We booked for T to spend a day in his previous nursery today while the parents are at work. T seems to be happy, and he was singing all the way while we were on the bike. He was welcomed with tender nurses, a feeling of familiarity and the great nature around the place.
Like I used to do last year, after having deposited him, I walked to a nearby station and set off for my workplace, a university library in the next city.
Even though I am a pronounced feminist in the classes that I conduct and my everyday life, I cannot stop feeling guilty whenever I deposit T in a nursery on my research days, i.e. days that I do not teach but work in the library for research.
On my way to the station, I continue to ponder how other researchers cope with their family life, and how other working parents take care of their children while they have to endure long work hours in Japan. I think I work hard, but I am not as productive as I have wished.
Research work/job is difficult to be understood by people outside to it. It requires days and years of concentration, and it necessitates extensive periods of consideration, but it does not usually guarantee a result. I am only thinking about the issue in my own case though, as I believe it is because I am not good enough in this discipline, so that I cannot have enough visible output to prove to myself and others the worth of my labour.
I might be lazy, too. I am not sure any more.
These thoughts tend to have even noisier presences on my "research days," naturally perhaps, since these days might end up with nothing to harvest.
Maybe I am not good enough. And it seems that this understanding is proving itself to be right these days, as I continue to be rejected in my applications for full-time jobs inside the country.
The rejection letters usually look like the one below. Or, sometimes they might be longer and more polite, but the central idea is the same.
They do not hurt my pride as much as they used to, because (?) I probably also begin to accept the fact or truth that I am not good enough for the country's standard. There are many kinds of standard, such as those for foreigners, for foreign women, for mothers, for the young, and for the middle-ages. Perhaps, earlier this year I was forced into a reality that my work had faded out of fashion and I do not command any attention or expectation from others any longer.
Days that occasion these kinds of thought about myself are increasing, and I am growing increasingly silent about them. On days like the "research days," on which I still shamelessly cling unto the passing identity as a researcher, and on which I deposit my child so as to have time for myself, these thoughts can loom so large to the extent of suffocation.
The failures at work are double-edged, as they also measure my incompetence as a mother. I am neither strong nor confident enough to ignore the accusation that my mother once afflicted upon me that she worked while raising her children because she was able to do both, but I cannot.
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