Here’s to you mom, the young and the old,
with dishes to wash, and shirts to fold.
Here’s to you mom, the rich and the poor,
the one herding everyone out the door.
Here’s to you mom, the single and married,
with lives that are full, and too often harried.
Hold on Mom, your time will come,
when there is no more work, it’ll all be fun.
So, enjoy it Grandma, now it’s all downhill,
A feast to enjoy, and never a bill.
Yesterday was Monday, and every other Monday during the school year, starting today, I’ll be playing mom to my six-year-old granddaughter for the afternoon. This is because my daughter and I have unusual work schedules since we both work at a hospital; she in the ER, and I work on a medical/surgical floor. She works every Monday, from 8-8, and has to rely on her father and me to pick-up Bean at school, take her to dance, and get her to bed. It turns out, that this is an exhausting afternoon for a grandmother, even a fairly energetic one like me.
it’s not that I haven’t done something like this before—my children are 27 and 21, and they both participated in a variety of sports that required numerous trips to and from school, not just after school, but before it as well…as in 4:30 am for a powerlifting program they inexplicably loved. I somehow acclimated to rising at 3:50 am, throwing on sweatpants and a hat and winter jacket (hey! This is Maine!), and sleepily driving the five miles to school, a silent teen, huddled like a turtle in it’s shell, inside a hooded sweatshirt beside me. Afternoons were more lively; sweaty, dirty and triumphant after a great game, or sometimes loaded down with friends bemoaning a loss, the afterschool task of chauffeuring my kids was always fun. I’m used to all the “running around” required of a mom with active kids—Or, at least I used to be.
“School gets out at 2:50, get there 10 minutes early, go to the office and fill out the pink sign-out sheet. Then wait in the hallway. You will have to watch and pluck her out of the herd of kids because she doesn’t always see me. Dance arrival is 3:45, her pink dance bag is in the living room. Please pack a water. Dance pick up is 5:30. Please ask her if she has homework. She should go to bed at 7:30.” My daughter is very organized, and gives explicit instructions which I appreciate, because I seem to have lost any sense of urgency that I used to employ to make sure that we were all where we were supposed to be, with clean faces and a minimum of five minutes to spare. I ran a tight ship back in the day, but now my ship is more like a pleasure cruise, and I am happy to let my daughter be the captain. She’s very good at it.
After a few clarifications, I showed up at the school and waited with the others, 3/4 of whom were moms. They’re easy to spot. Some hold coffee cups, some hold toddlers, all hold their phones, either in their hands, or stuffed into the back pocket of their jeans. They lean comfortably against the walls and chat about mom stuff, “I know! Harper always wants to watch that show,” and “I just can’t believe how fast they’re growing! My oldest just turned 15!!” The dads look uncomfortable and shuffle their feet, communication limited to a nod of sympathy to other dads, angling for a spot on the wall. I could almost hear them thinking of each other, “poor bastard, wonder how he got roped into this…” They too hold their phones, squinting fervently into the screen, which I know instantly is a ruse, because being an outsider myself, I also tried casually scrolling through my phone, so that I would feel less awkward and out-of-place, only to find to my disappointment that there was absolutely no service in that part of the school. Everyone waits for the kids to come out. Finally they do—and just as my daughter predicted, I did have to fish her out of a stream of kids. She threw her arms around my waist, and shouted ”Noni!!” She smiled a jack-o-lantern smile, while looking over her pink glasses like an adorable little librarian. French braided pig tails with loose strands springing out, and a giant backpack on her back, water bottle tucked in the side pocket, off we went, through the school doors and into the unseasonably hot September afternoon.
I can happily say that we did everything we were supposed to do (except for the shower her mother requested when she called at her dinner break; because, well, it just seemed like all too much), she had a snack, got changed for dance, got there in time, came home, had dinner, did homework, had a little tv time, brushed her teeth, read a story, and went to bed. But, because I’m a grandmother, I cheated a bit. Her snack was a cupcake from a local bakery, I let her watch YouTube videos in the car, dinner was a happymeal, and honestly, if she had whined about brushing her teeth, I’d have said, “oh well, it won’t hurt just this once!” But she didn’t.
However, even with all these shortcuts, I still found this afternoon exhausting. Usually when I’m with her, we have no agenda at all, Sure, I’ve had to pick a sick Bean up at school a few times, much to her working mom’s relief, and I’ve even taken her to an appointment or two, but usually we while away our days playing Barbies, baking, shopping, and going out to lunch.
There was a time though, when my life revolved around my children; their needs, wants and activities, and my husband and I managed it all while we worked and each went to college, and didn’t think anything of it. Not about the daycare that closed permanently one Friday afternoon, when I came to pick my daughter up, because as the daycare owner tearfully confessed, “my husband is cheating on me! I just can’t do this!” Not cleaning up vomit at 2 am, when I had to get up in 2 hours, or the battle royale faced every freaking night about homework (our daughter) and bedtime (our son). I look back now, and think, “how did we do it and not kill each other?” The answer is grace. God gives you the grace that you need for every season of your life. grace is quiet and gentle, like a soft sweater. You aren’t even aware of its presence at all, and there is only one way to know for sure that you were given grace, and that is when you look back at that time in your life and think… “How, did I do it all?” That does not mean that it’s not difficult, or that you don’t cry at night. Or nearly psychotically, endlessly, repeat Robert Frost’s “…and miles to go before I sleep” as you drive a wailing toddler to the babysitters at 5;30 in the am, both of you with blankets over your laps, and a scraper in your hand to clean the windshield of frost as you drive down the dark road because, the blower broke in your car, and you have no money to fix it.
But, I digress, clearly there is a lot of emotion left over if I think about how hard it really was. It is difficult to be everything to someone, or several someones. It is scary to feel like your little ones future rests on your shoulders and that if you mess this up, they might end up being a bad person. It is tiring to always have to do things the right way and rarely “cheat” as I did with Bean last night. But, it is so worth it. Because someday, when you have come through that exhausting season of life, you might be the grandparent, breezing through the drive-thru, not a shred of guilt, or a morsel of remorse for that snack-time cupcake. Let me tell you, because I’ve been there, no grace is needed for this job. Hallelujah!
