I returned to school for the Trinity term to find an email
waiting in my inbox wanting to know if I am ‘linked with anyone at present,’ in
order to finalise invitations for the staff garden party at the end of the
year. Although the email was profusely apologetic for the intrusion into my
private life, I found myself strongly tempted to reply, ‘In this job? You must
be joking!’ After all when would I meet other, likeminded, twenty-somethings?
Between 9am-12pm on a Monday morning when I enjoy some time off whilst the rest
of the normal world works? I also wondered how the school files such
information: hopefully under S for Single, rather than N for No-Hopers? And, I
pondered, how does one inform them of a change in ‘personal circumstances’? Or
is the garden party really a big rouse, providing an annual cover under which
it becomes acceptable for the school to update their current information on the
staff’s private lives?
It turned out that my employers are not the only ones trying
to marry me off like a Russian bride. On the children’s return, it wasn’t long
before one of them enquired as to whether I had ‘managed to get married over
the Easter Holidays yet?’ When I responded in the negative, a look of sympathy
flashed across her eight-year-old face as she quietly filed me under L for Lost
Cause. A great start to the term.
Interestingly, I’ve come to believe that the way each child
greets me at the beginning of every term presents a microcosm of my overall
relationship with each individual. In those first few fleeting moments I catch
a glimpse of the way they really see me. Take, for example, the ten-year-old
boy whose tennis ball I confiscated on the last day of the previous term, who
responds to my cheery hello with a gruff, ‘Oh you’re still here’.
Tennis ball clearly not forgotten. Or there’s the incredibly
bright little girl, suspected of being slightly further along the Aspergic
spectrum than most, who exclaimed, ‘Oh, Matron, how marvellous to see you. Did
you know they’ve found philosophical proof for the existence of God?’
Oh marvellous indeed. The absolute chart topper was Milly
(of tortoise fame) who flung herself into my arms shrieking ‘My Matron!!’
As I hugged her close and told her how nice it was to have
‘my Milly’ back again, I suddenly realised that she isn’t, in fact, my Milly at
all. At the end of the year, along with all the others that I’ve come to love,
I’ll have to hand her back into both the far more capable hands of her parents
as well as those of the next matron who replaces me. I tried, churlishly, to
comfort myself with the thought that I also get to hand over those whom I
perhaps haven’t developed quite such a natural depth of feeling for, but I felt
that only put a negative spin on things.
As I came to contemplate leaving and all the things I would
miss as I moved on to pastures new, I was assaulted by another email wanting to
know what I was moving on to and where I would be living, so as to include the
information in the trustees report. As I am still awaiting a decision on my
Masters application I am unable to answer the former, whilst the staggered
house-move currently being attempted by my parents leaves me, as the French
would say, sans domicile fixé once I move out of my school accommodation. As a friend and I mulled over the hard
facts of the case – that, as of July, I am unemployed, potentially homeless and
without a life partner – she helpfully pointed out that I was in possession of
all three of these things when I started work at the school. Once again, I found
myself having to resist the temptation to reply with an email pointing out this
fact so they can put that in their trustee report and smoke it, yet I feel that
a negative spin is not the answer in this case either. In fact, the more I
think about it, the more I see this set of circumstances as a blessing rather
than something to bemoan. When I finish my job here, I give back what was never
mine to keep and am handed a clean slate, a tabula
raza if you will. With nothing to tie me to a certain place or profession
the opportunities are endless. What’s more, the fact that I have no specific
thing to prepare for or ‘look forward to’ means there is nothing to distract
me from making the absolute most of my remaining time here, enjoying these last
few precious weeks of being ‘their Matron’ and having them as ‘my children’.
You may, however, need to gently remind me that I filed all
these thoughts under P for Positive in the week before half-term when the
tennis ball has been re-confiscated and my philosophical facts pertaining to
the existence of God quota has been filled to overflowing. My mental filing
system often gets a bit muddled at that stage of term…
No comments:
Post a Comment