1 Mother 2 Another

I spent yesterday living as close to the
life of a typical soccer mom as I have, and let me say, I was
exhausted.


And I don’t think I’ll be enlisting any time soon.

A quick definition: a soccer mom –
and I’m not making any judgments here – is a mom who is
purely stay-at-home, with no outside job or even work-at-home job.
A soccer mom, for the purpose of this essay, has the sole
“job” of taking care of the kids and home. If you like
or dislike the idea of soccer moms, or think that there’s
more to life than that or no one with kids should ever want to do
anything OTHER than that, please, let me say, this is not the place
for that debate.


It’s just a light-hearted essay on how shepherding my kids
kicked my butt.


The morning started with our early-rising practice in preparation
for school starting, so we got up at 7:15. At 8:15, a friend of
Maddie’s was dropped off at our house. At 9 a.m., we all got
in the mini-van and picked up a friend of Cora’s and took the
whole clan to a bounce house place. The twenty minutes in the car
with all four girls was actually quite humorous, as I listened to
the two sets of friends carry on entirely disparate conversations.
I had to struggle to not yell, “Cora, can you speak more
quietly? I’m trying to eavesdrop on Maddie!”


We hit the bounce house place at 9:30 and camped there for two
hours. Twice the kids stopped for snack breaks and I broke out what
I’d packed: string cheese, dried strawberries, water bottles,
and crackers. I’d brought little Dixie cups to feed the kids
so no one’s grubby hands were repeatedly dipping in a bag.


I refilled those cups more than a waitress at the Red
Lobster’s All-You-Can-Eat Sunday buffet.


My job at the bounce house was relatively easy: guard the two
entrance doors, watch for fights that might need refereeing, insist
on regular group-wide potty breaks. And the waitress thing, of
course. I tried to play with the girls and was met with blank,
uncomprehending stares (guest kids) and pleading looks (my kids).


So I sat on my butt and guarded the exits. Which wasn’t bad.
It felt, at times, like a job a monkey could do rather than an
engaged, loving mother, but it was fine.


From there we headed over to a fast-food place for lunch.
Don’t judge. On the drive over, all four girls gave me their
orders – and insisted I repeat them back for accuracy –
so they could go play in the play area while I stood in line for
the food. Order given and fulfilled, table secured, kids rounded up
and hand sanitized, we sat down to eat. Well, “sat
down” is a relative term.


The first part of the meal I hovered the entire time, opening
ketchup packets and splitting French fries and inserting straws and
wiping up spills. By the time I was able to sit the first kid was
done eating and barely containing herself while she waited for her
friend. They all ran to play a few more minutes while I ate and
cleaned up – I sat right in front of the play area window,
don’t worry – before the mom of one of my guests showed
up to pick up her daughter.


We took our remaining charge back home and played until 1:30, when
her mom came to grab and go. At that point, we had two hours before
Maddie had to get dressed for ballet class.


Everyone separated to their own corners, looking for some down time
for just a bit. I caught up on email before the girls demanded my
attention, and then I prepped dinner while they watched their daily
video. A short flurry of potty breaks and wrestling legs into
tights and hair into a bun, and we were off to ballet.


An hour later we ran home, I plated up dinner, and we scarfed down
our meal. Why eat so fast? Because in an effort to let Maddie try
new things, I scheduled ice skating on Thursdays as well. Just for
a two-week overlap, but still.


Throw Maddie into cold-weather clothes, grab socks, drive to the
rink. Watch while she practices, drive home, race through bedtime
routine, and pray they stay in their rooms.


I was exhausted.


It’s not like I’ve never spent an entire break-free day
with the girls: we’ve had lots of days where it’s just
the three of us constantly together. And I’ve enjoyed it.
Mostly. But I’ve never spent an entire day where I felt so
necessary, but not necessarily for myself. The girls didn’t
need me: they needed someone to drive them and cook for them and
get their clean clothes out and stay back during a play date and .
. . . and. . . . and. I felt indispensable and superfluous at the
same time.


So I’ll never be the mom who lets her kids do five different
activities at once, racing from piano to soccer to gymnastics. I
enjoy – sometimes only intellectually – serving my
kids. I do. But I want to be more involved – making brownies
with them, or helping them through art projects – if
I’m going to be on Mommy Duty an entire day. Does that make
sense?


Am I crazy to even draw that line? I don’t know.


But I do know it’s not my thing. And my kids will just have
to be ok with that.