prior to leaving on the trip I had shared with my colleagues that I was pregnant. My first trimester was not yet complete, but I wanted to make sure that they understood my behavior (especially related to food) was because of my new pregnancy – not because I was anorexic, bulimic, depressed or rude. During the first trimester my relationship to food could only be described as erratic and impulsive: sometimes I wanted NOTHING to do with it and then all of a sudden I would need to eat IMMEDIATELY. Or, on more than one occasion, I would happily be eating a meal and then, inexplicably, I would need to be as far away from food as possible. It was a terrible idea to get between food and me. At book club several weeks ago someone tried to “ration” my portion of French toast because she wasn’t sure how many more people were on the way. Without missing a beat, I announced that she absolutely could NOT ration my French toast because I was pregnant! That caught a few people off guard! I was also very suggestible – an advertiser’s best friend.
So I shared my news, slightly prematurely, with colleagues and I’m very glad I did. They were so understanding and always made sure that I got to go to the front of the buffet line. They also let me sneak away for a burger when everyone else was eating pizza. It also led to a number of very touching conversations, especially with the fathers in the group. At one point I shared with one of them that I was nervous about being a mom because I was so used to being a daughter – he assured me that it was possible to be both. But the transition to mom was somewhat exaggerated by the need to chaperon 90 kids over the course of the week. I kept thinking: “When did I become the adult?”
I remember my school trips fondly: there was the Washington D.C. trip, an east coast staple; the bizarre trip to the Christian camp that was also a ski trip during which my arch nemesis spent an hour and half one night crying to me in a bathroom and promptly went back to ignoring me the next day; the trip to French Canada during which I made PW tell our host family I was allergic to peas because they served them on a hamburger drenched in gravy; the trip to Stratford to see Shakespeare; the amazing trip to study theatre and history in London and the life-changing Habitat for Humanity trip to Rochester, NY. I knew the trip we were on in the South was just as monumental as any of these, if not more so, and I was excited about the experience, but it was completely surreal being the authority figure. I kept thinking, did my teachers lay in their hotel rooms watching whatever the 1980s equivalent of Sex in the City was and talking about us?!
To be honest, I do not have a good track record as an authority figure. While in college I worked at a summer program for high school students. I enjoyed my summer there but I didn’t get great feed-back as a counselor and I know exactly why that was: I was a really well-behaved kid and I had no idea how to deal with kids who weren’t. I actually did not understand them in a very basic way. That is still true today. As a teenager I did not break rules; I did not break curfew; I was not rude to my elders. When faced with that behavior I develop quite an edge. There was no place for my edge on this trip. I was sent with the express purpose of getting to know the kids so that they would feel connected to me and therefore connected to the alumni program that I run. I wasn’t supposed to be the heavy and yet, at the same time, well, being the heavy is sort of in my nature. It took me a couple days, but I was able to work it out in the end. I figured it was all good when one of the kids I caught breaking curfew early in the week came up to me at baggage claim on Friday, hugged me, and thanked me for the trip. I’m still not sure how I became the adult.
The Justice League of Chaperons
B'sha'ah tovah!
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