Furry Little Nuisances and the Typing Pool

Here is another dream post.

It was around the time I was amping up my career goals, teaching at the university. Though my five children were no longer toddlers, they still had many needs. I had to help with math homework, science fairs, PTA contests; I drove children to dance lessons and soccer games; I read books at bedtime and cooked meals and packed lunches and even cleaned house on occasion.

At the same time, I was trying to conduct research on teaching, take extra classes to improve my skills, write articles, and present at conferences.  Sometimes I couldn’t help thinking all those mundane mom- type responsibilities were keeping me from my really important work. I began to resent my children and all the work they entailed.

That’s when I had this dream. In the dream I was working in a giant “typing pool”-- a big room filled with desks and typewriters--and at each desk a woman typist was clicking away on her machine. These kinds of rooms really existed in those days before computers. We had one in the English department, where part-time student secretaries would transcribe research and lesson materials into typewritten manuscripts for the faculty.

Anyway, there we were, madly typing as fast as we could, but our work was impeded. These cute little balls of fur were all over the typing pool floor, climbing into our laps and up on the typewriters. When the fur balls covered the typewriter keys, we would gently remove them to the desk or floor and try to continue work, but before long they were right there on top of the work again. We were very frustrated, but those little fur balls were so dang cute, it was hard to be mad at them. Now that I think of it, the dream may have been influenced by the classic Star Trek episode, “The Trouble withTribbles.”  

When I woke up, though, I saw the obvious connection. And I felt disgusted at myself. I felt ashamed and chastised.

That typing pool was my work and the cute little fur balls were my children. And my work, which seemed so imperative, was probably no more important that typing those manuscripts in the typing pool. Those cute little fur balls were my children—but my children were not just cute, they were eternal souls; they were people; they were my responsibility to nurture and teach and love.

After that dream, I made efforts not to let my work at school interfere with loving and caring for my children. I mostly graded papers and prepared for class while the children were at school or after they were in bed, and sometimes even set the alarm for 2 AM to work in the unaccustomed quiet. I tried to be “there at the crossroads” as LDS President Ezra Taft Benson advised, scheduling my classes so that I was (nearly) always there when the children left for school, when they came home from school and at meals and bedtime. We (nearly) always ate dinner together and we (almost) always had a hot breakfast together in the morning. I tried to make time to volunteer in my children’s classrooms and to work in the church with them and to attend their performances and games.

I was lucky in that my work was flexible, as was my husband’s. Between us, we could usually arrange to be there when the children needed us-- if a child was sick or needed something delivered to school.  But even for parents who must work long hours, the principle holds. If you see your children, your family, as the most important priority, they will know it.  Even if work gets in the way of being with the children at important times, if the children know you are working FOR them, not for yourself, and that if you could you would be there for them--they will still know that they are your most important job.  The children will feel you put them first. And if they know that, they will know of their own value, which will influence everything they do.

So here is the key thing I remembered from that dream. My children are not cute nuisances. Whenever I found myself thinking of them that way, I pictured that typing pool full of cute furry balls, and made an effort to turn away from the “typewriter” to see to the needs of the child.