The Last Day of School; Who Grades Mom?
Raise your hand if you’re a Mom and this week, or two, or three, was a tad bit overwhelming? Both hands raised here. The schedule alone was demanding. The back and forth, the here and there. Literally Saturdays and every days filled with a steaming cup of coffee (how many times did they highly recommend I go get a “tap debit” card) from the drive thru and round and round the city taxiing kids to birthday parties, end of year celebrations, last recitals and horse shows not to mention our own adult end of year things. How many times did I hear the Moana soundtrack blaring from the back seat until I too believed “I ammmmmm MoANA!!!!”
I’m going to admit it, my heart’s longing in the parenting department and my stark reality don’t always match up. I mean honestly I long to be “Mommy: Dragon slayer and protector of small people!” and I fall so short. So I should have seen it coming with the business and the celebrations, the highs and the exhaustion, but I didn’t, and it all kind of culminated last night and into this morning.
Chad and I were so busy organizing and reorganizing our plan for the evening throughout the day yesterday, and my brain was in a 1000 work places, so I actually made it all the way home for the quick turn around supper, pizza in hand, before I realized Chad was the one getting the pizza. Slight moment of panic when I had to try to land the conversation in my overtired brain and remember if he was getting the pizza, who was getting the kids? Both of us arriving home with pizza, that can be a funny story, once we establish where the kids are, but I was struggling to find the funny and instead felt this horrible tightness rising in my chest.
Less then 40 minutes later we were back in two vehicles, everyone with slight pizza indigestion, everyone in a change of clean, dressier clothes, faces scrubbed shinny, picking up 2 more people and zipping back in to town for Zoe’s recital. I shook my head as I stood in the barn doors throwing a brush and sundress at my tired, horse manure smelling rider daughter Eliya. “Quick, quick! Move like it matters, we don’t want to be late!”
One eye ball on the dashboard clock, the other on the speedometer we made it with a few minutes to spare, and in those few spare minutes all the emotions tied with celebration, and end of year, and new chapters crept into my dark Mommy places. These dark and sinister Mommy places kick under the belt, often when I least expect them. All the Mommy inadequacies that are attached to too much work, too many little cutting remarks along the way that feed too much self doubt.
“Look at that little girls curled hair.”
“Wow, that one has a costume to wear while she plays her piece.”
“How did I miss the dirt streaks all up the babies little legs!”
“I bet that Mom didn’t throw her dress over her head in a stable 10 minutes ago.”
“Her Mom probably practices with her every night.”
All this, mixed in amid such pride to see my gorgeous girl stretch beyond her own anxieties and preform in front of strangers. Such happiness to sit still for a moment as our little, bigger than many, family. All in a row to celebrate our oldest. My how she’s grown. What a precious heart she has for others. I see those traces of womanhood on her face and my heart aches. It is going fast.
A new day dawns. It’s report card day. A day of evaluation. A day filled with numbers and comments, tables and charts. Anxiety for some. A day of lasts. Last day of Kindergarten, Grade 2, Grade 4. Last day in that school. Last day with some classmates. One daughter cries for her losses, one daughter tries to hold it in and be tough, one little man is at a loss to know what to do with it all. I hug the one crying, try to just touch the other’s shoulder and let her know I’m here and tousle my little man’s hair -and all the Mommy insecurities rise again.
But then the littlest hand takes mine and says, “Mommy, you’re my Heidi Mama, and you are the best.”
And I struggle to say, “Thank you” as my heart cries out, “Oh how I don’t feel that way! If you only knew! Oh how I worry I’m getting it all wrong!”
And then, almost as if she knows, she says, “You’re my Heidi Mama, and you are best because you love me most; I’m your Violet baby.”
And it is only then that I can whisper “Thank you” because there is hope and grace in that statement. “You are my Heidi Mama, and you are best because you love me most; I’m your Violet baby.”
So Mama’s let’s look at our report cards again. Let’s stop the writing and evaluating and let our children be our teachers. In all the business and celebrations let’s do our best to evaluate out of the hope and grace of our ‘most love’ for our little people. We may not slay dragons and protect small children in a larger than life fairytale, and our children may have streaks of dirt running up their sun kissed legs, but perhaps what’s truly needed is our one of a kind, “most love” and let’s strive for full marks there.
