Oil and Water

You know how when you put oil and water together, they immediately separate? We learned that in about 2nd grade I believe.  In the past year, I have been two different entities.  One is oil, and you can guess what the other one is....water.  As a mother and a wife, I am water. I can take on many different forms, many different shapes and I can usually find my way into any crack or crevice of my families lives, whether I'm wanted there or not (like when my son sneaks snacks into his underwear drawer for his midnight "A'int goin down till the sun comes up" parties.  I.e..  Me: "Trace, go put the snack away before you go to bed" Trace: "How did you KNOW!!!???")  And also like water, I wash away tears, owies, and dirt off of dropped apples.  I am fluid when I need to be, moving things around, changing directions and finding the easiest road to take. But as hard and unyielding as a rock when it's necessary, which is never the preferred state for water, it will always return to fluid at the first available opportunity.  I welcome this part naturally, as most mothers do and enjoy the little things, laugh off the crazy things and cry over the bad ones.  This is part of being a woman and it's the best part. 
There is another entity in me though.  I affectionately call this one Oil.  This is the passionate part of me.  This is when I walk out the door in my uniform and dare to call myself a Paramedic.  You see, ever since I was a kid, I thought "ambulance people" were the coolest things ever.  But I never thought about it as a career until I was 23.  I became an EMT about five years ago and when I was looking at potential careers, I felt like a child with a star shaped block turning a cube over and over again trying to make it fit the square, the circle, the triangle, getting frustrated and tossing the cube and then coming back to it, doggedly holding that star KNOWING it goes somewhere special.  And just like that, my first day of EMT school....that hole that I didn't take seriously, that I didn't think looked anything like my star at first, inexplicably, just fit. I knew emergency medicine was where I needed to be.
In my area of residence, however, EMT is only one step toward the coveted title of "Paramedic".  Last year I decided it was time to take the final jump.  Medic school (enter the doomsday music- dum dum DUMMMMMMMMMM *woman shrieking*)  Medic school has always been affectionately referred to as "The worst year of your life", or the "Widow maker's school" and the first question asked of a married person is "How does your wife/husband feel about it?"  It's a full time job and then some.  My husband is my official "Medic school widow".  I love that man.  He picks up the slack at home as much as someone who works 60+ hours a week at his own job can and never complains.  Never.  My poor, mother-less children don't even question me anymore when I say "I can't baby, I have to study or I have to be at school". They accept it and cling to the hope that I'm telling them the truth when I say that it won't be like this much longer, that I'm almost done.  I am in the very last leg of school, as an intern. I am a paramedic, but I have another paramedic standing over my shoulder for 600 hours molding me into a GOOD paramedic instead of a bumbling student, full of knowledge and a wealth of mannequin-only skills acquired in a controlled (and air conditioned) room, during a fake scenario, when the chance of me killing someone is limited to myself or my classmates (no one is safe when a bone drilling instrument is being wielded by an overzealous medic wannabe!)  And so, I refer to this time of transition as Oil.  Oil is not always pleasant, but it's necessary in order to get that smooth moving demeanor and confidence that you imagine when someone walks in your door after you've called 911 because the love of your life, your husband, just dropped to the ground clutching his chest.  Oil has the ability to turn something squeaky and noisy and not very subtle, into something you don't even question because it moves so fluidly that the idea of it ever being a pile of rough edges and mismatched parts is ludicrous. 
At this point in time, I've been balancing this oil and water act for awhile, and there are times when I think, It's working!! I've successfully mixed oil AND water and they are staying mixed!  My kids are happy that I made it to chaperon a field trip!  I was able to squeeze that parent-teacher conference in on my way to work.  I'm happy.  I've beat the odds, right!?  And then...somewhere along the way, it's...shifting (NO!!) it's moving back, oil is separating and water is settling on the bottom, always having to settle.  I'm walking out the door as one child is in bed with dry heaves because he has nothing left to throw up and the other one is crying because she might miss school since Grandma won't be able to take the puking one out of the house to take her.  It feels like abandonment. I can't just call in sick like I would at my regular job as an EMT, this is different, this is medic school (cue the music please) and you don't miss a single day, you just can't.  There are days when I wonder how my husband felt last week when he was unexpectedly called off work, and excited about it because we would be off the same day, until I crush him with the fact that I have a study group that day for my upcoming test.  By the time I'm done, the kids are home, and the evening rat race is in full swing.  I wonder how he feels when I crawl into bed at 1am after a 14 hour shift on the ambulance and I am so numb, emotionally, physically and mentally, that I get annoyed if he so much as puts his arm around me because I am not...there, if that makes any sense.
And so, I work as hard as I can to keep these two parts of my self swirling together, mixing and churning and coexisting peacefully.  The only way to do that is to never stop shaking.