Today I interviewed on Zoom.
Immediately after I hung up, I shed tears of relief for it finally being over. Twenty minutes later I was offered my dream job: the librarian position in the neighborhood school where I have taught the last three years, where I served my grad school practicum, the place where (if all goes well) I can work until I retire from public school education. I already have a ton of things on my To Do list. I know what you might be thinking. "What a time to become a librarian! What could she possibly be thinking?" When I was four, I was in a car accident with my mom. Being the late 1970s, I not only wasn't sitting in the back seat, but I didn't have a child seat or even a seat belt on. I slid under the dashboard and scared my mother to death when she saw that the ketchup from my cheeseburger had smeared across the front of my shirt. I obsessed over the sequence of events that had placed us there: the dentist appointment, the delay in the drive-thru to fix my burger just as I wanted (with ketchup), the fact we were in my dad's car instead of my mom's, that we were in the right lane and not the left. I know that because of this, my brain rewired. I became a person who was always looking for the cause-and-effect relationships. If looking back, my big dig was always to find out why. If looking ahead, I was a logistics expert, planning for all kinds of contingencies. It can be exhausting. I was not prepared for COVID-19. I was not prepared for it to escalate this quickly. I regret not having a second refrigerator or a Costco membership. I regret not sending everything home with my students at Spring Break. I spent weeks lamenting the 5th grade's Promotion to Middle School Ceremony my son would miss and the Musical Theater performance of "The Lion King" my daughter would never get to perform. I saw before me a parade of missed milestones, like graduations, birthdays, and just human touch and gathering. Maybe we haven't gotten to hugs yet, but one by one, we adapted to Zoom birthday parties. We found that 5th Grade Promotion Ceremonies were shorter and Drive-by Parades were actually more fun, with kids popping out of sunroofs like a Jacks-in-the-box, sporting family members' old mortar boards and tassels. Graduations and dance recitals alike will have individually-recorded parts that will be edited together and streamed from the comfort of one's couch--so there ARE perks to this whole thing. A few. Not quite that many. So far, we've been fortunate. We've had four extended family members recover from COVID-19. My uncle passed away during all this from other causes, but his memorial has been postponed indefinitely. We've been careful, cautious, and so very lucky. I hope for otherwise, but I know not all of our students will be able to say the same. Still, last week I helped the outgoing librarian collect books, while wearing masks and gloves. The books sat untouched on the library carts the recommended number of days before being officially checked in and shelved. There are so many unknowns for the fall, from scheduling to rules for sharing materials to digital expectations. The most impactful decisions will be made by people with pay grades higher than mine, and I will find a way to work within those parameters. Yet I will still be a Librarian with a capital L. I AM a Librarian with a capital L. My To Do list has grown in the time it has taken me to write this post. Today I interviewed on Zoom, and tonight I will go to sleep Happy. Not just happy...Happy...with a capital H!
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