A local bulletin jokingly announced recently that “Mom’s vacation starts on the same day as school begins.”
Really.
Really?!?
I found this tone-deaf attempt at parenting humor as amusing as walking out of the ladies’ room with my skirt tucked into my underwear and toilet paper trailing from my shoe.
It must seem to outsiders as if us mothers have it made in the shade once the school year starts – wrestling our children out of the house and into the car with a nutritious breakfast in their bellies, wearing clean clothes that fit and with two shoes on their feet, after having rivaled Indiana Jones in his quest for the Holy Grail retrieving the myriad books, homework and after-school sports apparel scattered across the house only to race like Danica Patrick across town, expertly dropping our speed to a snails’ pace as we enter campus so we can hurl our kids out of the car in the drop-off cone zone before the first school bell rings.
And that’s all just before 8am.
New math, power point presentations, homework, class projects, class parties where countless food allergies prevent any convenient pre-packed snack foods from being brought within ten yards of the school grounds. Teacher, student and grandparent appreciation days, crazy hair day, free dress day, picture day and big buddy gifts…all the while trying to keep the house clean, the fridge stocked, advance our career (should you be working at a job other being a parent), maintain a relationship with our significant other and, oh yeah, work out so we don’t drop-dead from a heart attack from all the stress our “mother’s vacation” brings.
And not to mention all of the valiant fathers, grandfathers aunts, uncles and more who share in this wonderful parenting vacation that us mothers enjoy during the school year. There must have been some clerical error in the bulletin seeing that there was no mention of them in that little jest.
So yeah, needless to say, that quip left me a little salty.
The start of school is always a little bitter-sweet. It brings to an end the lazy, carefree days of summer. Gone are the empty days, long beach afternoons, staying up late, impromptu get-togethers with friends or trips for ice cream or the movie theater. But the start of the school year does allow this particular mother to return to her job of writing. I do cherish our son’s school days because I use the time our son is in school to write. It allows me to spend the hours he is at home focusing on our family life. I am blessed to have this luxury because I know not every parent can limit their work schedule to school hours. As our son enters middle school, I want to get as much out of these last few years before high school as possible, attending every sports event, school activity that I can. Because all too soon he will naturally want to spend more time with his friends than with his parents.
While I sometimes wish the school year was actually a mother’s vacation where I could nap, see friends and fritter away my days relaxing in a hammock as I love to do on vacation, I am none the less excited for the opportunity to start writing again. After taking the summer off to spend time with our son and with book three in the process of being published, I have a couple of fun projects I am eager to begin.
I hope all the parents, guardians and anyone else entrusted with the day to day care of a child has a wonderful school year ahead. May our kids grow, thrive and learn not only what is laid out in their school’s syllabus, but also the millions of little lessons life brings to us each day as we walk through the world. I hope each of us can be a source of support, understanding, love and acceptance for the wonderful young people we are lucky enough to have in our lives.
And good luck with that new math. That’s another joke I don’t get…
Happy Tuesday! 📚💕