and now, for my next act

To anyone and everyone who has ever said, "I don't know how you do it," when referring to my job, allow me just this once to eschew my traditional shrug of dismissal and instead offer an amen. Because me too neither, brother.

It's not that there's anything different about right now compared to always. It's not as if each individual day or hour or moment is really that hard. I throw it together and do what I can and get by, more or less or mostly. And every day something goes right, or somebody learns something, or at least I have a laugh.

But now and then I have a little out-of-body experience as I cope with some normal-for-me that becomes a periodic last straw. I hear myself, on the phone in my typical role-reversal with Guidance at the end of just another nobody-ever-told-me-the-US-constitution-graduation-requirement-was-now-my-responsibility-or-if-they-did-I-was-out-in-the-hall-with-pregnant-girl-number-four-(FOUR!)-day explaining that yes, we will take the heretofore unschooled fifteen year-old Haitian orphan just now transplanted into Missouri, and that yes, he'll be mine, and yes, we'll teach him English, and yes, I'll help you enroll him, and yes, we'll figure it out. It will be fine, I say and mean it in a code that also translates, "I'll take him off your hands."

I will, and I'm glad to, and it is, after all, my job, my ever-expanding-now-what-how-will-I-one-way-or-the-other position. It will happen, this much I can tell you. How? Well. I'll get back to you on that.