Originally Published in the Tri-Town Transcript – Boxford, MA June 15, 2018
By Esther C. Baird
As I type this I’m a mere day away from summer. I’ve sat through the programs, ceremonies, presentations, and all the pre-final, almost final, and actually for sure, final things.
I’ve watched my two little kindergarten-aged girls do bizarre things like claim they are now in high school and middle school. Whatever. Who makes your lunches?? That’s right. You’ll be the age I tell you to be.
And as any parent will tell you, this final stretch takes every molecule of your body just to heave across the finish line. There is nothing left for extras. I can’t tell you what we’ve eaten for dinner the past couple weeks. The dogs have gone feral. And the status of the laundry? Let’s just say the clothes are growing their own organic matter. Further, I don’t care. It’s the last week of school, harvest it and call it dinner.
So when the email went out about teacher gifts I immediately ignored it. My gift to the teacher was to leave her alone for the next two months.
Except then I got an email from my daughter’s fifth-grade room mom saying, “What are we going to do?”
We? Was that like the royal we? Because I had no idea what SHE was doing.
Then, my other friend, the co-room mom, emailed. She had already cloned herself three times that week to Get It All Done and felt uncomfortable taking on one more commitment in case the clone Mommy confused her children. (Pssst, don’t tell the science community but cloning isn’t that big a deal, here in the trenches we just call it “motherhood”).
Again, I was looped in. Why!? A suppressed memory burst through. Back in September, I had volunteered, in some crossed neuron misfire, to be the third-string room mom.
Hear me please: I signed up not to be the main room mom, not to be the backup room mom, but to be the desperate, last ditch, room mom. The mom everyone knows should have nothing to do with party decorations, baked goods, or field trips.
Though, I think I rock at field trips. Just yesterday I chaperoned the fifth- and sixth-grade to Canobie Lake, and they all came back alive. I found a bench in the sun, told them, “Sure! Eat ice cream and cotton candy!” and then I sent them to ride loop-de-loop roller coasters. Seemed like a success to me. Not sure what their dinner and bedtimes looked like. Not my problem.
But, now my backup, backup job had come home to roost with the teacher gift.
I knew what our teacher wanted was to go to a bar on a beach, where no one under the age of 25 was allowed. But I didn’t know how to do that in a gift card.
Thankfully my 11-year-old daughter, her heart welling with love for this woman who basically raised her last year, is talented in basket design, greeting card illustration, and all things gifty.
I’d buy a few certificates and my daughter could whip it up into a fabulous looking basket that communicated gratitude and grace and many other warm fuzzy emotions that no adult could muster up here in this last week of school.
All that was left was to collect the money from the other parents. I sent out an email that said, “Pony up the cash, or else.”
And the parents did. We always do. We’re pavlovian when it comes to $20 bills and the end of the year. Who knows what it’s all for. You need $20? Great, here. No, I don’t need to know why. Just sign my name for me, thanks.
And so we now have a completed basket. All that’s left is to carry it into the building, down to the classroom, and hand it to the teacher. She may not have the strength to even take it since, if we’re tired, imagine what she’s feeling. Actually I can’t, that’s why I send my children to her.
But then, as soon as the final bell rings, we can all collapse across the finish line. Someone dump a bucket of sand and a lobster claw on us. We made it to summer.