CurrentMom

The Blessing of a Carpool

Truth Thursday

I remember the very first carpool I was in. My oldest son, two years old, was entering half-day pre-school.  We were very pleased with our choice of pre-school, but we were stumped as to how we were going to get him there and back. Our wonderful nanny at the time did not yet have her driver’s license, and we both worked full-time in the opposite direction. 

Somehow we learned about people in our neighborhood whose children were also attending this pre-school, and we figured out a carpool. I remember crying as I was trying to sketch out how this was all going to work – it just felt overwhelming and new and undoable.

Of course, it eventually all worked out, and except for one day when one of the fathers in the carpool forgot to pick the kids up (yes, I still remember that) it all ran pretty smoothly for the year. After that year, things start to blur a bit as to how we got our son to pre-school, but I think our nanny finally learned how to drive, and eventually, when my younger kids were going, I was also working at home as a consultant and could drive them as well. 

So that oldest son is now at college and no longer in need of a carpool. In fact, I haven’t driven him anywhere for years. He was never involved in team sports, and so the clubs and activities he chose were all at school and accessible. And because he is so independent, he chose to find his own way all these years – via metro, bus, car and foot.

But, as they so often do in parenthood, the tides are once again changing, and I am about to enter my next phase of parenting. Call it the Sports Carpool phase. And I am already starting to feel those tears of overwhelmed-ness well up again. 

Departure

Truth Thursday

It was about 8:00 in the evening, and my contractions had really started to holler. My husband and I got in the car and he drove me through the park to the hospital, with the windows open. I remember screaming into the soft, summer trees as we drove past, the pain was so extraordinary. 

At 6:44 the next morning, after a night of contractions and challenges, our son was born by c-section. Because his heart rate had dropped during my labor, he was whisked away to the NICU before I could hold him. My mother arrived while I was still in recovery and came barreling into the room and held me tight. All I wanted to know was that my baby was ok (he was) and that we would be reunited soon (we were.) He went home on the hottest day of the year half swaddled in the bunting she had lovingly chosen for him.

He was a challenging baby.  Didn’t nurse easily, didn’t reach any of his milestones on time. We worried a lot. But eventually, he reached them all. Including the doozy of all milestones - his departure for college.

We just dropped that baby off at his freshman college dorm.

It really does go by in the blink of an eye. I can remember – viscerally – the torture of being up with my newborn every night for two months, as he found the hours of 1:00 – 5:00 am to be the best for playtime. Sitting on our porch swing, waiting for the newspaper to be delivered. He would finally go back to sleep for a couple of hours and I would doze until he woke.  The memory of the physical pain from getting through those two months with no sleep and taking care of a newborn will never leave me.

I ran into the wonderful director of his wonderful pre-school the day before we hit the road for college. It was an omen of grace and goodness, as I would have kept all three of my kids in her charge for their entire school careers if I could. She wished me luck, and we reminisced about how she used to go into the classrooms with a Polaroid camera on the first day of school to bring a snapshot to the parents who were waiting upstairs in the “Tea and Sympathy” room.  She told me she never took a picture of a child crying. My child was merely curled up in a fetal position in the corner. We still have that picture.

Love Letters ... To Camp

Truth Thursday

One of the few visceral memories I have from my days at Camp Hillcroft was the time I received a long letter from my father, in which he spoke to me as if I were already much more grown up than I felt.  I don’t remember the actual words or content of what he wrote, only that it made me feel special and loved and very, very close to him.

I believe some of his thoughts were about how much I prattled on about the boys at camp, and how he was worried that such trivial thoughts would trample my intellectual acumen and even more importantly, get me hurt. He was and is a quiet philosopher, my father, even though, as anyone who knows him knows, he couches it in biting sarcasm and quotidian wit. But underneath it all, he is a deep thinker who deeply loves and cares about those few people he lets into his life. 

I’ve been thinking about that letter, long lost in the detritus of many moves, as I write to my almost-12-year-old son at camp this summer. This is his third summer, and his longest stint yet – he will be away from home for six weeks.

We are into Week Three, and to date I have sent him one letter that was mailed in time to be there when he arrived, one letter right before I left for an overseas trip, one postcard from said overseas trip, and another letter just today.  None of the letters I sent were deep or meaningful. They were newsy, breezy.  All the experts tell you not to tell your child you miss them when you write to them – and the fact is, I don’t. Not really.  As I tell my family anytime I go on a work trip, I don’t miss anyone for the first week. Then, in the second week, I start to get a little ache.

Roto Mom - Or, The Other Side of Helicoptering

Truth Thursday

This may amuse, or even satisfy, those of my friends who have long thought, silently (or not so silently) that am too loose with my kids – allow them too much freedom too early. Or that I'm not paying close enough attention to their comings and goings. That’s not to say there aren’t rules, because that’s different. But I’ve always been the mom who allowed my kids to walk to town sooner than their friends, take the bus alone, do things on their own. I don't hover.

My sister and I were raised in a family that placed a great premium on independence, both because of its inherent value and because of our circumstances. We grew up to be New York City kids, adept at riding the subways, navigating the mean streets alone, taking the train to school from the age of 11.

We both feel incredibly fortunate to have had that experience. It has prepared us for life in a positive and empowering way. 

I have always wanted the same for my children, except that we live a bit more in the suburban, go-car-go culture than I would have liked. But we have public transportation, and schools close enough to walk to. So they have figured it out. My oldest has been getting himself everywhere by himself for years – he hoofs it on his own, takes the bus or metro. Even flew to Israel on his own when he was 14 (to stay with family.)

Each summer I put them on a plane to fly alone to Boston to visit their grandparents. They walk to middle school, have learned how to take the bus to “downtown” and the youngest is about to leave for 6 weeks of sleepaway camp without a worry.

But this weekend tested me in a different way, and I felt more like a mother bear than I have in a long time.

The Bully Pulpit

Truth Thursday

Defined by Wikipedia, a bully pulpit is “a position sufficiently conspicuous to provide an opportunity to speak out and be listened to.”

It is also “only distantly related to the modern form of "bully", which means "harasser of the weak."

This week, I will write about bullying from the vantage point of my bully pulpit.

I have learned the very sad news that in one of my child’s circle of friends, there is someone being bullied. Bullied so meanly that this child is afraid to walk in the halls in school alone, and cowers until friends, including my child, come to the rescue.

This has all been happening in the last few days of school, and I don’t know what the parents of either child involved are doing about it officially, since it is not my child who is the victim.

But it was me. And when I heard the story, it pushed a button deep inside me and I started to cry. Because I was that child who cowered in the bathroom, who was afraid to walk in the hallways without a posse of friends to protect me, and who never mentioned a word to my parents for an entire school year about what was happening to me at school.