It’s All About the Small Picture
Saw a pickup truck this morning with the bumper sticker “I (HEART) MY WIFE”.
My mom is delaying her flight back a few days. Her brother is inexplicably doing better.
Usually my mom takes my kids 8 hours a week. I have no back up plan when she does not. Yesterday my eyes were bugging out of my head with lack of ‘me time’ (yes I did do air quotes when I typed that) and overwhelming thoughts of how I was going to die after an inconsequential life of never actually getting anything done, from the top of the list (WIKIPEDIA!) to the bottom (doing laundry before I use last emergency pair of clean undies) because I am unorganized, a piss poor housewife, a slow thinker, possibly sick with some awful fatigue disease, and crippling my children with my terrible role modeling and the fact that I never have playdates anymore and I didn’t go on my kid’s fieldtrip*.
Anyway, the baby fell asleep yesterday, the oldest was at school, and it was raining. My middle kid asked if I wanted to play with this plastic bead kit (you make a design, and then iron it.) (And you have some plastic melted bead thing that sits around the house for a million years because 1) too precious to throw out and 2) serves no useful purpose except perhaps trivet.)
(Except, not really a trivet, because of it’s low melting temperature. So yeah. Useless clutter.)
(Useless clutter that the kids get all big eyed and mournful about if they see you tossing it in the recycler. And so you find yourself midnight assassining it. And God help you if the kids happen to ask the next day where that useless trivet went, because then it will be midnight dumpster diving for you.)
Anyway, I said SURE! and so we sat and made trivetless art. And my mind was going a thousand miles an hour with all the other stuff I should be doing. And my kid looked studiously at her beads and said, “I have to do this perfect.”
Thank you, God, for putting me right there to hear that confession, and not deafly say, ‘oh yeah, you sure do’ without actually processing the content of her statement. So I could really look at her and let her know that ‘perfect’ is not required, that there is no ‘perfect’. If she tries her best, that is perfectly good, and the only thing I expect of her. And PS: You’re four, kid. Ease up on yourself.
And all the sudden, the little stuff became really huge, and I got weepy, and it lasted for a day, and then this morning, I nearly bear hugged that cowboy who was just minding his own business with his bumper sticker hanging out.
*She’s in first grade! Who has time to do those things? Not me, with my two other kids. But then several parents very smugly told me how great the field trip was, and how I totally missed out. Am I the only parent not going to these things?? I am too embarrassed to ask the teacher. But holy shit, the reason she is in school is because she is old enough to start doing stuff without me there all the time. Right?
24 Responses to “It’s All About the Small Picture”
I love this post. And yes. The small stuff.
I don’t go on field trips either, particularly because at our school they guilt us for not doing it but ALSO say “no siblings.” So, uh?
Swistle -
Yeah, mine too! How does that get orchestrated so frequently?!? Who are these super moms?
Anne
I got all weepy playing with giant Lego blocks with my boys the other day. We spent an hour in the floor building towers and knocking them down (read: me building about half a tower and them rampaging through it like Godzilla). It was sooo much fun that I forgot that I had laundry piled up and dishes to load in the dishwasher and trash to take out and the floor I was sitting on needed to be mopped. I just didn’t care. I wanted to play with my babies just for the sake of playing. And we did. And it was great. *sticks tongue out at FlyLady* Enjoy the little moments. They go so fast.
My daughter has the perfectionist gene too and I know she comes by it honestly. I wish I could talk her out of it but I know, really, I have to model her out of it. Sigh. I copped out of her last field trip (also 1st grade), as I work. I offered to go if they didn’t have enough martyrs, er, parents, but they did. Parenting is difficult. It’s hard enough being the hot, sexy blog goddesses we are. Why isn’t that enough?
When I was little all the parents didn’t go on the field trips with us. We’d have one or two sign up to be chaperones and come, but not all of them. It wasn’t like anybody who wanted to could come. We were independent kids too. We HATED when our parents were the stupid chaperones. It was so embarrassing.
Oh, the field trips want to keeel me dead. My oldest (5th grade) has several coming up that include an overnighter on a submarine and working on an authentic tall ship.
I’m passing on both. I’m apparently a bad mother.
Except for the field trip part, as I have only one kid, who is three, I TOTALLY feel like that.
I am a freaked out, frazzled, failed human being, tirelessly (tiredly?) imposing my neuroses on the next generation.
I love my daughter, but being a parent sucks so much of the time. You never feel you are doing it right, plus you get to feel really. really bad about it. And you get to dumpster dive.
After almost twenty-one years of parenting, I can tell you that the best thing you can do is miss a few (or more) field trips. The conundrum you face is this: you feel you can’t miss a minute of the Wee One’s life. You think you see parents who manage to never miss a minute.
But they do miss a minute. And it’s impossible not to. And your child needs his/her own life, and to have experiences without you hanging over him/her.
And the day will come when they move out and they will not want you not missing a minute (actually, that part will come when they’re about 11) and you will need to have all your own space staked out to live your own life and not be one of those people who live their entire lives through their kids.
I went to everything I could (I have worked almost completely through my parenting) but missed a fair chunk. My two oldest are fiercely independent who seem to like hanging out with me when they’re home from college but really like the respect I have for their space and time.
Don’t buy into myths and false advertising. (I’m sorry if this sounds all direct-y. I’m in a hurry to go see my mother who never lived her life through me but is insanely happy when I show up.)
We have that same bead kit, which I hid a long time ago, and coincidentally my daughter found it the same day you posted this! Time for a new hiding spot, since I definitely can’t throw it away.
Our school puts a limit on how many parents can come to the field trips, so it’s first come first go. I understand it can sometimes be quite cutthroat to try and be The Mom Who Goes. I say, “wheee! Have fun wit dat, girls!”
And the midnight toss? Just make sure that you get your hubby to take the trash out immediately. That way when the kid is asking you about their “Precious,” you can semi-honestly say you don’t know where it is. Cuz you don’t. Exactly.
I never go on field trips. I *almost* never show up for class parties. There are the couple-three moms that *always* do. I hate them.
It selfish, mean and petty. And still? I hate them.
But I just can’t get my shit together enough to be the class mom. It’s for the best really. At least this way when there are two other school age kids competing for my attention, they will all be used to me not going on the field trips and not being the class mom. I mean, how do you keep that up when all of your kids are in school at once? I would just be running from classroom to classroom. Yep- I’m just thinking about the future. Planning ahead. Yep. That’s me.
I’m not at the field trip thing yet…but will never go when I am. My mom never did, she never made things for the bake sale, she never volunteered in the class, none of it, and I think I’m a better person because of it. I always looked at those kids whose moms were dropping off lunch money that had been forgotten and showing up with crafty projects as, somehow, babies. They seemed so coddled, so incapable. And guess how many times I forgot my lunch/lunch money? ONCE.
Anyways…Anne…you seem like a good enough mom. Cut yourself some slack.
My dad was the one who would go with us on our field trips (government job = lots of time off to do the mom stuff). Funny they quit asking parents to go when my dad would break out his cigarette every time the bus stopped. I think they figured out that it was really stressful for the parents to babysit 30 gradeschoolers, if they had to take every opportunity to smoke in an effort to not scream at someone else’s kid to sit down and shut up. Don’t worry about it. Your kids will grow up fine.
We went through a phase of the trivetless clutter. My daughter was very creative. Unfortunately the non-trivets fell apart (some accidentally, some… not accidentally). I think it’s awesome you got a teaching moment out of it (for everyone!). We needs wake-up calls every once in a while, and they come in different forms.
I am SO not a hands-on mom. I don’t do field trips, I don’t volunteer in the class, I don’t go out of my way to provide things for the class/school/teacher, I don’t attend mid-day performances. I am thankful that my kids are at the point where I don’t even have to walk to get them to school or pick them up! Yay for independence!!
… and apparently I needs a nap…
I’d have hugged him, too.
And i have this rule: One mom day at school per year, per kid. They can use it as they will. One field trip, one day in the classroom, one whatever. They get me ONCE. Because I don’t like other people’s kids all that much.
You haven’t thought about an intermediate step in throwing things away, have you? I’ve got a drawer that I put their treasures in when I want to throw them (without telling them, or revealing its existence obviously). Then, every few months, I go through and throw out anything that they don’t seem to have thought about. I realise that this creates an extra layer of effort and organisation, but on the other hand it means that I throw more stuff away more quickly because I’m less worried about getting it wrong.
I work full time, so I rarely went on any field trips. Sorry, but my days off are way too valuable to waste on some stupid field trip. And yes, they generally are stupid. At least in our township. I’d rather take the day off and spend it one-on-one with my kid actually doing something fun.
I have a full time job because I am too lazy to be a stay-at-home mom. And I don’t do field trips because I don’t like kids. Other than my own. And even that is debatable some days.
I could never understand the “Parents on Field Trips” thing…especially the “no Sibling” thing. That means that I can only go and do those things with my youngest? Or I have to find a babysitter, which defeats the purpose of me being a stay at home mom (not having to pay for child care, amongst other things)? UGH
I think that Swistle is right. As always. I think you need to look at the “siblings vs. no siblings” thing. You could have an only child and go to everything and have play dates galore! But your child will miss out on having a best friend built in at home, someone they can bitch about on the innerents in twenty years. Wouldn’t you rather your daughter have blog fodder than a parent on field trips? I know you would, you good lil blogger you!
I am so tired of throwing things out that no one has looked at in a million years, only to be asked the next day where it is. (And that goes for Hubby’s stupid gloves, which I did NOT throw away, but maybe if he put them where they belong once in a while, he wouldn’t have lost them. No, I didn’t throw them out. The man loses a minimum of three credit cards a year, and he blames me for the loss of his gloves. Really?)
Okay, that was totally unintentional. Clearly, I need to blog about that on my own blog.
I don’t go on field trips because my daughter clings to me like a weepy barnacle if I do. If I’m not there, she has a great time. So there are other reasons to feel ok about not going.