Phoenix rising

Summer hits early in Phoenix, and at 8:30 am on a cloudless April morning, the sun already glinted off cars. My mother-in-law and I sat in her white Corolla, parked tentatively in a walled and gated parking lot as if for a quick getaway. We watched for signs of life outside a low-slung, drab building near downtown, still somewhat nineties newish and post-modern, but resembling nothing so much as a concrete fortress amidst the shabby bodegas and taco stands.

We watched muscled men in scant athletic togs amble in and out of a gym. A heavyset woman tacked up signs.

I was early for a job interview. Not at the gym full of half-dressed men, sad to say. I was early and my MIL—who was graciously hosting me—kept me company as the minutes ticked by. A cab pulled up and a young woman in expensive tan slacks and white blouse, hair neatly pulled back, stepped onto the curb, briefcase in tow.

“Well, this must be it,” I said, giving MIL a peck on the cheek. I followed the signs through a courtyard into air-conditioned relief in a library with a soaring cathedral ceiling, dotted with posters of Frida Kahlo and the occasional map. Over the next half hour, another 20 or so would file in, including taxicab woman, who’d turn out to be an entertaining and coolly poised math teacher.

I sat at a table with a former computer science teacher named John, a gregarious Italian from Long Island who talked in food metaphors, and no fewer than three other people from the Chicago area, one of them a shy, soft-spoken Loyola student with glittering brown eyes who hoped to move here with her new fiancee.

I’d applied to roughly 35 jobs since deciding a couple months ago that full-time motherhood had sapped what microscopic self-esteem I’d ever possessed. I love my children, but post-partum depression had long ago slid directly into mid-life crisis, abetted by cross-country moves, my mother’s prolonged death, and a depressing list of other personal and financial misfortunes.

These days, I play what writer Anne Lamott calls radio station KFKD in my head, with its grating buzz of self-loathing, bitterness and remorse. Occasionally, it’ll broadcast some inwardly directed sarcasm for variety, but otherwise it’s pitiless and incessant, and impossible to tune out.

It seemed time to make myself useful, to go out and earn my keep, only to discover no one wanted me. You don’t get personalized replies to electronic applications, so it’s impossible to know if I’m too old, too rusty, want too much money, live in the wrong part of the country or just what.

I had only two real possibilities out of all those applications, both in Phoenix, both promising, both taking me in different directions than the journalism stamped all over my resume.

The one that brought me into the spacious library required an eight-screen application and a four-hour proficiency exam that dragged me out in the rain a few weeks ago to a high school in the far southwestern corner of Chicago. I needed to know everything from how to pick apart words to find their component sounds to the sort of literary criticism reserved for a college senior’s honor thesis. I wrote an essay on alienation and longing in suburbia.

The job is, of course, teaching. It pays $31,000 to start. And, oh yeah, all those benefits they tell you about. The carrot they dangled was a fellowship—six weeks of intensive training over the summer. Then I’d be placed in an inner-city classroom, where I’d teach language arts by day and get my master’s and certification by night in only four semesters. Brett thought my skills and interests were a great match. I realized it would either permanently disarm my inner evil deejay or give her infinite new fodder.

I won’t get my results for another few weeks, so I had to go blindly to the interview, not knowing if faulty test scores had already torpedoed my chances. But no one else knew either. They’d taken Math or Science or Special Ed—I was the only English major in the room, I found out. I was the only one who’d ignored the fine print that said language arts wannabes need not apply. We’re a dime a dozen, apparently.

But there I was. They’d asked me to come—at my own expense, of course. I had a chance. A small one.

When the 20 of us broke into smaller groups, I was also the only one not carrying a tote full of handouts or flip charts or rocks or, in one case, bibles. We had five minutes to teach the group something, anything. Taxi lady taught fractions with paper puzzles she’d created. She let me keep one for Seth. The Bible woman had us read David and Goliath, and singled me out to read the longest bit, standing over me so her protruding belly nearly brushed the top of my  bent head. I couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if she’d asked me to undress and do cartwheels.

A slender, smiling blond in tortoiseshell glasses taught about the earth’s crust with rocks she’d brought in. A self-made millionaire did a vocabulary drill in a booming, drill sergeant voice.

My turn came, and I wrote my name on the board, along with the lesson’s subject, as we’d been instructed. I wrote “descriptive writing” and passed out blank index cards. I asked them to spend one minute writing a postcard home describing the room, using as many of their five senses as they could.

I read the postcards aloud, and we identified the senses together, noting how the room appeared to them, or what sounds they heard, or if it felt cramped or spacious, or how the dry-erase markers smelled, or what the scratching of pens reminded them of.

For about 4-1/2 of those minutes, KFKD fell silent. I could savor teaching something they might like to know, and they threw themselves into pretending to be middle school students. Pens flew furiously. Hands raised with enthusiasm. The last 30 seconds saw me crash back to earth, stammering and apologetic, before plunking into my seat, my heart pounding.

The day had only just begun. Ahead lay a writing assignment, a group discussion and a solo interview. I didn’t make any obvious errors in any of them, as far as I could tell from the amiable interviewer and his gentle lines of questioning. I’d braced for some stern probing, but there were no land mines, no ambushes, nothing unexpected or unpleasant.

I emerged into the hot day, exhausted, confident that if I didn’t make the cut (I’ll know in a few weeks) it wasn’t from any major misstep or gaffe.

And then my MIL whisked me away to lunch, to an enormous salad and the tallest, coolest, most refreshing glass of ice tea I think I’ve ever tasted. I don’t even remember the restaurant’s name.

But for the first time in a long time, I felt good.

Comments

[brettdl]

Wow, you left a lot of detail out when you described the whole thing to me.

[Sheila Ruth]

Congratulations on a job well done! It sounds like, whether you get the job or not, you can be proud of your performance at the interview. Good luck, and I hope that you either get this job, or find the perfect job for you if this isn't it. Shouldn't being the founder/organizer/administrator of an international awards program count for something on your resume?

[Sheila Ruth]

Congratulations on a job well done! It sounds like, whether you get the job or not, you can be proud of your performance at the interview. Good luck, and I hope that you either get this job, or find the perfect job for you if this isn't it. Shouldn't being the founder/organizer/administrator of an international awards program count for something on your resume?

[Sheila Ruth]

Ack. Sorry for the duplicate post. My browser timed out the first time, and I thought it didn't post.

[Bkbuds]

Hey, no problem. I liked your comment so much, I read both :-)

Thanks for the support. I'm still very nervous about the upheaval this will create for my family, but I'm remaining optimistic.

[Deb Clark]

I really hope you get the job, Anne. You're an inspiration to the rest of us frustrated, unfulfilled moms unable to achieve self-actualization among the sippy cups and playdates.