Beth Touchette
About this author:
Beth Touchette has been writing personal essays for almost ten years. She is interested in the natural world, and works as a high school biology teacher. She has written pieces abut her children, and her family’s pet canaries, rabbits, and turtle. She has yet to write anything interesting about her family’s pet hamster, Hammie, perhaps because he is either running on his wheel or asleep. Her essays have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Marin Independent Journal, and on KQED Perspectives.
She lives in Marin County with her husband Reese, and two children.
My Articles:
A Mother Learns How to Swim
I learned a lot about education by not teaching my four-year-old daughter how to swim last summer.
The Ties that Bind
This week I flew, alone, from San Francisco to New York City. On both legs of the trip, I had two-hour layovers in Denver. My parents live in Boulder, which is over an hour from the airport. I didn’t have enough time to visit, but I did call them.
Childhood Terrors
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take
My parents taught me that prayer when I was five or six. I still remember the first night we recited it. I stared at my bedroom ceiling for hours, suddenly aware that despite my good health, I could be struck dead in the middle of the night. The best hope my God could offer me was that he would take my soul rather than the Devil.
After I was picking up my kids from school today, my seven- year old daughter complained about her substitute teacher:
Receding
I feel like I’m moving away from my kids. I used to think about them all their time. Every experience, I saw through their eyes. Now, I’m so absorbed teaching rambunctious high school students biology, I forget about my two children, until I pick them up at 4:00
I think about how after I gave birth to my son, and how afterwards, time just seemed to stop. My hospital room was filled with the golden light of sunset, and I just stared at his face. I stared at my children for almost ten years. I did other things, but they were my focus. When my daughter awoke sobbing in the middle of the night, I could often recognize the events she described. “Oh, that mean red truck was only the fire truck we saw on our walk today,” I would tell her. … Now, I am as baffled by her dream images as she is.
I liked the young child phase of my life. Only now do I realize that it was a limited interlude, like college. I remember after I graduated from Berkeley, I continued to live in town. I would stop by the coffee shops I used to study for exams in, and as soon as I could, I applied to graduate school. Gradually, though, I realized I didn’t want to study genetics anymore. I wanted the freedom, intellectual challenge, and intense friendships I experienced during college to continue.
Worrywart
I’ve always been a worrier, but lately, it has been worse. I saw my parents over the holiday and realized that they are getting old. My dad can barely hear in his right ear, and he had a troubling angiogram. I’m truly dreading the day-to-day aspects of my life when they get ill, and my throat tightens when I think what life will be like when they are gone.
I dread certain hours of my job teaching high school science. Most of my classes are great, but one of my physiology classes has so much energy, it explodes throughout the room, literally. One day, I thought it would be nice for them to build a clay model of the neuron. They thought it would be more fun to throw the clay on the ceiling.
When I meet with the parents of my problem high school students, I dread the day my own sweet seven- and nine-year olds fall into the abyss of adolescence. The teenager parents have a resigned look to their eyes, and often, as they promise me to talk with their child, again, their voice has a tremor of hopelessness. Even if my kids don’t misbehave in class during high school, I know they will break away from me. I’m dreading the day my nine-year son stops coming by our bed in the morning for a good morning kiss.
Re-Entry
Until last month, my main job was being a mom to my son, Walker, and daughter, Elena. I filled nine years with nursing, changing diapers, sweeping Cheerios, preschool and play dates. Although I always worked part-time as a tutor or elementary school science teacher, I made sure that my kids’ schedules came first.
Now, I’m teaching high school biology full-time.
I’m responsible for other people’s children, and my kids go to before and after school daycare every day. My husband wakes Walker and Elena up and makes their breakfasts and lunches, because I have to be at school by 7:30.
Come Fly with Me
I remember the first time I picked up my husband, then boyfriend, at the airport. It was ten years before 9/11, so I was able to meet Reese at the gate. I positioned myself at his flight’s assigned jet way exit fifteen minutes before his scheduled arrival.
The first person off was a forty-ish looking man in a suit. He wrapped his arms around his wife and two kids. I walked closer to the door, figuring Reese would soon be exiting. A couple more business travelers trotted past. A family with a stroller came out. The guy holding a sign for Mr. Fred Jones found him. A flight attendant exited with her rollaway bag. Still, Reese did not emerge. I began to look for a pay phone to check my answering machine for messages. I was surprised when Reese hugged me from behind.
“What happened? Were you on a different plane?” I asked.
Fairy Tea Party
My six-year old daughter believes in fairies.
I think it might have started with that scene in Peter Pan when Tinkerbell is near death. Only the chant, “I do believe in fairies, I do, I do,” resuscitates her. Sometimes I hear Elena mumbling that chant as she draws fairies, always with long hair and double wings.
Elena constructs offerings for the tiny fairies that inhabit our backyard. She folds ivy leaves around peanut M&Ms and coins and reinforces them with clear tape. “The fairies are my best friends,” Elena said one day.
Stumbling, I said, “Aren’t I your best friend?”
Recycling
Last Thursday, I helped with my daughter Elena’s field trip to the Marin Recycling Center.
Walking Elena and her two classmates to my messy car, I sang “To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump” to the tune of the Lone Ranger. I was expecting a boring trip, and hoped the song would generate enthusiasm.
“What’s that smell?” whined Elena when we reached the recycling center. The other girls joined in unison.
We entered the spacious education room. There was a giant television with a gleaming blue monitor, a wooden piano decorated with stained glass, a turkey made of scrap metal, and a robot comprised of different sized cans. I asked our tour guide, Devi Peri, about the parquet dance floor. She said community dance groups used the facility at night. “The room can also be rented for special events,” she added.
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