23 May 2006
no more pencils, no more books...but
You know those lists you see every now and then of the 10 biggest stressors? I don't recall any of them ever listing The End of the School Year, but I am here to tell you that it's right at the top of my list.
6 kids + 6 Ends of the School Year / 4 different schools = 0 chance of not losing, every day, the Mother of the Year Award again. Most days, I lose it more than once.
There are plays and performances--always scheduled during working hours, except when they are scheduled after dinner and with the stipulation that you musn't live a life so untidy that you'd have to bring--gasp!--younger children in order to attend yourself. There are Gifts to Teachers, which these days are organized by the Pedicure Moms and always involve hours of work at home drawing pictures and writing the perfect thank you note for the Book of Appreciation, twenty bucks, and a single perfect flower which is expected to survive the hardships of night-stalking cats while they wait for the morning departure and the trip to school in the over-adrenalined schoolbus. Oh, and the order forms for next year's supplies, the notes about refunds for lunch funds which require replies by a certain date but it's not clear what that date is, the notes with urls where you can order the Summer Supplement for practicing for the next grade during the summer, tiny scraps of paper with illegible phone numbers of bestest friends for making playdates, and the unfathomable layer of something organic at the bottom of even frequently inspected backpacks.
I'm still counting the deadlines I've missed, the schedules I've gotten wrong ("But Mr. MiddleschoolEnglishTeacher, you said the scenes from Romeo and Juliet would start 45 minutes ago, and I have another play to get to....."), and the gift certificates I somehow missed contributing to.
And then there's about 20 pounds of schoolwork per kid, often supplemented by "extras" the teachers give to the kids as they are taking down the stuff on the walls, that seem to come home every single day of the last week of school. I'm quite sure my mother didn't deal with this. I don't remember staggering home under the weight of several reams worth of academic accomplishment. Either teachers used to throw the stuff away or the kids did. Turkeys drawn around the outline of a hand, rainbows with the colors written out in almost readable cursive, Martin Luther King profiles sharing the page with Washington and Lincoln, pictures of animals with pictures of their skeletons underneath them, essays on The Pearl and their six previous incarnations, hand-drawn maps of the Left Bank with little icons of the sights pasted on them, carefully laid out Maya calendars, timelines of the Roman emperors, Spanish verb conjugation charts--and, trust me, I could go on.
I haven't seen the tile on my kitchen counter in weeks as it is. The kids can't eat a meal without shifting piles of art, arithmetic, and story summaries to one side or another. And yet, drowning though we are (and the Last Day hasn't even arrived yet), I can't bear to throw any of it away. Every piece of paper is a piece of a kid, my kid, and therefore a piece of my heart.
Anybody want to go in on buying a storage barn?
6 kids + 6 Ends of the School Year / 4 different schools = 0 chance of not losing, every day, the Mother of the Year Award again. Most days, I lose it more than once.
There are plays and performances--always scheduled during working hours, except when they are scheduled after dinner and with the stipulation that you musn't live a life so untidy that you'd have to bring--gasp!--younger children in order to attend yourself. There are Gifts to Teachers, which these days are organized by the Pedicure Moms and always involve hours of work at home drawing pictures and writing the perfect thank you note for the Book of Appreciation, twenty bucks, and a single perfect flower which is expected to survive the hardships of night-stalking cats while they wait for the morning departure and the trip to school in the over-adrenalined schoolbus. Oh, and the order forms for next year's supplies, the notes about refunds for lunch funds which require replies by a certain date but it's not clear what that date is, the notes with urls where you can order the Summer Supplement for practicing for the next grade during the summer, tiny scraps of paper with illegible phone numbers of bestest friends for making playdates, and the unfathomable layer of something organic at the bottom of even frequently inspected backpacks.
I'm still counting the deadlines I've missed, the schedules I've gotten wrong ("But Mr. MiddleschoolEnglishTeacher, you said the scenes from Romeo and Juliet would start 45 minutes ago, and I have another play to get to....."), and the gift certificates I somehow missed contributing to.
And then there's about 20 pounds of schoolwork per kid, often supplemented by "extras" the teachers give to the kids as they are taking down the stuff on the walls, that seem to come home every single day of the last week of school. I'm quite sure my mother didn't deal with this. I don't remember staggering home under the weight of several reams worth of academic accomplishment. Either teachers used to throw the stuff away or the kids did. Turkeys drawn around the outline of a hand, rainbows with the colors written out in almost readable cursive, Martin Luther King profiles sharing the page with Washington and Lincoln, pictures of animals with pictures of their skeletons underneath them, essays on The Pearl and their six previous incarnations, hand-drawn maps of the Left Bank with little icons of the sights pasted on them, carefully laid out Maya calendars, timelines of the Roman emperors, Spanish verb conjugation charts--and, trust me, I could go on.
I haven't seen the tile on my kitchen counter in weeks as it is. The kids can't eat a meal without shifting piles of art, arithmetic, and story summaries to one side or another. And yet, drowning though we are (and the Last Day hasn't even arrived yet), I can't bear to throw any of it away. Every piece of paper is a piece of a kid, my kid, and therefore a piece of my heart.
Anybody want to go in on buying a storage barn?
