I might lose you as I attempt to explain something I realized today. Time has slipped by while I have been playing the character of “mom”. If you are not a geek, or have never played any sort of game, imagine for a second that you are seeing everything through a character’s eyes. Yesterday I missed a call from my daughter while she was at middle school. The message was something like “Hi mom. Ummm, we need you to drive us to the field trip tomorrow. Okay. If you can do it, ummm, e-mail my teacher.” The fact that my daughter still wants me around and wants me to be a part of the 6th grade experience is not something I can say no to. I really, truly, don’t care about what I had planned for work today. The bottom line is, I am missing out if I don’t take these opportunities now. You only have one chance at this folks. Just one.
We are a unique family. I’m sure there are others like us somewhere in this world. We watch Face Off together and show our kids old fantasy movies like Legend. We like to take trips and explore Virginia…sometimes alone, sometimes with others. I have never been so miserable as when I had to go back to work and that is the honest truth. There. I said it. I want to be there when my girls need me. I am tired of saying no, I can’t chaperone. No, I can’t bring anything in to the class party because I can’t be there for it. Nope, I can’t volunteer for the book fair, I have to work. No, I can’t stay home with you today because you are sick, dad has to. No, no, no. This is all wrong. Damn economy.
We cleaned up the mini-van yesterday and today I rode into battle. I got to school and it was a mad house. I waited in the hall while the teacher explained we were going to this house to check oysters. They had to clean off the baby oysters, measure them, pick out any dead ones, and use a refractometer to check salinity, and put them back. Hmm, sounds simple, right? Ha. Then she asked my daughter to pick who was going in our van. Say what? Uh-oh. Next thing I know, I had 3 boys and 3 girls…tweens. Now what? Don’t embarrass her. Be cool. Introduce yourself. What they didn’t know is that my daughter tells me most everything, so I recognized their names. One of them I already knew, so we packed in the van with the boys in the back row and the girls up front. Here is your RPG view of the events today:
Cleaning the cage
“Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.”
~Alice Walker
